British · 1917–2012
Eric Hobsbawm was a British historian of Marxist outlook, born in Alexandria, Egypt, and raised in Vienna and Berlin before moving to Britain in 1933. He studied at Cambridge and taught for most of his career at Birkbeck College, University of London. He joined the Communist Party in Berlin as a teenager and stayed a member until the party dissolved in 1991. He is best known for his history of the long nineteenth century and the short twentieth century: The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, The Age of Empire and The Age of Extremes. He also wrote Bandits, Primitive Rebels and, with Terence Ranger, edited The Invention of Tradition, which shaped the study of nationalism and national symbols. His books have been translated into dozens of languages and sold widely outside the academy. He received the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1998. How to Change the World, published in 2011, collects his essays on Marx and Marxism. He died in London in 2012.