Charles Reinhardt

994236992
HIS415

Analysis of Nationalist Historiography in

Eric Hobsbawms Age of Capital and Age
of Empire and George Mosses The
Nationalization of the Masses

The writings on nationalism in The Age of Capital and Age of Empire by Eric Hobsbawm and The
Nationalization of the Masses by George Mosse both provide illuminating perspectives on the
phenomenon of popular nationalist politics and their correlation to the rise of right wing
authoritarian nationalism. The former seeks to track the political, social and economic factors that
led to differing iterations of the principle of nationality, culminating in the rise of its dominant
right wing reactionary formation. The latter focuses instead on the mass political activities of
predominantly German nationalists and interprets these large-scale public events as the key to
understanding the powerful psychological pull of the anti-intellectual fascist political culture.
Through the use of these two historical lenses one can perceive many of the facets of this pivotal
historical movement and construct a fuller vision of its progression from liberal project to
conservative totem. While the two accounts diverge in emphasis and on a few key points, they
compliment each other in the end. Hobsbawm's analysis shows the broad outlines of the historical
phenomenon and explains its various manifestations through time while Mosse describes the
specific events and activities that cemented the power of the movement and the effect that they had
on their participants.

On a number of historiographical arguments, both Mosse and Hobsbawm find themselves in broad
agreement. For example, both historians agree that the conception of national community sprang
from a desire on the part of nationalized peoples to embed themselves in a greater whole and to
repair the fragmentation of society that had occurred as a result of the steady march of modernity.
Mosse describes the atomization of society as a force that led to a desire to make the world

whole again, corroborating Hobsbawm's characterization of the nation as an imaginary

community serving to fill the void left by the declining village and parish.12 In addition, both
historians explain well the connection between popular nationalist politics and the large-scale
socialist and labour movements of the 19th century. Hobsbawm correctly identifies the link between
early nationalism and social justice whether rural or urban, while Mosse demonstrates the
inspiration that popular nationalist politics drew from the socialist traditions of large-scale protest
and collective action.34 However, it is through the synthesis of the complimentary differentiations of
emphasis employed by Mosse and Hobsbawm that the picture of the rise of mass nationalist politics
comes more clearly into focus.

For example, both historians support the idea that the large-scale rallies engendered by nationalist
politics served as a fallacious yet outwardly sufficient substitute for representative democratic
participation. As Hobsbawm states, nationalist demonstrations had a democratic appeal without the
dangers of democracy.5 Mosse develops this point much further however, delving deeply into the
theoretical foundations of the process of objectification of the general will and the fulfillment its
festivals, rites and liturgies gave to their participants who saw their desire for full political
expression atomized by parliaments and representative bodies. He convincingly explains how
these events and activities transformed political action into a national drama in which all
participants felt that they were playing a significant role.6

In turn, Mosse's account leaves out an important point made by Hobsbawm: the fact that
nationalism was understood by political elites to be a powerful tool for social control by the early
19th century.7 By focusing on the illusions produced by the experience of mass political activities,
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Mosse, George, The Nationalization of the Masses (Howard Fertig, New York, 1975) 6
Hobsbawm, Eric The Age of Empire, 148
Hobsbawm, Eric The Age of Capital, 99
Mosse, George, The Nationalization of the Masses (Howard Fertig, New York, 1975) 161
Hobsbawm, Eric The Age of Empire, 149
Mosse, George, The Nationalization of the Masses (Howard Fertig, New York, 1975) 2
Hobsbawm, Eric The Age of Empire, 149

Mosse neglects to flesh out the role of the Nazi party and its state bodies in engineering these
experiences, choosing instead to elaborate solely from an aesthetic and cultural perspective on the
events. Also missing from Mosse's account is a more convincing and in-depth elucidation of the
concrete historical steps that promulgated concepts such as Rousseau's General Will and the
concept of mass democratic participation.8 While demonstrating an admirable grasp of the impact of
large-scale nationalist ceremonial on the mind of the German national, his presentation of the
historical continuity of the movement from the French Revolution to the Second World War is
vague and unclear, linking concepts without a great level of detail of how this philosophical
transmission occurred, whereas Hobsbawm makes concerted efforts to distinguish, to the best of his
ability, the different strata of society and how they perceived their own participation in the events
described. One of example of this is his explanation of the role of folkloric cultural revivalism
among the popular sections of the nationalist movement and how this intersected with the more
formal and continuous theoretical evolutions of the principle of nationality expounded by the elites
of Europe.9

Another area of valuable concurrence between both historians concerns the dialectical nature of
popular nationalist movements. Hobsbawm outlines in both Age of Capital and Age of Empire the
conflict at the heart of modern national politics: that the construction of a collective national
identity involved the negation or diminution of competing identities, dating most vividly from the
1848 ruptures in the Hapsburg Empire and the growing awareness of the reality of rival
nationalities.10 This adversarial dynamic arising from the perception of real or imagined threats to
the newly-defined national community is further illuminated in Age of Empire, as Hobsbawm
explains the rise of ethnic and linguistic categorization of the national communities and the cooption of the nationalist project by the far right of European politics.11 Mosse compliments this
birds eye view with a description of the interplay of German nationalist sentiment and the political
8
9
10
11

Mosse, George, The Nationalization of the Masses (Howard Fertig, New York, 1975) 1
Hobsbawm, Eric, Age of Capital, 90
Ibid, 88
Hobsbawm, Eric, Age of Empire, 144

conditions leading to the rise of National Socialism. He describes the nationalist movement as
opposed to the Establishment and singles out the weakness of the Weimar Republic as a perfect
environment for it to thrive, allowing for the relative freedom required to develop critical mass and
acquire the power to effect its revolutionary goals.12

Hobsbawms economic and political teleology clarifies important elements of the back-story of the
rise of right wing nationalism, as he ties the exacerbation of ethnic nationalist identity politics to the
downturn in the European economies caused by the financial Depression of the period. He provides
necessary background as he contextualizes the growing xenophobia in nationalist discourse as being
a response to the rise in immigration and movement of populations in response to the need to find
work in a depressed economic climate.13 He then links this to the highly significant and growing
middle class whose vulnerability to the vicissitudes of the economy led to popular distrust of
international capitalism and its scapegoats, the Jewish people of Western Europe and above all,
Germany.14

Where Mosse in turn excels is in describing the psychological and social realities of the movements
in Germany that Hobsbawm so generally sketches out, providing essential cultural and aesthetic
context. From Hobsbawms generalities Mosse moves to the particulars. Mosse describes national
socialism as an attitude, not a system, in which participants sought primarily beauty in their
political activities, in a manner reminiscent of the beauty found in the Christian liturgy.15 Mosses
vision penetrates the actual lived experience of the participants in fascist movements, outlining how
cultural experience served as a shaper of political reality and created a communal spiritual sense
of what Germany was.16 Though Hobsbawm ably enumerates the economic and political external
factors that contributed to the gestalt of the Garman nationalist, Mosse actually describes this
12
13
14
15
16

Mosse, George, The Nationalization of the Masses (Howard Fertig, New York, 1975) 18
Hobsbawm, Eric, Age of Empire, 154
Ibid, 158, 160
Ibid, 9
Ibid, 214

gestalt, convincingly outlining the world of illusion created by the national cult and liturgy.17
As he brilliantly expounds, Mein Kampf did not serve as a kind of bible for fascism in any way
analogously to the manner in which The Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital served the socialist
movement. This is because fascism, the most extreme expression of popular nationalism, did not
require books or theory, and it is through Mosses demonstration and description of its cultural,
emotional and parochial elements that this argument becomes compelling and satisfying.18

As a mutually supportive pair of historiographical sources, Mosses and Hobsbawms texts are
highly effective, allowing one to absorb convincing arguments that chart both the economic,
political and social causes of the rise of popular nationalist politics while also incorporating the
particular impact of the manner in which these causes manifested themselves in their most extreme
and, for world politics, consequential form. While their narratives have entirely different foci, they
corroborate each other on a number of essential points and when put together, flesh out a
compelling and vivid portrait of one of the most important political and historical phenomena of the
modern age.

17 Ibid, 192
18 Ibid, 10