ABSTRACT
Reprinted from Industry and Empire (Baltimore and Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969). E. J. Hobsbawm is Professor of Economic and Social History at Birkbeck College, University of London. His books include Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Bandits, and Industry and Empire (from which this selection is taken).
