The Age of Empires

The Age of Empires , the book that concludes Eric Hobsbawm's trilogy on the history of the modern world, returns to bookstores with a new cover and new graphic design.

In the trilogy The Age of Revolutions 1789–1848 , The Age of Capital 1848–1875 , and The Age of Empires 1875–1914 , English historian Eric Hobsbawm sought to understand and explain the 19th century and its place in history. The international recognition of this trilogy is due to the fact that Hobsbawm is an author who writes not only for specialists, but for a wider, educated audience, who, reading these books, allow them to see the past as a coherent whole rather than as a collection of isolated topics.

The age of empires, the period from 1875 to 1914, is crucial for the development of modern culture and also for generating heated debates in the field of History, the vast majority of which began in the years preceding 1914, about, for example: imperialism, the development of labor and socialist movements, the problem of British economic decline, the nature and origin of the Russian Revolution and, especially, the reasons that led to the First World War.

For Hobsbawm, the age of empires is not merely the belle époque , so often stylized through a golden haze by film and television; it is not the "lost paradise" that events like World War II and the Russian Revolution would have buried in the past. The author shows us that the period preceding 1914 still serves as a reference in 20th-century scholarly cultural production, in science, technology, and communications. Above all, Hobsbawm presents the age of empires as a period marked and dominated by contradictions inherent in its advancement, indicating that, thanks to them, "for better or worse, since 1914 the century of the bourgeoisie belongs to history."

“ The Age of Revolutions , The Age of Capital , The Age of Empires (...) all display the same astonishing set of qualities: synthesis; richness of detail; global scope, while also providing an acute insight into regional differences; fluency; power of analysis; and, furthermore, remarkable clarity and vividness.” – London Review of Books

“One of the most lucid, brilliant and courageous intellectuals of the 20th century.” – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva