Bourgeoisie

BOURGEOISIE

BOURGEOISIE. For much of the twentieth century, historians used the term "bourgeoisie" unselfconsciously to denote that rather vague middle group between the nobility and the masses of peasants and urban workers. The middle classes, the middling sort, the Bürgertum, the bourgeoisie; these terms were all used to describe the merchants, the guild members, the pensioners, and the elite non-nobles (professionals, financiers, and officials) who dominated much of the early modern urban landscape. They enter the European scene in the Middle Ages—the tradesmen and other urban figures who did not fit neatly into the idealized tripartite society of Three Orders: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work. These individuals worked, but they did not till the land like peasants. While some definitions of bourgeoisie include the artisan, most exclude those whose work soiled their hands. But these urban merchants and manufacturers were economically useful; they dealt in goods, and they dealt in cash. They would become Max Weber's Protestant capitalist, imbued with an ethic of ascetic capitalism, and Karl Marx's budding bourgeois class, the owners of the means of production. We see hints of this nineteenth-century meaning of bourgeoisie in earlier times; workers referred to their employers as "bourgeois," and peasants used the same term for their urban landlords.

DIFFICULTIES OF DEFINITION

Historians of France have led the way in trying to better understand the character and function of the early modern bourgeoisie. Steeped in a Marxist historiography that termed the French Revolution a "bourgeois revolution" fueled by class conflict between a politically aspiring bourgeoisie and a moribund aristocracy, scholars have closely examined the social class structure of Old Regime France in search of an economic and political bourgeoisie that would seize control of the Revolution's direction. But revisionist historians since the early 1970s have worked to demolish the Marxist framework, the notion of a dynamic precapitalist bourgeoisie leading a world-historical Marxian revolution. The bourgeoisie, if it existed prior to the French Revolution, they argue, was risk-adverse and keener on social mobility than class power. As soon as they earned enough money, individuals wanted to leave the bourgeoisie to become part of the nobility. Members of this group were far more attached to the trappings of status than to the accumulation of capital, the fruits of profit. Furthermore, links between the upper reaches of the bourgeoisie and the nobility—who frequently intermarried, and socialized in the salons and academies—were so close as to render meaningless the notion of "class conflict" between aristocrat and bourgeois. The elite—noble and non-noble—was quite unified, certainly more unified than any amorphous "bourgeoisie."

This suggests the importance of social mobility to any definition of bourgeoisie. Traditionally, historians have differentiated between the upper, the middle, and the petty bourgeoisie. There was always some mobility within this group; an education and a profession, not to mention the accumulation of wealth, could move one from the ranks of the petty into the middle, or from the middle into the upper bourgeoisie. But there was also movement from the upper reaches of the bourgeoisie into the ranks of the elite. As the numbers and power of old noble families began to decline in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in a number of western European countries, many wealthy bourgeois families moved in to take their place through the purchase of land, and eventually, the purchase of venal offices, some of which conferred noble title. Social mobility—up and down—blurs the boundaries between the bourgeoisie and other social groups.

These fuzzy boundaries complicate the picture considerably. Focusing on linguistic and cultural categories, Sarah Maza argues that there was no middle class—no "bourgeoisie" beyond a precise set of legal meanings—in pre-Revolutionary France. According to Maza, until there is an actual discourse about the middle class, until it is named and given a social, political, moral, or historical importance, it does not exist; and thus, it did not exist in early modern France. A similar argument has been made for early modern England and for other European countries. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century sociological definitions of the bourgeoisie fit uncomfortably in early modern society, which would not have recognized the categories we impose.

Furthermore, the bourgeoisie—composed of relatively comfortable urban dwellers—was a small segment of the population in any European country before the nineteenth century, seldom more than 10 percent of the total population, except in the commercial countries of Holland and England, where the total urban population surpassed 50 percent and 25 percent, respectively. About 20 to 30 percent of Londoners were members of the middle classes by the eighteenth century, with some 3 to 5 percent in the upper class. During the same period, about 8 percent of the French population could be considered bourgeois—but only about 2 percent of the population counted in the upper reaches of that group. In other words, the size of the upper bourgeoisie in France was roughly equivalent to that of the nobility. The same was true in the city of Nuremburg in the sixteenth century, where rough numerical parity existed between the rich merchants of the city and the aristocracy.

Moreover, lack of real class solidarity attenuated the political importance of the bourgeoisie. Even in Great Britain, which boasted perhaps the largest and proudest middle class in Europe by 1800, the aristocracy dominated the reins of government well into the nineteenth century. If "the middle classes are always rising," as the old adage goes, their ascent had barely begun.

And yet, despite the admonitions of those who would consign the term "bourgeoisie" to the dustbin of history, historians continue to use it, as did early modern individuals themselves. But the sets of meaning that this term conveys are imprecise. Just as the boundaries between the bourgeoisie and other social classes are vague, the definition of "bourgeoisie" is equally so. Depending on context and assumptions, the historian conjures up sometimes radically different images when using the term. Definitions of "bourgeoisie" generally fall into one of four categories: legal, economic, political, and cultural.

LEGAL DEFINITION

The legal definition of bourgeoisie is both the most precise (although it varied from place to place) and the most restrictive. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, burgenses was the term applied to the inhabitants of any seigneurial territory that was granted a written coutume or charter. This charter granted privileges to the inhabitants of that territory, but the specific privileges varied from place to place, and indeed, from country to country. Sometimes those privileges were quite narrow; for example, individuals enjoying the title "Bourgeois de Bordeaux" were allowed to bring their wine into the city free of duty and had the monopoly of retail sale within the city limits. Because the privileges associated with the legal title "bourgeois" could be quite specific and quite lucrative, it was not uncommon for nobles to seek the status of "bourgeois." In general usage, however, the term "bourgeois," from medieval times through the age of the French Revolution, referred to the non-noble inhabitants of towns, citizens who enjoyed the privileges associated with living in a particular place.

ECONOMIC POSITION

The economic definition, which emphasizes the economic activity and financial standing of the bourgeoisie, is both more contentious and more compelling. It denotes the bourgeoisie as the capitalist class, the social group that emerged with towns and trade. A market-centered focus and control of commerce and capital made the bourgeoisie a potent rival to the aristocracy in a number of European countries, most notably England and the Dutch Netherlands. In the German states, the small to midsized towns, especially the trading cities on the coast, were also dominated by the merchant, craftsman, and financier. It was the rising power of the capitalist that foreshadowed the end to a European political and economic system governed by aristocrats barred from trade by the threat of dérogation —loss of noble title. The bourgeoisie pioneered the commercial capitalism of the early modern era in the same way that it would spearhead the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

But not all "bourgeois" individuals were involved in trade and manufacture. The term encompasses lawyers, doctors, and non-noble officials, sometimes counted on the fringes of, or even at the center of, the elite. It also includes the so-called bourgeois vivant noblement, the "bourgeois living nobly" from the proceeds of investments and no longer required to labor for an income. While status in the early modern era was not invariably linked to wealth, wealth could go far in blurring the lines between middle class and elite, at least for those who were involved in the professions and not directly connected to the less noble function of trade. In many countries—most notably France and Spain—trade was considered a dishonorable profession, one that any person of fortune would try to leave behind as quickly as possible. It is this desire on the part of the bourgeoisie to move out of trade—the dynamic sector of the economy—and to invest in the more respectable lifestyle of land- or office-holding that calls into question Marx's vision of the rising capitalist bourgeoisie, challenging the aristocracy for economic, political, and cultural supremacy. Some historians have blamed the status-seeking French bourgeoisie for the stagnant nature of the French economy in the eighteenth century as compared to the rapidly industrializing British economy where the middle classes were less eager to disinvest from the productive sectors of the economy.

POLITICAL INFLUENCE

Still, the economic clout of the bourgeoisie as individuals and as a group could go far in conferring political power along with social status. Economic resources allowed bourgeois individuals to obtain professional expertise for their sons through education, as well as to purchase land from the weakened aristocracy. This phenomenon was particularly pronounced in England at the close of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1471), which had wiped out many of the most powerful baronial families, but it was repeated in other regions as well. The wealthy bourgeoisie, the nouveaux riches, embedded in business and administrative circles, moved into the positions of economic and political influence once held by the aristocracy and eventually supplanted them as the new aristocracy. This regeneration of the old elite with social climbers from the bourgeoisie is a common theme in early modern history. The aristocratic diarist Saint-Simon railed at the tendency of Louis XIV of France (ruled 1643–1715) to choose bourgeois individuals, vile men "raised from the dust," as his ministers at the expense of his traditional advisors, the nobility. Within a few generations, these "vile men" would hold sway as prestigious members of the court. A similar process took place in the Prussian bureaucracy under Frederick William I (ruled 1713–1740).

This would suggest a tight nexus between the rise of absolutism and the role of the bourgeoisie in early modern states. Kings bent on increasing their authority would turn to members of the bourgeoisie to serve the state and carry out the king's will at the expense of the old feudal nobility, whose wealth and regional power bases made it a constant threat to central authority. Affluent commoners, ready for the peace, rationality, and business benefits a centralizing monarch could introduce into the operations of government, eagerly supported the king against the rapacious nobility, and their educated sons entered into royal service. Recent scholarship that indicates more mutual dependence between monarchs and their nobility throws this line of analysis into question, but certainly the perception of an aggressive bourgeoisie usurping aristocratic privileges and rights was a powerful one, as the writings of Saint-Simon indicate.

But another interpretation of the political role of the early modern bourgeoisie also undermines the notion of complicity between king and merchant. The traditional social interpretation of both the English Civil War of the 1640s and the French Revolution of 1789 painted a bourgeoisie confident in its commercial importance, seeking political power commensurate with its economic power. Jürgen Habermas cites the creation of a "bourgeois public sphere" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which a nascent public opinion called into question the monopoly of state and clergy over political discussion. This desire for a political voice brought the bourgeoisie into conflict with aristocracy and crown, both jealous and unwilling to sacrifice political control. Accordingly, a powerful, independent, and discontented bourgeoisie was essential in bringing about revolution or parliamentary democracy or both in countries like France and England; and the absence or weakness of that same class (as in Prussia or Russia) was responsible for the prolongation of absolutist dictatorship. In the words of Barrington Moore, Jr., "No bourgeois, no democracy." The growing political awareness of the eighteenth-century bourgeoisie and the intense political partisanship linked to the effects of the French Revolution throughout Europe played a key role in shaping middle-class consciousness.

CULTURAL INTERPRETATIONS

But bourgeois identity also had important cultural roots that went beyond political activism, including a belief in property, virtue, and talent as the bases for social advancement, and attachment to religious values, frugality, a work ethic, public service, and especially material comfort. The bourgeoisie is also associated with an emphasis on the conjugal family and sentimental familial relations, in contrast to the focus on lineage associated with the aristocracy. This sociocultural interpretation of the bourgeoisie, with its focus on values, attitudes, and rules of conduct, has dominated historical scholarship in recent years. This consciousness of difference, of cultural and moral superiority to the idle aristocracy and the lower-class masses, had appeared among the middle classes by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even if a clear-cut notion of class solidarity did not yet exist.

Still, "bourgeois values" were never uncontested, even in the nineteenth century, often heralded as the golden age of the western European bourgeoisie when its ideology triumphed across class lines. Aristocrats were notoriously contemptuous of the bourgeois values of thrift, acquisitiveness, and morality. They ridiculed the lack of culture and refinement, the crudeness, the avariciousness, the "shopkeeper mentality" of the bourgeoisie. They saved their sharpest barbs for the upwardly mobile, the individual who was trying to buy his way up the social ladder, but whose lack of blood and breeding would forever mark him as bourgeois. Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1671) underlines aristocratic disdain for the wealthy parvenu. And the lower classes, who might have looked to emulate certain characteristics of their bourgeois betters, saw them as calculating, exploitative, and cruel.

Those who give weight to the sociocultural interpretation of the bourgeoisie often underline gender relations within this social group. The ideology of domesticity, which emerged by the eighteenth century, emphasized the importance of harmonious familial relations, a moral private life, prescribed gender roles, and the celebration of the home as a haven from the rational, but heartless, world of the market. The consolidation of bourgeois class status was marked by the movement of women out of family businesses and into the home. Women were central to maintaining the standing of bourgeois families, in creating a moral center for the family and a suitable home with the necessary material comforts.

CONTRADICTIONS IN THE IMAGE OF THE EARLY MODERN BOURGEOISIE

The early modern bourgeoisie emerge as a contradictory group. They are the dynamic protocapitalists, trading and running manufacturing enterprises, working as lawyers and doctors in the liberal professions, running town and state as government officials; they are the status-conscious upwardly mobile, looking only to accumulate enough wealth to invest in land and venal offices and to withdraw from productive activity. They are toadies of absolute monarchs, imposing centralized governments throughout Europe; they are bold political actors, demanding an end to monarchical despotism and a role in the political process. They are a group that values thrift, order, religious principles, industriousness, gender-appropriate behavior, and material comforts; they are a small-minded, petty, and greedy group whose base roots can never be camouflaged, even if their wealth propels them into a higher social category. These contradictory images cannot be resolved, but contradictions are normal within a group as large and as loosely defined as the early modern bourgeoisie.

Despite the self-confidence and belief in the values of hard work and honesty that were part of bourgeois identity, anxiety also permeated the self-image of the early modern bourgeoisie. The status of these individuals was hard-won and was not undergirded by the security of noble title. While we focus on the success stories, downward mobility was at least as common a phenomenon as upward mobility. A merchant could lose his fortune; a lawyer could lose his clients; an official could face dismissal by his ruler. No social safety net existed to protect him. Work, frugality, and reputation were all that stood between the bourgeois and the downward slide to social oblivion. That anxiety may explain his attachment to the conservative values we consider "bourgeois," often long after he had left the middle classes behind.

See also Ancien Régime ; Aristocracy ; Capitalism ; Cities and Urban Life ; Class, Status, and Order ; Law: Lawyers ; Mobility, Social.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Christine Adams