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Quote by Eric Hobsbawm

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Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm was a renowned British historian known for his research on the Industrial Revolution and the social changes in 19th-century Europe. His works have had a profound impact on the field of history, particularly in the areas of social history and comparative history. more

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“Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.”

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Book:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
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“The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively continuing in some of the world's most troubled areas.”

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Book:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
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“One way to explain the complexity and unpredictability of historical systems, despite their ultimate determinacy, is to note that long chains of causation may separate final effects from ultimate causes lying outside the domain of that field of science.”

WayMayLongLyingCausesEffectsFieldsUltimateHistoricalNotesFinalsDespiteChainsOne WayComplexityDomainUnpredictabilityCausation
Book:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
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“When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land by order of his Majesty the King of Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian.”

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Book:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
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“Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other—by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others.”

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Author:Jared Diamond
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