Age of Empire 1-4

In his book "The Age of Empire" Hobsbawn discusses the development of a world economy during the late 1800's and early 1900's. The book begins by discussing the difference between the "poor" and "rich" countries in during this era. The rich countries were becoming industrialized, developing a proletariat and bourgeoisie, and trading with other rich countries around the world. While the poor countries were still stuck in medieval ways, having a king or tsar and having most of the population farming as serfs. He also explains how the technological developments of the west spread throughout different parts of the world and how the western countries became models for other developing countries. Next Hobsbawn explains how a capitalistic economy undergoes cycles of boom and bust and how countries dealt with these cycles in a global economy. He also explains some of the investments made in other countries by these core powers. The difference technology made in these global transactions is also described here. The telephone, telegraph, etc. made it much easier for countries to trade and become more connected. The next section explains how these core countries interacted with the poorer nations unable to keep up. Most of these core countries took to imperialism and developed interests in other countries. This lead to countries like England, France, and America to expand and form empires all over the world. The last chapter of the reading explains how democracy developed throughout some of these imperialized countries. It also begins to describe some of the ways in which workers dealt with this industrializing economy by attempting to form unions and gain more rights.

This reading was fairly interesting to see how these countries began to develop and dominate the world economy. It also shows how some of these countries became industrialized and some of the technological changes which allowed for the world economy to develop and grow. Last semester I took a class in Russian History and it is very neat to see how Russia went from being a "poor" country to a world power in a matter of 50-60 years. It is also neat to see how ideas like communism could spread so rapidly and cause a nation to become a global power. Some interesting questions that occur to me are How would some of these poor countries, who were imperialized, have been shaped differently? How did democracy gain the upper hand and allow for vast economic expansion? and How greatly did the inventions of the telegraph and telephone affect the ability to trade globally?