The Age of Revolution

by Eric Hobsbawm Book 1 in the The Age of… series.

First published 1962

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The Age of Revolution traces the transformation of Europe between the French Revolution of 1789 and the revolutions of 1848. Hobsbawm presents the French political upheaval and Britain’s Industrial Revolution as a connected “dual revolution” that dismantled older social structures and established the conditions for industrial capitalism and bourgeois power.

The narrative follows revolutionary and Napoleonic war, the restoration of monarchies, the spread of liberalism and nationalism, and the emergence of socialist and working-class politics. It also examines changes in agriculture, cities, religion, science and the arts, ending with the continent-wide crises of 1848.