Renata Torrado (she/her)

1-PAGE ESSAY: Eric Hobsbawm on Crucial Events

Prompt:

What, according to Hobsbawm, is a “crucial event?” What is the crucial

public event of your lifetime? How has that event shaped your view of the world?

When Hobsbawm refers to “crucial events”, he means to bring attention to one specific

element: change. What periods of time or actions “changed” the course of the future?

What events made people change perspectives on a country or a group's reputation? In

the reading, Hobsbawm refers to a specific event in human history which he considers

crucial, World War 2, where the invasion of Poland by Germany led to the declaration of

war by France and Great Britain. This war is not considered a crucial event soley due to

the fact that over 85 million people died, but because it was one of the first wars in

which competing nations fought against each other publicly, turning perspectives and

creating groups amoung nations. To this day, the war has forever changed and

questioned the intentions of countries such as Russia, who sided with Nazi Germany

during the war. This can be seen clearly with the Cold War, which was consequent to

WW2, where two world powers, the U.S and Russia, turned against eachother. Events

such as WW2 are crucial to our understanding of world views, especially due to the

countless repercussions deriving from them which can only be explained from “crucial

events”. Moreover, I believe that I would consider that the crucial public event in my
lifetime has been the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite not being a world war, the Covid-19

virus affected the whole world, killing millions, disrupting economies, etc. This outbreak

led to a complete re-shaping of human life, and with it perspective. Personally, I had

never felt so helpless, so scared, and so stressed. I had family and friends suffer to the

worst extent, fearing that their lives would be over and that there was nothing that even

the best doctors could do. Quarantine also moved me, showing me how isolation and

what many people living in war felt (to a certain extent), where they lived in fear of the

unknown. I was affected also in regards to my education, where I had the misfortune of

graduating via a computer, causing me to miss those amazing events that I had looked

forward to since I was a child.