¶ 3: Introduction: My Grand Narrative: Slouching Towards Utopia: Notes & Long Notes
¶ 3: Introduction: My Grand Narrative: Slouching Towards Utopia: Notes & Long Notes
I am starting to go through the manuscript of my forthcoming book, paragraph-by-paragraph, adding in the full notes that could not make it into the print version...
¶3: My strong belief that history should focus on the long twentieth century stands in contrast to what others—most notably the Marxist British historian Eric Hobsbawm—have focused on and called the “short twentieth century,” which lasted from the start of World War I in 1914 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.[3][h] Such others tend to see the nineteenth century as the long rise of democracy and capitalism, from 1776 to 1914,[i] and the short twentieth century as one in which really-existing socialism and fascism shake the world.[j]
Printed Endnotes:
[3] Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, London: Michael Joseph, 1984 <https://archive.org/details/ageofextremeshis00hobs_0>.
Longer Notes:
[h] It was reading Hobsbawm and thinking “no—that’s not the right story” that put one of the many bees in my bonnet that has led, in the fullness of time, to this book.
There is barely a paragraph in the book that has not been the subject of fierce controversy, or that takes a point-of-view has not been rejected as wrong by thoughtful and learned historians, or that is at the very least massively over- or understated. So I acknowledge that smart people of goodwill can deliver trenchant and largely-unanswerable criticisms against nearly every single paragraph.
And I very much hope they will do so: it is one of the few ways that I can learn.
[i] The idea of the Long 19th Century is truly a staple of historical interpretation: you can find it at Kahn Academy <https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/whp-origins/era-6-the-long-nineteenth-century-1750-ce-to-1914-ce>. Wikipedia claims it was coined by Ilya Ehrenberg and/or Eric Hobsbawm, and in Hobsbawm’s case it finds expression in his trilogy: The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875, and The Age of Empire: 1875–1914. It is certainly a textbook staple; see, for example: Trevor Getz: The Long Nineteenth Century, 1750-1914: Crucible of Modernity <https://www.amazon.com/Long-Nineteenth-Century-1750-1914-Modernity/dp/1474270522>.
The underlying animating principle is that of dual revolutions: economic—the Industrial Revolution—and political—the Democratic Revolution—proceeding in parallel, mutually reinforcing and shaping each other, launched sometime in the 1700s and reaching a culmination of sorts with the start of World War I. I have been able to trace the idea that this is the right way to understand the history only back to Friedrich Engels’s footnote (d) to Part I of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848): The Communist Manifesto <http://www.slp.org/pdf/marx/comm_man.pdf>: “Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France…” needless to say, there is a little warrant for a belief that the general tide of political development follows—as some kind of imperfect copy—the development of France, and there is only little warrant for a belief that the general tide of economic development follows—as some kind of imperfect copy—the development of England.
[j] It is not just on the left that there is a vogue for seeing a short 20th century bracketed by the rise and fall of really-existing socialism. See the excellent John Lukacs: A Short History of the Twentieth Century <https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryoftw0000luka>. And, of course, Francis Fukuyama (1989): “The End of History?”, National Interest 16 (Summer), pp. 3-18 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027184>.
