I am curious to know when, roughly, do we see an end to a feudal system (esp. in England and France) and the arising of a middle class? …or, were there other steps in between, even still?
For one, I thought there was no middle class in France at the time of the French Revolution, but the World Almanac claims it was an uprising of the middle class - not [merely?] peasants.
While I can’t see the peasants having had the means, I didn’t think there was a well-formed middle class at this time. I thought it was only the noblemen and the peasants.
Yeoman farmers were men, under the rank of gentleman, who owned and cultivated their own land. The OED puts this usage to Late Middle English, whenever that was.
I would have thought the days of the feudal system waned with the change in population ratio between urban and rural, the rise of tradesmen and merchants classes/guilds, and the development of centralised governments and militia over local authority and feudal forces.
What about the merchants, bankers, manufacturers, lawyers and just about anyone else living in towns who was not engaged in manual labour?
That said, the term ‘the Middle Class’ is so amorphous that sweeping generalisations based on its supposed ‘rise’ or ‘fall’ tend not to mean much. It lumps together distinct groups whose interests, outlooks and experiences could be very different. Talking about ‘the Middle Classes’ makes slightly more sense.
On the same note, ‘a feudal system’ is another piece of historical jargon which can mean anything or nothing. Deciding when it ends depends entirely on how you chose to define it.
I was told in History class that it was at the Industrial Revolution - the middle class were people who worked to earn their wealth (rather than inheiriting it) and owned mills, etc.
Following a recent thread on the SDMB I’ve been re-reading “Making History” by Stephen Fry. In it his main character, a history post-grad, makes a wry point about history essay buzz-phrases:
“As everyone knows, there is no period in history in which you can’t write successfully of a newly emergent, newly confident middle class, just as there is no period in history after the sixteenth century that you can’t write about ‘the sweeping away of old certainties’.”
From which I think we can conclude that there was always a ‘middle class’, as its definition has always been fluid and relative to the rest of the period’s society.
I wouldn’t think there was enough of a middle class to make a difference in the Dark Ages, until towns and cities began to grow. The contenders in society would be nobles, church, and royalty–the contenders for making decisions.
Early Middle Ages = teeny weeny middle classes? Industrial Revolution = middle classes have serious political weight?
No, but really. Futile Gesture hits the nail on the head, so to speak, about the “rising” of the middle class. To some extent, the “middle class” has always been rising.
But, more to the point, there’s always been a “middle class.” We tend to think of the Middle Ages as being a place where there existed nobility, peasantry, and not much in between. That was never really the case. While feudalism was the most widespread economic model in Western Europe, even in England it wasn’t the only one. Yeoman farmers, mill owners, and merchants abounded in Norfolk and Suffolk (to give an example that I’m familiar with) in the 13th century.
OK, you say, the “middle class” was there, but were they “rising”? Did they hold any power? Even as early as the 13th century, yes. The post of churchwarden (in a nutshell, the CFO of the English parish) was held mainly by persons of the “middle class.” In an era when national and regional authority and both secular and ecclesiastical law courts were held only intermittently, the churchwarden held a great deal of local power.
When you get to the 16th century, you can really start to see how powerful the middle class was getting economically. In England, subsidies or taxes were assessed in three ways: by landholdings, by saleable goods, or by “wages.” The goods-holders, while still comprising only about 20% of the population in Norfolk and Suffolk, hold more than 20% of the wealth–in other words, they are cutting into the landholders’ (mostly the noble and gentle) share. And the post of churchwarden is now almost exclusively a “middle-class” preserve.
Of course, it took a couple more centuries for the middle class to break into English national government. But it’s still an ongoing process, you could say.
Historically, the middle class has always emerged whenever cities arise, and this is true as far back as there are cities.
APB is correct in identifying the basic components of the middle classes. Before lawyers and doctors, though, were the buyers and sellers of goods, the lenders of money, the skilled artisans, the foremen and organizers, the whosesalers and middlemen and go-betweens. These are necessary positions whenever villages grow too large so that every transaction takes place between people who have known each other their entire lives.
Whether these people and their families are “middle-class” in the way we think of the term today is a matter of definition and understanding. But under any definition they were middles - between the ruling classes and peasantry.
So the middle class is probably at least 6000 years old. Jericho probably had a middle class. So did Ur. And Babylon. The Egyptians certainly did. And by the time we get to Rome, the middle classes were a large and important part of the population.
…and one important note: in the old societies, the ranking of “noble” vs. “bourgeois” vs. “peasant” was not exactly correlated with wealth. You could have rich or poor nobility, or rich or poor bourgeoisie/middle class. You could have “middle-class” commoners severalfold wealthier in land and cash, and more highly educated and travelled, than folks of noble birth (and conversely, noble-born folks who were flat broke oafs).
And yes, the French and American Revolutions were “bourgeois” revolutions, not peasant rebellions. Revolution as an uprising of the proles is a later, Marxist, idea.
Oh, there you go bringing class into it again! We’re not an autonomous collective… you’re only fooling yourself. Good people, I am in haste! Who do you think you are? Well, I am King! Oh, King are ya? Well, I didn’t vote for you…
