The Age of Empire (chapter 1 -4)

Hobsbawm describes the beginnings of the great empires. We see how industrial production and population increase rather suddenly during this time period. The increase in technology widens the gap between the western culture and the rest of the world. Legal slavery was abolished in most all of the world. The lives of some of the common people did improve. The capitalist economies start to take off although they are hampered by downturns in the business cycle. The prices for agricultural goods really declined causing some unrest in the rural areas. England was the centrally located shipping point for most of the goods shipped around the world. Most of the countries were very protectionist and instituted some rather high trade tariffs with the exception of Britian which believed in free trade. Mass production gets underway leading to greater efficiencies in industry. All of the countries economies become very broad based. The demand for novel goods increases. A number of rulers were officially calling themselves emperors. The United Sates introduces the Monroe Doctrine which states that no European power could interfere politically or colonize any western territories. The Marxist way of thinking begins as an answer to the imperialist agenda. White western people see the darker skinned people of the world as inferior. Salesman see a lot of the worlds people as new customers. We then see how some of the various political parties come to be.

Some interesting points: The fact that Russia was considered a back water of Europe. I had believed that Stalin’s purges killed off the Russian intellectuals but it sounds as though it was mostly made up of the peasant class. Gandhi was educated in England and he wrote a very well written book to advise Indian students how to get along in English society.

From chapter 1: “In France no sensible politician campaigning for vote and no significant party describe themselves as being conservative; in the United States ‘progress’ was a national ideology; even in imperial Germany – the third great country with universal male suffrage in the 1870s – parties calling themselves ‘conservative’ won less than a quarter of the votes in general elections in that decade.” Just wondering if the progressive and conservative labels had the same meanings then as they do today?