Age Of Revolution 1789 1848

Contains pages 53 to 76 of Chapter 3 from THE AGE OF REVOLUTION, 1789-1848

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Between 1789 and 1848 the world was transformed by both the French and Industrial Revolutions, creating the modern world as we know it. This book traces the transformation brought about in every sphere of European life by these two revolutions.

Hobsbawn traces the transformation brought about in every sphere of European life by the Dual Revolution - the 1789 French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution that originated in Britain.

The Age of Revolution is the first of four works by Eric Hobsbawm that collectively synthesize the ideas he developed over a lifetime spent studying the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hobsbawm's vision is important – he was a lifelong Marxist whose view of history was shaped by a fascination with social and economic history, yet who privileged evidence over political theory – but the real power of these works, and especially The Age of Revolution, emanates from the wide range of the author's reading and his mastery of the critical thinking skill of evaluation. It is this skill that allows Hobsbawm to combine insights drawn from decades of reading into an original thesis that sees the crucial "long 19th century" as a period shaped by "dual revolution" – the twin impacts of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and the French Revolution on the continent. Hobsbawm supplemented his evaluative excellence with a firm grasp of reasoning, crafting a volume that contains brilliant, clearly-structured arguments which explain complicated ideas via well-chosen examples in ways that make his work accessible to intelligent general readers and scholars alike.

A "lively, panoramic" history of a revolutionary year (New York Times) In 1848, a violent storm of revolutions ripped through Europe. The torrent all but swept away the conservative order that had kept peace on the continent since Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815 -- but which in many countries had also suppressed dreams of national freedom. Political events so dramatic had not been seen in Europe since the French Revolution, and they would not be witnessed again until 1989, with the revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe. In 1848, historian Mike Rapport examines the roots of the ferment and then, with breathtaking pace, chronicles the explosive spread of violence across Europe. A vivid narrative of a complex chain of interconnected revolutions, 1848 tells the exhilarating story of Europe's violent "Spring of Nations" and traces its reverberations to the present day.

This book addresses enduring historiographical problems concerning the appearance of the first national movements in Europe and their role in the crises associated with the Age of Revolution. Considerable detail is supplied to the picture of Enlightenment era intellectual and cultural pursuits in which the nation was featured as both an object of theoretical interest and site of practice. In doing so, the work provides a major corrective to depictions of the period characteristic of earlier ventures - including those by authors as notable as Hobsbawm, Gellner, and Anderson -- while offering an advance in narrative coherence by portraying how developments in the sphere of ideas influenced the terms of political debate in France and elsewhere in the years preceding the upheavals of 1789-1815. Subsequent chapters explore the composite nature of the revolutions which followed and the challenges of determining the relative capacity of the three chief sources of contemporary unrest -- constitutional, national, and social -- to inspire extra-legal challenges to the Restoration status quo.