Empire

My recent leisure reading is The Age of Empire by Eric Hobsbawn.

This is the last book of the Age trilogy (the birthday present that I bought for myself last year) and, to me, the more difficult one to follow. As Hobsbawn himself mentioned, this is not a book to describe what happened, but to discuss and explain the historical events between 1875 and 1914 from a socialistic point of view. Although it could stand alone as an excellent treatise, the theory and argument that Hobsbawn put up are logical consequences of the previous volumes, notably, the industrial revolution and the French revolution.

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An important idea that emerged during the period of discussion and Hobsbawn spent some effort to elaborate is nationalism. Given the recent incident in Ukraine and Crimea, and using the jargon of Humphrey Appleby, the topic is not entirely without contemporary interest.

The underlying question is simple but profound: What is a country?

In short, there are two forms of country. The classical examples are the Han (漢) and Roman Empires, which appeared roughly at the same time in history.