Download Britain, Empire, Europe: Re

417
Jan Rüger
Britain, Empire, Europe:
Re-reading Eric Hobsbawm
How should we think of the relationship between Britain, its empire and European
history? When re-reading Hobsbawm’s trilogy on the nineteenth century with this
question in mind one is initially struck by a paradox: while originally designed as a
history of Europe and appreciated as such by a vast audience of readers, there is,
conceptually speaking, surprisingly little «Europe» in it. The book titles themselves
suggest that Hobsbawm was hesitant about a rigidly European framework. In its
early editions The Age of Revolution carried the subtitle Europe, 1789–1848. Later editions dropped the «Europe»; they were simply entitled The Age of Revolution, 1789–
1848. The other two volumes in the trilogy came without «Europe» in the title from
the beginning: The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 and The Age of Empire, 1875–1914.
This change in emphasis can be seen as reflecting Hobsbawm’s ambiguous attitude towards «Europe» as an idea or category more generally. There is never any
doubt in the three books that nineteenth-century Britain was part of Europe, but
the way in which the trilogy is organized has little to do with a geographical framework, let alone a definition of Europe. Instead, it follows a remarkably flexible
approach, allowing for a continuous change in the level of analysis, including
local, regional, national, imperial and global contexts. Indeed, in the preface to The
Age of Revolution, Hobsbawm explains that this is neither a history of Europe, nor
a history of the world. Instead, the work «traces the transformation of the world
between 1789 and 1848 insofar as it was due to what is here called the ‹dual re-
volutions› – the French Revolution of 1789 and the contemporaneous (British) Industrial Revolution».1 Any part of the world that was touched in a lasting fashion
by these two developments was to be covered; any part not affected by the «dual
revolutions» was not to be included. If the book’s «perspective is primarily European, or more precisely Franco-British, it is because in this period the world – or at
least a large part of it – was transformed from a European, or rather a Franco
1 E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848,
New York 1964, ix.
418
Jan Rüger
British, base».2 It is this focus on the transformation of the world which gives
coherence to his trilogy, rather than any geographical or political definition of
Europe.
1. Britain in Europe
In «The Curious History of Europe», an essay first published in 1996, Hobsbawm
is characteristically dismissive about such definitions.3 «Europe», he writes, is simply one of the various «human names for parts of the global land-mass».4 It «exists
exclusively as an intellectual construct».5 With its focus on Europe as a «shifting,
divisible and flexible concept»6, the essay reads like a retrospective explanation of
the rationale which Hobsbawm followed in his trilogy on the nineteenth century.
To a degree this rationale echoes J. G. A. Pocock’s warning against writing the British past as a part of «Europe», «that tendentious and aggressive term».7 While
Hobsbawm does not demonise «Europe» in the way Pocock arguably does, he
shares his fundamental scepticism about the «European idea»:
It is not surprising that the ideology which has formed the core of the «European
idea» from Napoleon via the Pan-European movement of the 1920s and Goebbels
to the European Economic Community – that is to say a concept of Europe which
deliberately excludes parts of the geographical continent – likes to appeal to Charlemagne. That Great Charles ruled over the only part of the European continent
which, at least since the rise of Islam, had not been reached by the invaders, and
could therefore claim to be the «vanguard and saviour of the West» against the Orient – to quote the words of the Austrian President Karl Renner in 1946, in praise of
his own country’s alleged «historic mission».8
For Hobsbawm, the Cold War offered the latest twist in this tradition which had
defined and redefined the continent as a single entity according to political and
ideological aims. The historian’s task, in contrast, was to explore Europe’s «economically, politically and culturally heterogeneous» character: «There has never
been a single Europe. Difference cannot be eliminated from our history.»9
But although Hobsbawm is dismissive about political definitions of Europe, he
does not follow Pocock’s plea to separate the history of Britain and its empire from
the European past. On the contrary, in Hobsbawm’s writing it is precisely the com 2 Ibid.
3 The essay was published in German in Die Zeit
on 4 Oct 1996. An extended English version
(which is used here) came out in On History, London 1997, 287–301.
4 Ibid., 287.
8
5 Ibid., 289.
6 Ibid., 290.
9
7 J. G. A. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands. Essays in
British History, Cambridge 2005, 78. The most
influential article by Pocock in this context is
idem, «British History: A Plea for a New Subject», in: Journal of Modern History 47 (1975),
601–624.
Hobsbawm, On History, 291 (emphases in the
original).
Ibid., 293.
Re-reading Eric Hobsbawm
419
bination of European and global contexts that explains Britain’s pivotal role in the
nineteenth century. Europe had «been on the defensive for a millennium» before it
conquered the world in the modern era. It is therefore «impossible to sever European history from world history».10 This sounds perhaps obvious now, but his
insistence on the link between European and world history came long before the
«global turn». Hobsbawm was in this sense a world historian avant la lettre:
rather than following a discrete, geographically defined historiography («Modern
Europe»), his work brought together Britain, Europe and the world in one context.
Apart from the sheer craftsmanship of Hobsbawm’s writing, his trilogy works
so well because it is based on the belief in an underlying structure that explains the
transformation of the nineteenth century. Yet this focus on large-scale socio-economic changes (not dissimilar to Charles Tilly’s «Big Structures, Large Processes,
Huge Comparisons»)11 is again and again fractured into a multitude of small examples, telling details and biographies. And it is broken up by rapid shifts between
local, regional, national, imperial and global levels of analysis. All this allows
Hobsbawm to capture the diversity and undetermined character of the «many Europes» that he sees unfolding in the nineteenth century, while at the same time
pegging back his narrative to the «process of revolutionary transformations», the
trilogy’s interpretive backbone.12
This light-touch Marxist approach explains why Hobsbawm had no problem
with integrating Britain in his survey of Europe. Britain was a key factor in the socio-economic transformation called the Industrial Revolution and a pioneer of
European imperialism. How could it not be at the heart of a narrative aimed at
explaining how Europe had changed, allowing it to turn outwards in the nine-
teenth century and take on a temporary global role? It is obvious that this integration of Britain into a more generally European explanation was based on a decidedly Eurocentric interpretation. As Hobsbawm puts it in «The Curious History of
Europe»:
Everything that distinguishes the world of today from the world of the Ming and
Mughal emperors and the Mamelukes originated in Europe – whether in science
and technology, in the economy, in ideology and politics, or in the institutions and
practices of public and private life. Even the concept of the «world» as a system
of human communication embracing the entire globe could not exist before the
European conquest of the western hemisphere and the emergence of a capitalist
economy. This is what fixes the situation of Europe in world history, what defines
the problems of European history and indeed what makes a specific history of
Europe necessary.13
10 Ibid., 292.
12 E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914, Lon 11 C. Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comdon 1987, Preface.
13 Hobsbawm, On History, 297.
parisons, New York 1984.
420
Jan Rüger
It is doubtful whether many historians would interpret the globalising dynamics of the nineteenth century in such a one-sided manner now.14 Hobsbawm’s depiction here certainly contrasts unfavourably with recent syntheses.15 What is worth
noting for the purposes of this essay is how much he sees the socio-economic transformation of the nineteenth century and therefore Britain at the heart of Europe’s
history. The subject of European history «is not a geographical space or a human
collective, but a process. If Europe had not transformed itself and thereby transformed the world, there would be no such thing as a single, coherent history of
Europe».16 It is the focus on this transformative process (in which industrialisation,
imperialism, nationalism and war went hand in hand) which explains why
Hobsbawm’s history of Europe works without using the term «Europe» much at
all – while bringing Britain into the centre of the picture.
2. Europe and the British Empire
This was unusual at the time and has arguably become more unusual since. While
Hobsbawm composed his survey of the nineteenth-century a number of scholars
were busy distancing the history of Britain and its empire from «Europe». Pocock
was particularly influential in theorising the separation of British history and especially British imperial history from the European context.17 The «new imperial
history» has arguably had a similar effect. Whether intended or not, much of the
innovative work on the relationship between Britain and its colonies has directed
the attention of British historians away from Europe.18 Scholars working on Britain’s relationship with the continent, too, have contributed to this sense of isolation. One (more traditional) school of thought argues that the empire mattered little
for Britain’s role in the European concert.19 Another (more recent) tradition suggests the opposite, namely that the empire mattered much more for Britain’s foreign relations than Europe.20 The debate between these positions has been mostly
14 For one of the most important critiques see
Present», Radical History Review, 95 (2006), 211–
D. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. Postcolo234. See also Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects:
nial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton
Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination,
2000.
1830–1867 (Chicago and London, 2002); Cathe 15 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780–
rine Hall and Sonya O. Rose (eds.), At Home with
1914, Oxford 2004; J. Osterhammel, Die Verthe Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial
wandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. JahrhunWorld (Cambridge and New York, 2006); Kathderts, München 2009.
leen Wilson (ed.), A New Imperial History: Cul 16 Hobsbawm, On History, 297.
ture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Em 17 On Pocock’s influence see D. Armitage, «Greater
pire 1660–1840 (2004); Antoinette Burton, Empire
Britain: A Useful Category of Historical Analyin Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British
sis?», in: American Historical Review 104 (1999)
Imperialism (Durham and London, 2011).
and R. Bourke, «Pocock and the Presuppositions 19 P. M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism 1860–1914, London 1980; P. W. Schroof the New British History», in: Historical Journal
eder, The Transformation of European Politics,
53 (2010).
18 For a good survey of the «new imperial history»
1763–1848, Oxford 1994.
see Kathleen Wilson, «Old Imperialisms and New 20 K. Wilson, The Policy of the Entente. Essays on the
Imperial Histories: Rethinking the History of the
Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904–1914,
Re-reading Eric Hobsbawm
421
about the hierarchy of, but rarely about the interdependence between «empire» and
«continent». With few exceptions, the two terms continue to represent distinctly
separate lenses through which historians interpret Britain’s external affairs in this
period.21
Hobsbawm thus remains one of the few authors who, in a sustained fashion,
wrote the British empire into the European nineteenth century. What allowed him
to do so was that he did not structure his narrative according to an idea or definition
of Europe, nor did he hold mutually exclusive notions of «Europe» and «empire»
within his conceptual framework. Indeed, re-reading Hobsbawm’s nineteenth-century one is struck again by the futility of demarcation: who could say where Europe
began and where the empire ended? If Hobsbawm’s Eurocentric interpretation
of industrialisation and globalisation seems problematic, the framework of the
three books is still remarkable for its integrative qualities, bringing together vastly
different scales of analysis in a narrative that explores the relationship between the
British imperial and the continental European pasts in one context.
This matters for research as much as for teaching. In the preface to The Age
of Empire Hobsbawm stresses that he «spent many years» lecturing European history to the students of Birkbeck, University of London. Dedicating the book to
them, he concludes that «I doubt whether I would have been able to envisage
a history of the nineteenth century in world history without this experience».22
Long before he wrote his history of Europe, he had taught it to a diverse and
demanding student audience. Although the key survey course which he devised
has undergone numerous changes since, it still reflects the challenge set by
Hobsbawm: how to bring together national histories with overarching thematic
and comparative questions; how to do justice to the European context without separating it from world history; how to integrate Britain into this picture when curriculum and job descriptions demand for a split between «British», «European» and
«world» histories.
3. The Imperial Link
Eric Hobsbawm’s nineteenth century remains therefore not only exemplary in the
broad sweep, the elegance and style, the sheer amount of knowledge it displays;
it also continues to offer a rich encouragement to think Britain and Europe in
one context. This is not to advocate the streamlining of British history into an «EU
past» – Hobsbawm had little time for such endeavours. Nor is it to deny that Britain’s imperial roles distanced it from continental developments and allowed it to
Cambridge 1985; K. Neilson, Britain and the Last
ing the Anglo-German Antagonism», in: Journal
Tsar. British Policy and Russia, 1894–1917, Oxford
of Modern History 83 (2011).
1995; N. Ferguson, The Pity of War, London 1998. 22 Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, Preface.
21 For a more detailed survey see J. Rüger, «Revisit-
422
Jan Rüger
retain differences which may otherwise well have been eroded.23 But the empire
also connected British and European histories in a multitude of locations and contexts.24 This is not only demonstrated by Hobsbawm’s trilogy on the nineteenth century, but also by his own biography. Britain and its empire were inseparably bound
up with European history in his life and his family’s past.
Nowhere is this illustrated more beautifully than in the overture to The Age of
Empire in which he explains (amongst many other things) how his parents met. The
passage is worth quoting as it exemplifies Hobsbawm’s extraordinary gift for the
combination of small-scale examples with large-scale processes; and because it is
paradigmatic for the way in which he integrates British and European histories in
an imperial context:
In the summer of 1913 a young lady graduated from secondary school in Vienna,
capital of the empire of Austria-Hungary. This was still a fairly unusual achievement for girls in central Europe. To celebrate the occasion, her parents decided to
offer her a journey abroad, and since it was unthinkable that a respectable young
woman of eighteen should be exposed to danger and temptation alone, they looked
for a suitable relative. Fortunately, amongst the various interrelated families which
had advanced westwards to prosperity and education from various small towns
in Poland and Hungary during the past generations, there was one who had
done unusually well. Uncle Albert had built up a chain of stores in the Levante –
Constantinople, Smyrna, Aleppo, Alexandria. In the early twentieth century there
was plenty of business to be done in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, and
Austria had long been central Europe’s business window on the orient. Egypt was
both a living museum, suitable for cultural self-improvement, and a sophisticated
community of the cosmopolitan middle class, with whom communication was
easily possible by means of the French language, which the young lady and her
sisters had perfected at a boarding establishment in the neighbourhood of Brussels.
It also, of course, contained the Arabs. Uncle Albert was happy to welcome his
young relative, who travelled to Egypt on a steamer of the Lloyd Triestino, from Trieste, which was then the chief port of the Habsburg empire and also, as it happened,
the place of residence of James Joyce. The young lady was the present author’s
future mother.
Some years earlier a young man had also travelled to Egypt, but from London. His
family background was considerably more modest. His father, who had migrated to
Britain from Russian Poland in the 1870s, was a cabinet-maker by trade, who
earned an insecure living in East London and Manchester, bringing up a daughter
23 A. G. Hopkins, «Back to the Future: From 24 For a good set of examples see U. Lindner, KoloniNational History to Imperial History», in: Past &
ale Begegnungen. Deutschland und GroßbritanPresent 164 (1999); B. Weisbrod, «Der englische
nien als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914
Sonderweg in der neueren Geschichte», in: Ge(Frankfurt, 2011).
schichte und Gesellschaft 16 (1990), 233–252.
Re-reading Eric Hobsbawm
423
of his first marriage and eight children of the second, most of them already born
in England, as best as he could. Except for one son, none of them was gifted for
business or drawn to it. Only one of the youngest had the chance to acquire much
schooling, becoming a mining engineer in South America, which was then an
informal part of the British Empire. All, however, were passionate in the pursuit of
English language and culture, and anglicized themselves with enthusiasm. One
became an actor, another carried on the family trade, one became a primary school
teacher, two others joined the expanding public services in the form of the Post
Office. As it happened Britain had recently (1882) occupied Egypt, and so one
brother found himself representing a small part of the British Empire, namely the
Egyptian Post and Telegraph Service, in the Nile delta. He suggested that Egypt
would suit yet another of his brothers […].
That young man was the author’s future father, who thus met his future wife where
the economics and politics of the Age of Empire brought them together – presumably at the Sporting Club on the outskirts of Alexandria, near which they would
establish their first home. It is extremely improbable that such an encounter would
have happened in such a place, or would have led to a marriage between two such
people, in any period earlier than the one with which this book deals. Readers ought
to be able to discover why.25
Hobsbawm bounces back and forth here between different levels of narrative in a
manner which is, also for its light but consistent touch of irony, reminiscent of Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities.26 The context changes rapidly, from biographical, to social, to economic, to political, to cultural. The timeframe too shifts in practically every other sentence: the long durée of migration, the shorter period during
which his mother’s uncle had established his business as part of Austria’s rising
trade with the orient, the brief span during which his mother and father travelled
from London and Vienna to Egypt – before the chronologies merge in the one day in
the summer of 1913 when they met. While the passage is worth quoting at full length
for these qualities alone, it serves here also as a reminder that British and European
histories intersected not just in London, Berlin, Paris or St Petersburg, but also at
the edges of continents and empires – Britain and Europe were bound up with each
other on the outskirts of Alexandria.
Jan Rüger
Birkbeck, University of London
Department of History, Classics and Archaeology
Malet Street
London WCIE 7HX
e-mail: [email protected]
25 Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, 2–3.
26 Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, vol. 1
(Berlin, 1930); vol 2 (Berlin 1933); vol. 3 (Lau-
sanne, 1943). Cf. idem, The Man Without Qualities, trans. Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike (London, 1995).