Quote of the Day | 1007
In recent decades, as the appetite of historians to account for change in the long term has diminished, Eric’s contribution has appeared all the more distinctive and magnificent. The degree of austerity, the refusal of sentimentality, all of which I had found a little off-putting when a student, now appear among his great strengths as a historian. As he acknowledged in his 1993 Creighton lecture, as a communist he was on the losing side of history. Movingly, he tried to recuperate as a historian what had been lost politically. Winners, he suggested, rarely asked the interesting questions. How could they? Their victory so often seemed right or inevitable or both. […]
David Feldman, ‘Eric Hobsbawm 1917-2012’
[x]#10376 fan zondag 7 oktober 2012 @ 22:05:59
