In The Age of Revolution, Eric Hobsbawm focuses on the tumultuous late 18th and early 19th centuries. He argues that the "dual revolutions" of the time—the French Revolution and the British Industrial Revolution—changed the way the whole world thought about politics and power, and fundamentally shaped the modern era. Hobsbawm explains how these dual revolutions created conditions in which capitalism and liberalism could rise and dominate. But while values such as liberty, free trade and meritocracy led to the formation of the middle class, this leap forward excluded the laboring poor, resulting in the emergence of socialism and the working class.