Illiteracy in the age of Empire
Eric Hobsbaum is acknowledged as one of the most important living historians. I consider him as someone to be reckoned with just for the very background he was brought up in. Indeed , the son of a Wiener Jewish mother and an enthusiastic second generation Polish immigrant to Britain, he embodies the quientessential mitteleuropean having endured the widest range of European blurrings possible.
I recently bought his The Age of Empire, after having read some years ago his better known The Shortest Twentieth Century-Age of Extremes. I had serious problems in getting along with the reading of a chapter on the Nationalist political movement at their dawn. In this chapter, unfortunately, it becomes too apparent Mr.Hobsbaums sees everything through a filter biased by his left-wing ideology. Nationalism comes from right-wing movements. Right-wing movements are by definition against working classes. Conclusion:Nationalism is bad, even 150 years after its birth as a socially identifiable movement. Except for this short chapter, where in my opinion he appallingly misses the point of giving a more open and fair-minded view on the so-called nationalist movements, the book is definitely worth-reading.
Especially interesting are some graphics and tables gathered in the last pages of the book. They show some basic evidence of the answer to one question I have often asked myself. Why are my countries of origin so often considered as less modern and less consistent than many others in Europe? How can people be aware of the difference in wealth between these countries and those indeed more developed as a whole? Why do people from these lands make a worse impression in terms of reliability when it comes to deal with culture and technology and progress? Where does this social perception take root and how?
Hobsbaum shows the percentages in illiteracy for most european countries about 1850. I tried to investigate if those percentages bear any significant correlation with their current relative GDP per head. The answer, except for some exceptions, is astonishing clear: those countries with the higher tax of illiteracy 150 years ago are still lagging behind in terms of development still nowadays. No wonder after so many years of unchanged trend such popular views take root deep in the otherwise malleable social consciousness.
Here you are the table and -in parenthesis- the current GDP per head (in relative value)
Of course, this is just a very basic correlation, but it is a firts step towards the interpretation of the mistery of popular beliefs.
