Hobsbawm 1962

[Rode Neagle]

Myholiday reading, courtesy of one of the biggest secondhand bookshops in England, ended up being Eric Hobsbawms classic work The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848, which was first published in 1962. I cant remember whether Ive read the whole of it before, but if so its so long ago that all memory of its contents has disappeared, so I came to it completely fresh. The result was an appreciation of just how good a historian Hobsbawm is, but also of the gulf that separates his outlook from a twenty first century one. For Hobsbawm in 1962 the developments of the late eighteenth century still had deep and powerful connections to his contemporary world. I was struck, in contrast by the gap between 1962 and now: suddenly I saw more clearly than before what it means to live in post-modern times.

The gap isnt mainly due either to Hobsbawms Marxism or to new historical insights into the material which have since emerged. There are still a number of Marxist historians around today, so his approach and vocabulary is familiar and most of the time in the book Hobsbawm avoids the biggest historical danger of Marxist historiography: the problem of inevitability. (He is weaker, not surprisingly, on womens history, but not much worse than many more recent historians). And while his analysis may well have been superseded or corrected on many points, Im not enough of a specialist on the period to pick up the problems.

At first, the French revolution seems to have more resonance with todays world: the significance of concepts like liberty, equality and fraternity has never gone away. Even the fall of the Soviet Union hasnt made the problems of democracy, dictatorship and revolution any less potent. But as I read the book I did come to see the limits of Hobsbawms approach. One of his key questions (although only implicitly) is the necessary conditions for the success or failure of revolutions and his instinct is to seek them in the character of the revolutionary movement: its tactics, its class composition, a regions sense of nationalism etc. And yet now its hard to argue that such aspects are more than second-order factors. What really matters in modern revolutions is the extent to which the ruling classes want to hold onto their position and the involvement of outside powers. China, Burma, Iraq, Zimbabwe have shown that people power is no match for ruthlessness backed by heavily armoured troops and tanks (as Hungary in 1956 already suggested). The Berlin Wall did not fall because of the superior tactics of the East German populace as opposed to the Chinese. Popular revolutions now (as opposed to coups) succeed if they are allowed by regimes whose will to crack down has crumbled or whose military capability have been destroyed by an outside force. (The same analogy is also increasingly true at the level of labour relations. The workers united can very often be defeated.)

Because he concentrates on these twin revolutions, Hobsbawms geopolitical framework now seems equally pre-postmodern, even though his work is notable for the extent to which he analyses events from Latin America via the Middle East to India. His focus on Britain and France as the key countries in the period is entirely justified, but that simply confirms that the period is no longer our own. The European conflicts of the nineteenth century now seem rather like the battles of the classical Greek city states: how could people get so het up about such insignificant polities? To whom (other than the Italians) does the unification of Italy now matter? Hobsbawm wrote in a world in which individual European countries were still political significant, Russia was supposedly an industrial power and China was a third-world country. The 45 years between his book and now have seen far more changes in that sense than between the nineteenth century and 1962.

All this doesnt mean that Hobsbawms historical analysis is necessarily wrong or even so old-fashioned as to be irrelevant. There are even occasional moments when he seems spookily prescient, such as his pointing out the lack of a Yugoslav national identity. (Some of his comments on religion, which I want to deal with in a different post, also seem very relevant to current concerns). But what I think it does show is that the connection of what happened then (1789-1848) and now must now be proved in a way that was not necessary in the mid twentieth-century. Just as any contemporary discussion of the seventeenth century European wars of religion or the eleventh century conflict of church and state cannot assume that students will have a pre-existing understanding of why these issues mattered, so they will increasingly need to have explained to them the importance of manufacturing and who the proletariat once were. The worlds we have lost are getting increasingly numerous and varied.

Moreover, I had been reading on and off the first volume of what became his four-volume study of the modern age since the French Revolution. This first volume, Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (1962), was one of the best synthetic works on a tumultuous period in modern European history, and unlike conventional, pro-liberal-democratic treatments of the same sprawling subject, Hobsbawm made a strenuous attempt to integrate economic and social change with evolving ideological fashions. Whatever his personal politics, Age of Revolution and the succeeding volume Age of Capital were highly respectable scholarship. They came from a disciplined mind that operated from a historical materialist perspective.

Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., is editor-in-chief of Chronicles. He is the Raffensperger Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, a Guggenheim recipient, and a Mises Research Fellow. Paul also cohosts the Cotto/Gottfried interview program on Roku. He has been writing for Chronicles since its founding in 1977, and is the author of numerous articles as well as 13 books.

This article traces the origins and development of the Scottish Presbyterian mission in South Africa through its Scottish antecedents to its actual establishment in South Africa in 1824 until the end of the first phase of the mission in 1865. It begins by examining the Scottish context, the contribution of voluntary societies and the "Disruption", both of which had serious implications for missionary growth. It then moves to South Africa and examines the birth of the mission through mission stations, institutions and the participation of black people.

The Preface to the Scots Confession (1560) states clearly, "And this glad tidings of the kingdom shall be preached through the whole world for a witness to all nations, and then shall the end come." The Confession closes with the prayer, "... let all the nations cleave to the true knowledge of Thee" (Cochrane 1966:163, 184). Clearly, it was the intention of the nascent reformed Scottish church that mission to the world was a priority. However, for more than two centuries, this did not materialise. The severe shortage of ministers may have been responsible, in part, for this state of affairs as well as the internal political situation in Scotland. While Ross (1986:33) acknowledges the insignificant missionary impulse and indifference on the part of the established church from the 16th century Reformation up to the late 18th century, he claims that mission has always been integral to the life of Christianity "despite its high and low points". Let us consider the course of events that led to mission work becoming a reality

It was during the 18th century that Scotland began to experience substantial change in society. The Industrial Revolution led to increasing urbanisation, population growth, scientific discoveries (Hobsbawm 1962:46), democratic universities (Hobsbawm 1962:45; Devine 2011:30-31), political reform and the ongoing effects of the highland clearances (Mackie 1964:315-318). In terms of the Scottish diaspora, of which the missionary movement was a part, Thomson has claimed, "Of all the peoples of the United Kingdom it is the Scots' contribution to the empire that stands out as disproportionate. They were the first peoples of the British Isles to take on an imperial mentality and possibly the longest to sustain one" (2008:51).

But it is impossible to refer to the ethos of the Scots without taking account of their religious values. Devine (2011:191) counters a false view that the influences of the churches was declining by the 19th century: "In fact, far from religious erosion, the Victorian era [1837-1901] saw quite a remarkable and hitherto unprecedented fusion between Christian ethos and civic policy." And this ethos was fuelled by evangelicalism which was to be a powerful contributing factor to the "Disruption" in 1843: "It was evangelicalism above all which cemented the relationship between religion at home and the overseas missions" (Devine 2011:192).

To spread abroad the knowledge of the Gospel amongst barbarous and heathen nations seems to be highly preposterous, in so far as philosophy and learning must in the nature of things take the precedence: and that, while there remains at home a single individual without the means of religious knowledge, to propagate it abroad would be improper and absurd (du Plessis 1911:182).

And this in spite of an earlier decision to encourage the collection of funds for work among American Indians. Du Plessis (1911:182) attributes the formation of voluntary missionary societies to this disinterest on the part of the church. This is true of the genesis of the Scottish mission.

However, Hewat (1960:2) points to the poverty of the Scottish nation rather than disinterest as the reason for lack of action in this regard. This is supported by the further decision of the General Assembly to pray that God's promise be fulfilled "in giving His Son the heathen for His inheritance" though it was deemed highly inexpedient at that time to accord such ventures financial support. It further agreed that it would "embrace with zeal and thankfulness any future opportunity of contributing by their exertions to the propagation of the Gospel of Christ which Providence may hereafter open" (Hewat 1960:6). Those who were motivated to inaugurate a world mission approach therefore had to find a way to do this outside the formal structures of the church. Hence, the growth of voluntary societies.

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