A Study Of Hobsbawm’s View Of Social History

As a representative of the British Marxist historical school,Hobsbawm has always insisted on examining and studying the historical development of contemporary capitalism and socialism from the perspective of historical materialism.And he has published many heavyweight academic works,which have had a profound impact on academic circles at home and abroad.Taking Hobsbawm’s "Age Quadrilogy" and other representative works as the starting point,placing the main line of research in the dual historical context of the "dual revolution" of the 19 th century and the global integration of the 20 th century,and taking historical materialism theory as the theoretical guide,this thesis aims to systematically study,sort out,summarize,and evaluate Hobsbawm’s view of social history,which is of great significance to a certain extent.The thesis is composed of four chapters.The first chapter mainly introduces the basis for the selection of the topic,the significance of the research,a review of domestic and foreign research results,research ideas,research methods,innovations,and shortcomings.The second chapter mainly defines the concepts of dual revolution,Euro-centrism,class,view of social history,and other related concepts,and briefly introduces the theoretical basis of the people as the creator of history,the dynamic of social development,and class struggle.The third chapter systematically discusses Hobsbawm’s view of social history from four aspects: the vision,the subject,the dynamics,and the trend.The fourth chapter focuses on evaluating Hobsbawm’s view of social history by using the basic viewpoints of the historical materialism and analyzes Hobsbawm’s contemporary features and shortcomings in the study of the process of human socio-historical development and its enlightenment to the development of socialism in China todaythrough further research on the historical background and ideological origins of him.The concluding chapter briefly summarizes the implications and limitations of Hobsbawm’s view of social history for the historical development of human society.Guided by the theory of historical materialism,the study of Hobsbawm’s view of social history shows that Hobsbawm strives to break away from the Eurocentric complex and gradually forms a global vision of social-historical research;furthermore,Hobsbawm insists on a holistic historical research method combining "bottom-up" and "top-down",and together with other British Marxist historians,Hobsbawm creates a social-historical analysis model of bottom-up historical research,which is not only an inheritance of historical materialism,but also reflects Hobsbawm’s responsibility and care for social reality.