Yes, this is the second book of the Age’s trilogy – the first of which I finished not too long ago.
The scope of this book is deliberately limited; it covers the short period from 1847 to 1877. Unlike the previous Capital, however, the Revolution is more global in perspective and does not discuss only on what happened in Europe. A considerable length is spent on the theory of Karl Marx and how the idea came along. More importantly, Hobsbawm did go into some depth to discuss the attempt of modernization of two ancient countries: Japan and China.
The idea of Hobsbawm was simple: Japan has a long history of adopting foreign culture, while the Middle Kingdom has its own system and has been running well for thousands of years. If you consider modernization as taking up the barbarian system, there is no way you could make any meaningful change.
I may not agree entirely with what Hobsbawm said, but that’s certainly an objective and authoritative view.
PS. Unlike Japan and China, Hobsbawm discussed very little about the development of India. I believe that’s because India was under the control of Britain during that period and there was minimal progress with regard to revolution or modernization of the social system.
No comments:
Post a Comment