Historians in the News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

Source: WaPo
Oct 1, 2012

Eric Hobsbawm, leftist historian of grand sweep, dies at 95

Eric J. Hobsbawm, whose upbringing amid the rise of European fascism provoked loyalty to the Communist Party long after it had been discredited and shaped his scholarly career as an influential chronicler of sweeping historical forces such as democratization, industrialization and nationalism, died Oct. 1 at a hospital in London. He was 95.He died of complications from pneumonia and leukemia, his daughter Julia Hobsbawm told the Associated Press.The Cambridge-educated Dr. Hobsbawm spent most of his prodigious literary career in England after an early life set against the backdrop of cataclysmic events. He was born in Egypt to European Jews in 1917, the year of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. He passed his formative years in Austria and, after being orphaned, in Germany during the rise of the Nazis....Related LinksEric Hobsbawm, 1917-2012

Source: CNN.com
Oct 1, 2012

Why Hobsbawm's loyalty to Marxism never wavered

Eric Hobsbawm, seen by many peers as the greatest post-war historian of European ideas, has died aged 95. Here, Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor of History at Yale University, explains why Hobsbawm's determination to stick with Marxism long after it went out of fashion made his message so special to historians and readers around the world. The paperback of Snyder's most recent book, "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin," was released on Monday....To be a man of Hobsbawm's generation was to have experienced the collapse of capitalism in the Great Depression, to be a Jew of Hobsbawm's generation was to have seen the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. In those years of the 1930s, the years when Hobsbawm was a brilliant youth, was to face what seemed to be a binary choice, to be with the Nazis or against them. And no one seemed to be more against the Nazis than the communists. Hobsbawm joined the Communist Party as a very young man, and was loyal, in his way, to the end.

Source: Stephen Mark Kotkin in The New Yorker
Oct 1, 2012

Postscript: Eric Hobsbawm

Stephen Mark Kotkin is Professor of History and director of the Program in Russian Studies at Princeton University...[His] best book, at least to my mind, remains the memoir “Interesting Times” (2002), one of the very few—dare I say—great life stories of a historian. (I wrote about it for The New Yorker.) His memoir enacts the core principles of all his historical work: he wrote for the public, not just for the guild, and he wrote not only with compelling narrative, which is how popular history is delivered, but with strong analysis, too. Does that add up to more than legions of students and well-grounded original interpretations? It is arguably Hobsbawm’s overall life/work rather than any single piece that has been and will continue to prove most influential. On that front, there’s also this: having embraced and never relinquished the passionate early Marx, E. J. Hobsbawm, as he reaffirmed in his last book, was in it to change the world.Related LinksEric Hobsbawm, 1917-2012

Source: Matthew Boudway for Commonweal
Oct 1, 2012

Eric Hobsbawm, "an object lesson in the dangers of ideological devotion"

Matthew Boudway is an associate editor of Commonweal....Despite his lucidity and widely attested personal decency, Hobsbawm also became an object lesson in the dangers of ideological devotion. His passion for justice drew him into a cause that would require him to excuse the many injustices that took place in the Soviet Union under Stalin. A lot of Western Communists abandoned ship after the Soviet crackdown on Hungary in 1956. Not Hobsbawm. Nor did he quit after the tanks rolled into Prague twelve years later. In a 1994 interview with Michael Ignatieff he famously claimed that if the Soviet Union had succeeded in creating a true communist society, it would have been worth the deaths of the twenty million people who perished under Stalin. Didn’t Marx himself say that ”no great movement has been born without the shedding of blood”? So self-sacrifice wasn’t the only kind of sacrifice that socialism might require....Related LinksEric Hobsbawm, 1917-2012

Source: Eric Foner in The Nation
Oct 1, 2012

Remembering Eric Hobsbawm, Historian for Social Justice

Eric Foner, a member of The Nation’s editorial board, is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. Eric Hobsbawm, who died on October 1 at the age of 95, was perhaps the twentieth century’s preeminent historian and a life-long advocate of social justice. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1917 to a British father and Austrian mother, he was educated in Vienna and Berlin. His family sent him to London in 1933 when Hitler came to power and he lived for the rest of his life in England, where he taught for many years at London’s Birkbeck College....

Source: Guardian (UK) Editorial
Oct 1, 2012

Eric Hobsbawm 1917-2012: not the end of history

When future generations come upon the webpages and news bulletins of the last 24 hours, something may puzzle them about their contents. How was it, they may ask themselves, that the death of a venerable Marxist historian could be seen as such a large shared national loss by so many people whose assumptions and worldviews often had so little in common with his? Worthy of an obituary, of course. But a front-page news story?It is not an unreasonable question. Part of the answer lies in the late Eric Hobsbawm's sheer academic productivity and prowess. He cast the net of his curiosity far wider than most historians. He knew so much about so many things in the history of so many countries. And he had an unrivalled ability to marshal them in clear prose. No wonder he was such a sage to so many....Related LinksEric Hobsbawm, 1917-2012

Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 1, 2012

Eric Hobsbawm death: Miliband leads tributes to 'extraordinary' historian

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, led tributes to the Marxist historian and academic Eric Hobsbawm, who died on Monday , calling him "an extraordinary historian, a man passionate about his politics and a great friend of my family".Hobsbawm, one of the leading historians of the 20th century and an intellectual giant of the left, died in the early hours of Monday morning at the Royal Free hospital in north London, his family said, following a long illness. He was 95.Miliband said Hobsbawm had "brought hundreds of years of British history to hundreds of thousands of people. He brought history out of the ivory tower and into people's lives."...Related LinksEric Hobsbawm, 1917-2012

Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 1, 2012

Eric Hobsbawm: A believer in the Red utopia to the very end

Michael Burleigh is a historian and author of 'Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II', and winner of the Nonino International Master of His Time Prize (2012)...Everything Hobsbawm wrote deceitfully downplayed the grim role of the Communists in Spain in the Thirties or the forcible nature of the coups the Soviets carried out in Eastern Europe after 1945. Such a cosmopolitan thinker had ironically become imprisoned within a deeply provincial ideological ghetto, knowing or caring nothing for the brave Czechs or Poles who resisted Stalin’s stooges, while being manifestly nonplussed by the democratic transformations of Central Europe since 1989-90. That the secret police – the Sword and Shield of the Revolution – would end up running Vladimir Putin’s FSB-mafia state was literally inexplicable to him.

Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 1, 2012

The Guardian assembles a panel of historian all-stars to remember Eric Hobsbawm

Niall FergusonIt may surprise readers of the Guardian to know that Eric Hobsbawm and I were friends.We were poles apart politically, of course. I still remember the disappointment I felt when I read his autobiography, Interesting Times, which I had hoped would contain some expression of remorse for his decision to remain a member of the Communist party even after the exposure of Stalin's crimes. Indeed, we disagreed about most contemporary political questions.But his politics did not prevent Hobsbawm from being a truly great historian. I continue to believe that his great tetralogy – The Age of Revolution (1962), The Age of Industry (1975), The Age of Empire (1987) and The Age of Extremes (1994) – remains the best introduction to modern world history in the English language.David PriestlandOf all the British Marxist historians, Eric Hobsbawm is probably the most read today, and that is a mark of his extraordinary intellectual flexibility.Catherine Merridale

Source: U.S. Intellectual History (Blog)
Oct 1, 2012

Henry F. May: 1915-2012

Henry F. May, one of his generation’s most distinguished historians, died Saturday, September 29, at the age of 97. May was Margaret Byrne Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, where he had taught from 1952 until his retirement in 1980. He was a prominent campus citizen throughout his tenure at Berkeley, and served as Chair of the Department of History during the Free Speech Movement of 1964. He was honored by the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate in 1981 as Faculty Research Lecturer.

Source: MacArthur Foundation
Oct 1, 2012

Northwestern professor Dylan C. Penningroth named MacArthur fellow

Dylan C. Penningroth is a historian who examines shifting concepts of property ownership and kinship in order to shed light on long-obscured aspects of African American life under slavery and in the half-century following slavery’s abolition. In his book The Claims of Kinfolk (2003), he elucidates the informal customs that slaves in the antebellum South used to recognize ownership of property, even while they were themselves considered by law to be property at the time. He also traces the interactions of these extra-legal, vernacular customs with the formal realm of law after emancipation by teasing stories of claims and disputes from such sources as the Freedman’s Bureau and Southern Claims Commission records compiled by the federal government after the Civil War. In addition to demonstrating that ownership of land, livestock, and other material possessions was much more widespread among slave communities than previously believed, Penningroth’s research draws out the underlying social relations and reliance on family members’ labor that made such ownership possible.

Source: NYT
Oct 1, 2012

Eric J. Hobsbawm, Marxist Historian, Dies at 95

Eric J. Hobsbawm, whose three-volume economic history of the rise of industrial capitalism established him as Britain’s pre-eminent Marxist historian, died on Monday in London. He was 95.The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter, Julia Hobsbawm.Mr. Hobsbawm, the leading light in a group of historians within the British Communist Party that included Christopher Hill, E. P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, helped recast the traditional understanding of history as a series of great events orchestrated by great men. Instead, he focused on labor movements in the 19th century and what he called the “pre-political” resistance of bandits, millenarians and urban rioters in early capitalist societies.His masterwork remains his incisive and often eloquent survey of the period he referred to as “the long 19th century,” which he analyzed in three volumes: “The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848,” “The Age of Capital: 1848-1875” and “The Age of Empire: 1874-1914.” To this trilogy he appended a coda in 1994, “The Age of Extremes,” published in the United States with the subtitle “A History of the World, 1914-1991.”Related LinksEric Hobsbawm, 1917-2012

Source: NYT
Sep 30, 2012

Eugene D. Genovese, Historian of South, Dies at 82

...Praised for his meticulous research, Mr. Genovese argued that slave life in the pre-Civil War South was not one of continuous cruelty and degradation. Rather, he described a system of “paternalism” in which slaves had compelled their owners to recognize their humanity. This, he said, allowed the slaves to preserve their self-respect as well as their aspirations for freedom while enabling their owners to continue to profit from their labor.The book in which he articulated this view most completely was “Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made,” which in 1975 won the Bancroft Prize for American history writing. The historian Edward L. Ayers, writing in The New Republic in 1994, called it “the best book ever written about American slavery.”

Source: Marc Bauerlein in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Sep 28, 2012

On Eugene Genovese

Marc Bauerlein teaches English at Emory University. Eugene Genovese died Wednesday morning, passing away in his hospital bed at home after a long battle with heart disease. When I sat with him the night before and clasped his hand, he blinked his eyes for a moment, then sank back into darkness. He was ready for months, and he anticipated, with God’s blessing, reunification with his wife, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who died five years ago. (Both of them embraced Roman Catholicism late in life—Betsey’s perceptive account of her conversion can be found in an essay that appeared in First Things in April 2000.)Genovese will be remembered for two things that don’t often coexist in figures in our time. First, he was a scrupulous, diligent, and discerning scholar; his work on the antebellum South will stand as a monumental corpus for years to come. Second, outside the classroom and the archive, he was a vigorous partisan, sometimes confrontational, identifying political adversaries and hurling broadsides with Homeric force.

Source: Time
Sep 27, 2012

History threatens repeat in renewed Pacific War, historians warn

TOKYO – The good news is that there won’t be a new war in Asia. The bad news is that the old one never really ended. And with Japanese and foreign patrol boats firing water cannons at each other this week, it may not be long before the real shooting resumes.“The dispute over the Senkaku Islands is a direct legacy of the Pacific War. For many people, particularly in China, that war is still going on,” says Liu Jie, professor of history and international relations at Tokyo’s Waseda University.Liu was among a dozen historians who converged on Tokyo this week to take a new look at the 15-year conflict that ended – or seemed to – with Japan’s surrender in August 1945. The consensus is grim: Nearly seven decades later, wartime adversaries share little agreement over how the war started, who was responsible or how to bury grudges that remain very much alive....

Source: Democracy Now!
Sep 27, 2012

Alfred McCoy on torture and impunity [VIDEO]

[CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO]In this online exclusive, we continue our discussion with University of Wisconsin professor Alfred McCoy on U.S. torture policy, the Obama administration’s refusal to prosecute war crimes, and new revelations that waterboarding was used more often than the government ever acknowledged.Click here to see part one of this interview.AMY GOODMAN: We’re now joined by Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He’s the author of several books, including, most recently, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation. His past books include A Question of Torture and Policing America’s Empire.Talk about what was found in Somalia. And what is the kind of information that’s being used now?

Source: Reason
Sep 26, 2012

Eugene Genovese, RIP

The historian Eugene Genovese has died at age 82, leaving a legacy that will be confounding ideologues for decades to come. His scholarly focus was the antebellum South, and his most famous book was Roll, Jordan, Roll, a study of slavery that broke important ground by presenting slaves as more than just victims and investigating the rich culture they built for themselves. It was the sort of book you might expect to be written by a leftist, and sure enough, Genovese came out of the left. He wasn't some mild-mannered liberal, either: His first major public controversy came when he announced that he welcomed a Viet Cong victory in Vietnam.But Genovese was also a cultural conservative, a sympathetic interpreter of southern traditionalists, and a fierce critic of the academic left....Related LinksEugene Genovese: 1930-2012

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sep 26, 2012

Eugene D. Genovese, 82, historian on slavery, dies

Eugene D. Genovese, an American historian known for his writings on the Civil War and slavery, died Wednesday. He was 82.Dr. Genovese taught and guest-lectured at several colleges and universities across the country, including Emory University, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Rutgers University, the University of Rochester and the College of William & Mary....Related LinksEugene Genovese: 1930-2012

Source: Pantagraph.com
Sep 26, 2012

Guy Fraker writes book about Lincoln’s years as circuit-riding lawyer

BLOOMINGTON — In a roundabout way, Central Illinois saved the United States.That’s among the conclusions Bloomington attorney Guy Fraker reached in researching his book, “Lincoln’s Ladder to the Presidency,” about Abraham Lincoln’s years as a circuit-riding lawyer in Central Illinois.The book goes on sale next month.“If Lincoln had not come from Central Illinois and the circuit, he would not have been nominated (for president). … I really believe Central Illinois made Abraham Lincoln president and I believe Abraham Lincoln is the only man who could have saved the country,” Fraker said....

Source: WaPo
Sep 25, 2012

Volcker Biographer: Bernanke needs to embrace lessons of 1970s

The ideas and legacy of Paul A. Volcker loom as large in contemporary economic debates as his 6’7″ frame. From the merits of the most recent Federal Reserve actions to boost the economy to how to regulate Wall Street, many of the challenges of today have echoes of those that the former Fed chief grappled with in a five-decade career. William L. Silber has written a rich and detailed new biography of a man who has left as deep an imprint on the world economy as anyone of his generation. Silber, a professor at New York University and author of a bestselling textbook on money and banking, discussed the lessons for the present from his new book, “Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence.”Washington Post: What do you see as the lessons that Ben Bernanke and the current Federal Reserve should be taking from Volcker’s experience in the 70s and 80s?