My Take | The bloody past of the last 2 centuries has never ended
- The Ukraine crisis has resurrected 19th-century imperialism and 20th-century Cold War, with an evermore powerful China thrown into the combustive mix
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner
The great Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm famously called the 19th “the long century” and the 20th “the short century”. Indeed, he wrote three books – adding up to over 1,100 pages if you use the Vintage edition – on the 19th century as part of a trilogy on Western modernity, but only one book on the 20th century, with 620-plus pages, inclusive of notes and index. Granted, the fourth book was substantially longer than each of the other three, but still, his fans easily get the point.
Many political scientists have followed Hobsbawm’s example, believing the fall of the Soviet Union marked the end of the ideological and political struggles that defined the last century. In his fourth volume, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, he declared with great confidence: “ … the Short Twentieth Century, that is to say, of the years from the outbreak of the First World War to the collapse of the USSR which, as we can now see in retrospect, forms a coherent historical period that has now ended …”
He wrote this passage sometime between 1992 and 1994, that is, almost contemporaneous with the tumultuous era-ending events he was describing towards the end of his book. Did he jump the gun?
Today, are we so sure about Hobsbawm’s periodisation, in light of the Ukraine crisis, which looks like, for each passing day, a fateful reconfrontation between Russia and the West, while the rest of the world looks on with horror and anxiety?
After all, as her government announced that it would send advanced Leopard tanks to Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock inadvertently admitted last week “we are fighting a war against Russia”. By “we”, presumably she meant the West.