An intellectual biography of Eric Hobsbawm

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Eric Hobsbawm was undoubtedly one of the most important English-language historians of the twentieth-century. His books were hugely successful and his ideas were discussed far beyond the confines of British academia. At the same time, he was the archetypal intellectual. He remained a specialist in his discipline but he participated actively in civic and political debates about contemporary British, European and global politics. He was not an activist but his commitments and his ideas reflected the intense politicisation and lingering utopias of the twentieth century. There are few historians whose ideas have been discussed by Peruvian trade unionists, Italian Eurocommunists and Cuban Communist ideologues, but the universal Marxist themes that underpinned Hobsbawm's writing made his work accessible to very diverse audiences. This multiplicity of contexts makes it particularly difficult to build a unified and chronological picture. I have therefore chosen instead to organise the project around three common themes that illuminate Hobsbawm's development as a public figure. The first is the role of the intellectual in British public life. In the twentieth century, the British have often been reticent about the notion of the intellectual, but Hobsbawm's unusual trajectory - he was brought up in interwar Austria and Germany - meant that he had a different view of public and political engagement. In Britain he was first and foremost a historian, but elsewhere he was called upon to speak intelligently about topical subjects that were only tangentially related to his professional interests. Hobsbawm thus offers a unique insight into the way the twentieth-century European intellectual was formed and shaped. The second theme is the global imagination of twentieth-century Marxist politics. This means taking seriously, not simply the economic and social implications of Hobsbawm's Marxism, but also its ethical dimensions. Rather than returning to hackneyed debates about whether Hobsbawm's lifelong commitment to Communism was 'good' or 'bad', I want to bring to bear new global and transnational perspectives on the study of the intellectual history of Marxism by emphasising how he used Marxism to help him weave historical stories that influenced hundreds of thousands of readers the world over. The third theme is historical writing. Through a close reading of Hobsbawm's Ages tetralogy and his other textbooks, I will investigate the stylistic underpinnings of English-language history writing. Amongst other things, I will explore Hobsbawm's interest in science and economics; the influence of continental European social scientific writing of the 1930s, 40s and 50s; and the importance of his career as a teacher. I will also consider the way he marketed his books: Hobsbawm had a remarkable talent for self-promotion and the commercial underpinnings of his history writing played an important role in his success.These three themes will allow me to explore the foundations of Hobsbawm's thought, his intellectual trajectory, and the relationship between his personal commitments and his public engagement. They will make it possible for me to compare him with his contemporaries and draw out the common threads that brought together a broad and transnational constellation of twentieth-century Marxist intellectuals. And, crucially, they will help us understand why Hobsbawm was able to contribute to the right debates at the right time. Without this, it is impossible to explain the progression of his ideas and his astonishing long-term impact.