The Age of Empire

In The Age of Empire, the third in Hobsbawm's four-volume world history, he examines the crucial years that formed the modern world. It is the story of the strange death of the nineteenth century, the world made by and for liberal middle classes in the name of universal progress and civilization. It is about hopes realized that turned into fears: an era of unparalleled peace engendering an era of unparalleled war; revolt and revolution emerging on the outskirts of a stable and flourishing Western society; new and sudden mass labor movements that rejected capitalism; and new middle classes that rejected liberalism.  It is about world empires built and held with almost contemptuous ease by small numbers of Europeans, whose rule was to last barely a lifetime, and a European domination of world history, society, and politics, never more confident than at the moment when it was about to disappear.

"It is Mr. Hobsbawm's achievement both to have captured the exuberance of an age, and to have shown how and why that world was coming to an end.... He not only captures the age of empire, he also illuminates the course of the twentieth century."--Paul Kennedy, The Economist

"One of the great achievements of historical writing in recent decades."--New York Review of Books

The other volumes in the series, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, and The Age of Extremes are all available from Vintage Books.