Book review - 'On History' by Eric Hobsbawm

On History is book by great Historian Eric Hobsbawm which is compilation of several essays from his past lectures and papers. The essays cover diverse themes like on economic and social history, nationalism, Karl Marx, contemporary society, Soviet union, barbarism etc. But at its core, the book is about, as its title suggests, the dynamics of history as a science. The authors explains what is History, how its study evolved in previous two centuries, what were & are its shortcomings, what are consequences of these shortcomings. In fact, author stresses much about 'bad history', that is politically motivated history, anachronistic follies and history based on personal biases of historians. All these topics are discussed in great depth although book may appear too short for these topics. 

Author signifies the role of Karl Marx's importance to historians about how historical materialism is critical force of social change and he also underscores pitfalls of 'vulgar Marxists' who built their own hypothesis on Marxian ideas and economic determinism, which are valuable as well as not in circumstances. The essays on Marx and social history underscores how current modern history as a science evolved from old traditional simplistic chronological narrative based history. 

The historical study starting in late 19th century and especially post-Marx era made socioeconomic progress as major theme of any inquiry. The socioeconomic progress means both the 'mode of production' & technology (means to control the nature) as well as its distributional aspects & social organization on how income/profits are shared in a society. And also how History is an all encompassing field which covers every aspect of society, including vast number of fields as well as cultures and continents. History cannot be understood from a local viewpoint alone. For example, history of India is incomplete without pairing it with aspects of history of Great Britain that ruled India for two centuries. 

A thing i am always interested in is critique of mainstream economic theory and this is where i found Hobsbawm to be excellent. His critique of pigeonholed thinking of neoclassical economists, their absurd tenets (like rational choice theory) and their more absurd mathematical models, is remarkable in exposing what frankly is bankruptcy of neoclassical system. Hobsbawm demonstrates true macro thinking by explaining how economics is vastly overlapping field with many disciplines and simplistic neoclassical models capture very little of other critical areas. Hobsbawm also explains the idea of fundamental uncertainty which mainstream thinkers have hard time comprehending. 

Hobsbawm on his own analysis reaches conclusion to that of Joan Robinson's ideas (logical time vs historical time) and Schumpeter (there's no such thing as equilibrium). Hobsbawm also criticizes orthodox economists who extend their analysis to economic history especially with mathematical models without knowing the epistemology of Historical science and pitfalls of history like failure to grasp anachronism. Here he's extremely critical of cliometrics especially of neoclassical tradition. 

Hobsbawm also has vehement critique of nationalists who have subverted history for their own goals. Hobsbawm explains how fictional past is the tool of nationalists to consolidate power and legitimacy in current times. Here he also mentions the 1990s religious riots, Babri masjid demolition by right wing political party BJP in India on how they built a mass movement out of fictional historical narrative of Ram temple. Hobsbawm mentions general trend of re-inventing history in post colonial nations by various political forces, including governments. Here, i would like to extend this narrative with my own view on how much of Indian contemporary history, including the veneration of 'founding fathers' and anti-colonial national heroes is based on exaggerated myths and fiction. 

Why Hobsbawm is important today? Of course, he's important as a great historian and a thinker but also as a critic of postmodernism. In the age where shadows are lengthening on the enlightenment era (Age of reason) with world going haywire in barbarism and chaos (Trump's victory, Ukraine war, middle east conflict, instability of globalization etc), one needs clarity of vision and objective reality. Hobsbawm's work is precisely that.