Professor Mayer
History 104
November 30, 2015
Second Assignment The Ages of Extreme: A History of the World In the novel The Ages of Extreme: A History of the World 1914-1991, the author Eric Hobsbawm tells the reader series of events that happened within those time frames. This 600 page book consist of the development of the entire planet, giving more details into the European affairs. The events are not told year by year but divided into three centuries: Catastrophe (1914-50), the Golden Age (1950-75), and the Landslides (1975 to 1991 and beyond). Eric Hobsbawm refers the chronicles the “short twentieth century” from the outbreak of World War 1 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Hobsbawm contrast this period …show more content…
He tells readers how many people at the timing were scared that this war would cause the start to the worlds ending. Since all major countries who had power were involved. This include Russia. United States, France, Britain, Prussia, Japan and Austria-Hungry. This shocked Hobsbawn and others because yet, experiencing other smaller wars the World War I was nothing compared to the seriousness to those war. Both of the two world wars on either side of a world-wide depression where Hobsbawm labels “The Great Slump”,comprise the Age of Catastrophe. Following on, and resulting from, the indescribable massacre of the First World War was the Russian Revolution, which established the communism and economic of capitalism that would dominate the short-twentieth century. It took a temporary agreement between the two superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union which championed these opposing systems to propel the world out of the Age of Catastrophe. By fighting as allies during World War II, they combined to defeat the fascist establishment of Europe and Asia; this victory signal a short period of relative economic and political stability throughout the world. Before the war started, however, the communist system had proved its viability by managing to avoid the Great Slump which descended on all the major capitalist economies of the world. This remarkable feat engendered a host of communist revolutions and after World War II, Soviet expansion that resulted in over one-third of the world’s population living under communist rule. In America, Roosevelt, had created the modern welfare programs such as social security and government subsidies, while also reporting an age of high tariffs and overall intervention by the federal government, instituted Keynesian economic reforms. Hobsbawm argues that the Great Slump,opposite ultimately saved capitalism by forcing it to reform its vulgar laissez