Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz (review)

The cover notes to this new volume of essays quote The Times as suggesting that Eric Hobsbawm is “the best known living historian in the world”. This may or may not be the case, but he is certainly Britain’s best known Marxist historian, and purveyor of the long view of history. His previous work has covered a dazzling array of subjects and periods, and has dealt with the history of an astonishing range of countries. This volume continues in that tradition.

The book brings together chapters that have previously contributed to other collections, journal articles, reviews of books, and conference papers, written over a period stretching from the early 1950s to the present day. They are divided into four main sections, on the ‘Radical Tradition’, ‘Country People’, ‘Contemporary History’, and ‘Jazz’. Within these sections, in themselves an eclectic mix, essays are included that range from Tom Paine to Harold Laski, from nineteenth century South American peasant movements to twentieth century Sicilian petty mafiosi, and from the French May 1968 to Count Basie. Even within the chapters themselves, the discussions continue to be wide ranging in subject matter, time period, and geographical location, and are written with a fluidity and sureness of touch that illustrates Hobsbawm’s command of his subject. The breadth of scholarship on display is impressive, and often the writing is startlingly insightful. This is perhaps best exemplified by the analysis of the Vietnam War in chapter 14, written and published as early as 1965, and which provides some frighteningly accurate predictions about the course of that conflict. His analysis of 1968 also avoids many of the cliché ridden phrases that so often accompany histories of these events, so that in a short chapter he grasps the essence of that explosive year, if at the same time underestimating its long term impact.

The book also raises important issues about historical method, particularly the applicability of a long view of history to a social history of the lives of ‘ordinary’ people. In the Preface, the author is at pains to explain that he has chosen the title Uncommon People because he wants to discuss “the sort of people whose names are usually unknown to anyone except their family and neighbours” and who, he argues, are ‘major historical actors’ when considered collectively. He argues that “what they do and think, makes a difference. It can and has changed culture and the shape of history, and never more so than in the twentieth century. That is why I have called a book about ordinary people, the ones that are traditionally known as ‘the common people’, Uncommon People.” The strange choice of this title is where the problems start. If the book is to be a ‘history from below’, as this explanation would seem to suggest, then it is difficult to understand how this theme links together such a diverse mix of subjects within one volume. Moreover, because many of these essays cover large geographical areas, as well as long time periods, it is impossible to get more than a fleeting glance at these ‘uncommon people’.

Only very rarely are the voices or the stories of the people who constituted these groups, or those of their representatives, or the groups as a whole, heard in the text of this book. Sometimes, essays discuss subjects directly concerned with ordinary people, such as machine-breaking, or radical nineteenth century shoemakers, but this history is painted with such a broad brush that there is little space for these people to be heard. They remain a faceless, nameless mass. Alternatively, some essays deal with very long term trends, such as the chapter on the making of the working class, or that on Latin American peasant movements, that inevitably makes it almost impossible to include details about these ‘uncommon people’. Perversely, many chapters deal in detail with individual people who can only be described as extraordinary, such as Tom Paine, Harold Laski, and perhaps even more especially Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Sidney...