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I'm about as middle class as they come - middle-middle. Father's side: yeomen ('gentlemen farmers') in Nottinghamshire, grandfather and uncle both C of E clergymen, father a computer programmer. Mother's side: obscure until late C19, then probably lower-middle class until my grandfather became an eminent nuclear physicist at which point probably upper-middle, mother now a school librarian, Father and mother met at Oxbridge Academy, London; I also went there. Now faffing around doing nasty low-level media jobs while waiting to hear whether I can go back to Oxbridge Academy, London, in order to escape the whole wretched business by becoming an academic.
I always think of upper-middle as being 'county' families and wealthy professionals - barristers and so on.
Haus's analysis of the class system:
On the middle classes - the lower middle classes were, I think, traditionally smallholders - either small amounts of farmable land or small shops. The grocer is a classic example of a lower middle class occupation. Middle middle class was clerking and business work - businesses at the time tending to be much smaller and with a far tighter concentration of executive power. Upper middle class was professionals (and clergy outside the Lords, I theenk) - doctors, lawyers, military officers above the rank of captain (i.e. those who had purchased their commission) and some other odds and sods, and the upper class were those who held titles and land. However, the late 18th and 19th centuries saw massive accretion of wealth in the hands of industrialists who in the class system stood squarely in at best the middle middle class, hence the vogue for purchasing titles...you probably want to talk to a modern historian on this one. Kit-Cat?
Not actually sure how much help I can be here, but I can certainly try. It is worth bearing in mind that the idea of 'class' is pretty much separate from economic strata of society until the twentieth century; and also that ideas of class have developed differently on different countries (France, for example, very different to Britain in early modern Europe). The idea of class only really develops in the mid-nineteenth century, so it's pretty anachronistic to talk about class even in the time of the Agricultural Revolution.
Society really begins to split out into definable economic strata at the end of the seventeenth century, when the 1690s financial revolution gives rise to speculation and stock-broking - this goes together with a massive increase in urbanisation and urban consumption (not TB). So a 'middling sort' begins to become obvious - not just merchants and yeomen or lesser gentry, but a mobile group of people which could encompass shopkeepers, clerks, financial businessmen, blah blah; and these people, with their addtional economic strength, became capable of actual influence on society and policy. One of the characteristic fears of early C18 society is that of lower sorts of people (belonging to 'the Mob') tricking their way into higher strata of society through appearance - aping their betters, basically. However, the fears of solical mobility disguise the fact that social mobility was a reality - daughters of the aristocracy would frequently marry rich merchants. The professions were slightly anomalous in that they tended to function as a holding-house for younger sons of the aristocracy and gentry (denied inheritance by primogeniture). It's really impossible to talk tin terms of splitting the middling sort at this stage - partly because it was still quite small - but there are the roots of the middle classes.
As the middling sort grows in size it beomes much more important in the life of the nation - George III led a home life according to middling-sort ideals, pretty much, much to the disgust of the aristocracy and of several of his sons - and after the Regency its financial power (due to accretion of land and financial wealth - due, as Haus says, to the growth of industry) was such that it was definitely the most important group in the nation. As the century goes on, wealth becomes more and more important in determining social status, as we can see from novels deploring the rise of the nouveau riche, and industrial barons who - horrors! - actually dared to send their sons to the public schools; it's around this time that we get the idea of 'shabby genteel' - another name for an existing reality, but it is significant in terms of the formation of the idea of the middle class. Marx is responsible for labelling the socio-economic strata as classes, I think. But there were other motivations in social allegiance - education was a very important factor, as it still is.
I think the idea that wealth that doesn't come from land is somehow unclean has been totally debunked now - probably something to do with the decline of the aristocracy as a power base.
Working class comes from the industrial labouring class rather than from peasantry.
Is that any help to anyone? |
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and not one of the majority of the world’s citizens, in whose eyes I would be a filthy Western imperialist plutocrat living very high on the hog.