The age of capital, 1848-1875

The first and best, major treatment of the crucial years 1848-1875, a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism throught the world. In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world: 'capitalism'. The global triumph of capitalism is the major theme of history in the decades after 1848. It was the triumph of a society which believed that economic growth rests on competitive private enterprise, on success in buying everything in the cheapest market (including labour) and selling it in the dearest. An economy so based, and therefore nestling naturally on the sound foundations of a bourgoisie composed of those whom energy, merit and intelligence had raised to their position and kept there, would - it was believed - not only create a world of suitably distributed material plenty but of ever-growing enlightenment, reason and human opportunity, an advance of the sciences and the arts, in brief a world of continuous and accelerating material and moral progress. **The Age of Capital: 1848–1875** is a book by Eric Hobsbawm, first published in 1975. It is the second in a trilogy of books about "the long 19th century" (coined by Hobsbawm), preceded by *The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848* and followed by *The Age of Empire: 1875–1914*. A fourth book, *The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991*, acts as a sequel to the trilogy. (from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Capital:_1848%E2%80%931875)) Hobsbawm offers a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism throughout the world during the period 1848-1875 Hobsbawm's brilliant history, beautifully repackaged as an Abacus History Great