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2 Eric Hobsbawm as a Public Champion of Cosmopolitan Universalism

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Professional Historians in Public
This chapter is in the book Professional Historians in Public
Stefan Berger2 Eric Hobsbawm as a Public Championof Cosmopolitan UniversalismAt the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century Eric Hobsbawm re-mains one of the best-known historians world-wide, recognized as a self-professedpublic intellectual who combined research in global labour, economic and socialhistory with the writing of extremely popular history books that reached an audi-ence that went well beyond university students and lecturers. In addition, he was aprolific publicist who published in newspapers and journals where he reached amass audience. This chapter will discuss aspects of Hobsbawm’s work, in particularon questions of social democracy, nationalism and national identity in relation tohis universalist ethos. He was already born under a transnational cosmopolitanstar: in Alexandria, Egypt to a mother of Austro-Hungarian Jewish background anda father who was a London East-End merchant of Polish-Jewish descent. Growingup in the politically tense atmosphere of Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s and early1930s he made a political decision against Jewish nationalism and for Communism–a decision he stuck to throughout his long life that he wrote extensively about inhis autobiographyInteresting Times.1Experiencing first-hand the hyper-nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s, Hobs-bawm championed proletarian internationalism. His early career as a profes-sional historian was steeped in an internationalist orientation that rejected muchof British history writing as parochial and found inspiration in the world of theFrench Annales instead.2He became an important member of the CommunistParty Historians’Group3and championed an internationally oriented economicand social history that put the labourmovement and working people centrestage. At the same time, he was politically active on behalf of the CommunistParty of Great Britain (CPGB)–a commitment that clashed frequently with Hobs-bawm’s dislike of all orthodoxies and was eventually getting weaker and weakerover the years. Yet he always refused to cut his ties to the party entirely.Eric Hobsbawm,Interesting Times. A Twentieth-Century Life(London: Allen Lane, 2002).As Peter Burke has pointed out, Hobsbawm’s interest in the Annales was exceptionally early.He was certainly a pioneer in forging links to the Annales. See Peter Burke,“Annales in Britain,”inAnnales in Perspective: Designs and Accomplishments,ed.DragoRoksandić,FilipŠimetinŠegvićand NikolinaŠimetinŠegvić(Zagreb: FF-Press, 2019), 85–86.Bill Schwartz,“‘The People’in History: the Communist Party Historians’Group, 1945–1956,”inMaking Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics, ed. R. Johnson, G. McLennan, B. Schwartzand D. Sutton (London: Routledge, 1982), 44–95.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111186047-002
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Stefan Berger2 Eric Hobsbawm as a Public Championof Cosmopolitan UniversalismAt the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century Eric Hobsbawm re-mains one of the best-known historians world-wide, recognized as a self-professedpublic intellectual who combined research in global labour, economic and socialhistory with the writing of extremely popular history books that reached an audi-ence that went well beyond university students and lecturers. In addition, he was aprolific publicist who published in newspapers and journals where he reached amass audience. This chapter will discuss aspects of Hobsbawm’s work, in particularon questions of social democracy, nationalism and national identity in relation tohis universalist ethos. He was already born under a transnational cosmopolitanstar: in Alexandria, Egypt to a mother of Austro-Hungarian Jewish background anda father who was a London East-End merchant of Polish-Jewish descent. Growingup in the politically tense atmosphere of Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s and early1930s he made a political decision against Jewish nationalism and for Communism–a decision he stuck to throughout his long life that he wrote extensively about inhis autobiographyInteresting Times.1Experiencing first-hand the hyper-nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s, Hobs-bawm championed proletarian internationalism. His early career as a profes-sional historian was steeped in an internationalist orientation that rejected muchof British history writing as parochial and found inspiration in the world of theFrench Annales instead.2He became an important member of the CommunistParty Historians’Group3and championed an internationally oriented economicand social history that put the labourmovement and working people centrestage. At the same time, he was politically active on behalf of the CommunistParty of Great Britain (CPGB)–a commitment that clashed frequently with Hobs-bawm’s dislike of all orthodoxies and was eventually getting weaker and weakerover the years. Yet he always refused to cut his ties to the party entirely.Eric Hobsbawm,Interesting Times. A Twentieth-Century Life(London: Allen Lane, 2002).As Peter Burke has pointed out, Hobsbawm’s interest in the Annales was exceptionally early.He was certainly a pioneer in forging links to the Annales. See Peter Burke,“Annales in Britain,”inAnnales in Perspective: Designs and Accomplishments,ed.DragoRoksandić,FilipŠimetinŠegvićand NikolinaŠimetinŠegvić(Zagreb: FF-Press, 2019), 85–86.Bill Schwartz,“‘The People’in History: the Communist Party Historians’Group, 1945–1956,”inMaking Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics, ed. R. Johnson, G. McLennan, B. Schwartzand D. Sutton (London: Routledge, 1982), 44–95.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111186047-002
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. The Politics of Historical Thinking V
  3. Contents VII
  4. Introduction
  5. 1 New Roles for Professional Historians and New Public Uses of the Past 1
  6. Part One: Histoires Engagées: A Critical Look Back
  7. 2 Eric Hobsbawm as a Public Champion of Cosmopolitan Universalism 37
  8. 3 Two Sides of Activist Scholarship Within UNESCO’s General History of Africa (1964–1998) 65
  9. 4 Colonial Historiography, Hindutva, and the Difficulty of Reading the Ancient Indian Historical Traditions 89
  10. Part Two: Law and Historical Expertise
  11. 5 Challenges of Historical Expert Witnessing in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Elsewhere 117
  12. 6 The Waitangi Tribunal and the Public Life of History 141
  13. Part Three: Old and New Public Demands on Professional Historians
  14. 7 Between Discipline and Profession: Historical Studies and Their Public Relevance in Brazil 163
  15. 8 Policy-Oriented History for the EU: The Rise of a New Type of Professional Practice for Historians? 185
  16. 9 Indigenous History, Activism, and the Decolonizing University: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Struggle over the Khoisan Past in Post-apartheid South Africa 213
  17. Part Four: Public History in New Media
  18. 10 Russian Public Historians in the New Media (The Case of Telegram) 245
  19. 11 Practices of Popular Science and Digital Curation in Theory of History on the Portuguese Edition of Wikipedia 271
  20. Part Five: Perspectives: Moral, Epistemic, and Political
  21. 12 Historians and Human Rights Advocacy 299
  22. 13 The Politics of Memory and the Task of Historians 327
  23. 14 Languages of Legitimation and the Registers of Legitimate History 351
  24. Biographical Notes 373
  25. Selected Bibliography on ‘Public Uses of the Past and the Role of Professional Historians in the Public Sphere’ 379
  26. Index 385
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111186047-002

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. The Politics of Historical Thinking V
  3. Contents VII
  4. Introduction
  5. 1 New Roles for Professional Historians and New Public Uses of the Past 1
  6. Part One: Histoires Engagées: A Critical Look Back
  7. 2 Eric Hobsbawm as a Public Champion of Cosmopolitan Universalism 37
  8. 3 Two Sides of Activist Scholarship Within UNESCO’s General History of Africa (1964–1998) 65
  9. 4 Colonial Historiography, Hindutva, and the Difficulty of Reading the Ancient Indian Historical Traditions 89
  10. Part Two: Law and Historical Expertise
  11. 5 Challenges of Historical Expert Witnessing in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Elsewhere 117
  12. 6 The Waitangi Tribunal and the Public Life of History 141
  13. Part Three: Old and New Public Demands on Professional Historians
  14. 7 Between Discipline and Profession: Historical Studies and Their Public Relevance in Brazil 163
  15. 8 Policy-Oriented History for the EU: The Rise of a New Type of Professional Practice for Historians? 185
  16. 9 Indigenous History, Activism, and the Decolonizing University: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Struggle over the Khoisan Past in Post-apartheid South Africa 213
  17. Part Four: Public History in New Media
  18. 10 Russian Public Historians in the New Media (The Case of Telegram) 245
  19. 11 Practices of Popular Science and Digital Curation in Theory of History on the Portuguese Edition of Wikipedia 271
  20. Part Five: Perspectives: Moral, Epistemic, and Political
  21. 12 Historians and Human Rights Advocacy 299
  22. 13 The Politics of Memory and the Task of Historians 327
  23. 14 Languages of Legitimation and the Registers of Legitimate History 351
  24. Biographical Notes 373
  25. Selected Bibliography on ‘Public Uses of the Past and the Role of Professional Historians in the Public Sphere’ 379
  26. Index 385
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