Eric Hobsbawm, my favorite historian, died at the age of 95. 😦
Here are some quotes from this brilliant scholar:
Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.
I find his insights into the nature of nationalism to be absolutely priceless:
Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
And one of my favorite quotes ever:
Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so.
Hobsbawm had a profound understanding of WWII:
The victory over Hitler’s Germany was essentially won, and could only have been won, by the Red Army.
And here is Hobsbawm on the economy:
Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated by private profit-seeking. Both are bankrupt. The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another.
And these words about his bookshelves constitute the best tribute to this great historian:
Most of them, however, are filled with the foreign editions of my books. Their numbers amaze and please me and they still keep coming as new titles are translated and some fresh vernacular markets – Hindi, Vietnamese – open up. As I can’t read most of them, they serve no purpose other than as a bibliographic record and, in moments of discouragement, as a reminder that an old cosmopolitan has not entirely failed in 50 years of trying to communicate history to the world’s readers.
I highly recommend Hobsbawm’s Nations and Nationalism.
Clarissa's Blog 
Eric Hobsbawm never apologized for his complete support of communism, even after the atrocities of Stalin and Mao were fully revealed. In my opinion, he allowed his ideology to contaminate his history. And that effectively eliminates him as a serious scholar. A few nice-sounding sentences cannot make up for a disgraceful attempt to pervert young minds with an evil ideology and a twisted version of history.
Stalin and Mao : Maybe 40 million mass murders, including quite a number Jews? And that wretched man – a Jew himself – was willing to portray them as saviors of their nations! I do not know how he could live with his conscience.
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His political views did not prevent him from offering an invaluable contribution to the theory of nationalism.
” In my opinion, he allowed his ideology to contaminate his history. ”
– There is not a single history textbook in existence where that doesn’t happen. Every book on history is an ideological construct.
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The victory over Hitler’s Germany was essentially won, and could only have been won, by the Red Army.
Really? If Germany hadnt had to worry about the rest of the Allies I think the Russians would all be fluent in German right now. 😉
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There is nothing cute about such arrant ignorance of history. Look at the date when the US entered the war. And then look at the map of where the troops were at that time. If that doesn’t help you become more informed, nothing will.
It’s mind-boggling to me why people need to advance completely uninformed opinions in areas where they lack even the most basic knowledge.
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Tell you what, look at the date Canada entered the war and then we can have a discussion on history. You do realize the Allies were more than just the Americans, geez. 😦
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Yeah, Canada totally won WWII.
Is this what’s being taught in Canadian schools?
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I’d never heard of him before, but I’ll look him up now. The writings you provided make him sound like he was a very witty, clever fellow.
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A brilliant historian. And he is the kind of scholar who knew how to make his research exciting and accessible to any reasonably intelligent person.
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No, but they were one of the Allies.
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Who had zero influence on the outcome of the war.
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Who had zero influence on the outcome of the war.(Clarissa)
Wow, did you really just say that, Professor? Clearly history wasnt your major or minor for that matter.
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Yes, I did say that. I hope I will not now have to issue confirmations for every comment I make on my own blog.
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Oh no…
RIP, Hobsbawm.
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Shocking. But, I needed your quotation #2 for today, really needed it, so I am taking it. RIP.
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