The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914

by Dominic Lieven

Book Overview

Intellectual, social, and economic developments in Victorian and Edwardian Europe threatened the wealth, status, and power of the aristocracy. What precisely were these threats? How did the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 023108112X
• ISBN13: 9780231081122
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Not easy reading but excellent historical study

The enobled upper class in the 19th century viewed the Industrial Revolution and (in Britain) the expansion of the franchise in quite a different light from the middle classes. To them, increased educational and occupational opportunities were an economic and social threat to their power and right to rule. Comparing the aristocracies in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, the author investigates their "strategies" (rather too active a term, but it's accepted jargon) and the ways they responded to the danger. What he finds, not surprisingly, is that each national group responded in its own way to the challenge from the lower classes in its own country. Even the most moss-bound, autocratic English lord could barely conceive of the literal power of life and death enjoyed by Russian noblemen over their serfs. By the First World War, the untitled middle classes, the self-made men -- especially in Britain and Germany -- had begun to rival the aristocracy in economic power and in some cases was actively infiltrating it through marriage and purchase of estates. On the other hand, the new class of millionaires included a few aristocratic magnates whose wealth was industrial, however ancient their titles. Lieven is a political economist with a strong background in Russian affairs and this is a thoroughly academic volume, complete with statistics and charts, but it's an important work on the decline of aristocratic power.