uk oligarchy

The United Kingdom and ternary gradualism
The case of the United Kingdom is of obvious interest, on the one hand because the monarchy
British was at the head of the first world colonial and industrial empire in
Nineteenth century and up to the mid-twentieth century, and secondly because it is about
sort of the opposite case to that of France. While the French trajectory is
marked by the break of the Revolution of 1789, and by multiple breaks
Monarchical, imperial, authoritarian and republican policies and restorations
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the British trajectory seems to be characterized by
Absolute gradualism.
However, it would be wrong to imagine that it is only by small touches
that the social and political organization of the United Kingdom has moved from
trifunctional to a proprietary logic, then to Labor logics and
subsequent neo-owners. The moments of rupture have an essential importance
which must be underlined, as they again illustrate the multiplicity of bifurcations and
possible trajectories, and the importance of crises and event logic
in the history of unequal regimes. Two points particularly deserve
to be reported: on the one hand the central role played by the fight for progressivity
in the fall of the House of Lords, especially during the crisis
fateful of 1909-1911; and on the other hand the importance of the Irish question in
the general questioning of the dominant order and the British inegalitarian regime
between 1880 and 1920, both in its tri-functional dimensions, proprietary and
quasi-colonial.
Let's start by recalling the general context. The British Parliament has
ancient origins, which are generally traced back to the 11th-13th centuries. The
Council of the king, made up of representatives of the high nobility and the high clergy, becomes
gradually and sometimes includes representatives of cities and counties. The
separation of Parliament into two chambers, the House of Lords and the House of Lords
common, is set up from the fourteenth century. These institutions reflect the
trifunctional structuring of the society of the time. In particular, the Chamber
lords consisted of members of both dominant classes, who initially
had an equivalent weight in the assembly: on the one hand the spiritual lords,
that is, bishops, archbishops, abbots and other representatives of the class
clerical and religious; and on the other hand the temporal lords, that is to say the dukes,
Marquis, counts and other representatives of the noble and warrior class. In the
medieval English texts theorizing social organization into three orders, such as
those of Archbishop Wulfstan of York, we find the same concern for balance as
we noted in the French texts7. The nobles must listen to the advice of
the wisdom and moderation lavished on them by clerics, who in return should not
to think of themselves as warriors and to abuse their power, otherwise
the whole legitimacy of the trifunctional system that could be threatened.
This equilibrium experienced a first decisive break in the sixteenth century. Following
conflicts with the papacy and the dissolution of the monasteries decided by
Henry VIII in the 1530s, the spiritual lords are sanctioned and see their
political role diminish. They then become clearly a minority in the
House of Lords, which will now be almost entirely controlled by the Lords
time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the number of spiritual lords was thus limited to
26 bishops, while the temporal lords have 460 seats. The high nobility
has also succeeded in imposing, from the fifteenth century, the principle that almost all
seats of temporal lords are occupied by hereditary peers, that is,
say dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts and barons, passing on their
paternal to son, usually according to the rule of primogeniture.
This system gives this thin group durability and prominence
under the protection of both royal and electoral power and
issues of power and rivalry within the noble class (the bass and
mean nobility playing no role in the appointment and perpetuation of
peers). Of course, the king has always kept the theoretical possibility of naming
new lords, in principle without any limit, which in case of a serious crisis can
to allow complete control of the affairs of the kingdom. But in
practice, this right has generally been exercised with extreme caution, and the most
often in very special circumstances, under the control of Parliament, by
example as a result of the union with Scotland (1707) and Ireland (1800), which
led to the appointment of new lords (eg 28 peers and 4 bishops
in the Irish case, have

as many as a hundred seats in the House of Commons),

without upsetting the balance of power.

Multiple works have shown the extreme concentration of power and

earthly property characterizing the high English aristocracy within the nobility

European. It is estimated that by the end of the 19th century, around 1880, nearly 80% of

United Kingdom lands were still held by 7,000 noble families (less than

0.1% of the population), of which more than half by only 250 families (less than

0.01% of the population), a thin group that corresponded largely to

hereditary peers making up the House of Lords8. By comparison, the nobility

France held on the eve of the 1789 Revolution about 25% -30% of

earthly properties of the kingdom, in a context, it is true, where the class

ecclesiastic had not yet been expropriated.

Recall also that the House of Lords played a distinct role

dominant in British bicameralism until the last third of the nineteenth century.

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, they were members of the Tory party

(conservative) or whig party (officially renamed liberal party from

1859), the majority of prime ministers and members of the government were

from the House of Lords. It was not until the end of Lord's long tenure

Salisbury, third marquess of the name, and Tory Prime Minister in 1885-1892 and

again in 1895-1902, for this tradition to be lost and for the leaders of

from the House of Commons9.

Above all, it must be emphasized that the House of Commons was itself

composed mostly of members of the nobility in the eighteenth century and during

most of the nineteenth century, until 1860-1870. Adopted following the

Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the dismissal of King James II, the Bill of Rights

had confirmed and protected the rights of Parliament, particularly

adoption of taxes and budgets. But this founding text had not changed anything at the

structure of Parliament and its mode of election: on the contrary, it has led to

a parliamentary regime that was fundamentally aristocratic and oligarchic.

In particular, all laws should always be adopted in the same

terms of both Houses, which gave the House of Commons a veto

lords (and thus to a few hundred hereditary peers) over the entire

kingdom, especially in tax and budgetary matters, and for everything

which concerned the right of property. In addition, the members of the House of

municipalities were still elected by a minority of owners. The rules

defining the electoral tax, that is, the amount of taxes that must be paid

or properties that had to be held to be eligible to vote, were complex

and constituency variables, and controlled by local elites

power. In practice, they favored landowners, whose influence

was further strengthened by an electoral division giving more seats to

rural areas.

In the early 1860s, about 75% of the seats in the House of Commons

The communes were thus always occupied by members of the aristocracy,

same as the latter represented less than 0.5% of the British population of

the époque10. On the benches of the Commons, there were representatives of the three

main traditionally distinguished components within the classroom

nobility of the United Kingdom: the peerage, the titled nobility (except patry) and the gentry

(untitled nobility). The school was well represented, especially in the form

younger sons of hereditary peers who, with some exceptions, had no chance

to have access to the House of Lords and often made the choice of a career

Parliament and Politics in the House of Commons, generally by being elected

a district where the family lineage held vast estates. We

also counted in the Commons the eldest sons of hereditary peers, pending

their place in the House of Lords. Salisbury was a member of the House of Commons

Commons from 1853, before taking up its seat in the House of Lords at the

died of his father in 1868, then became prime minister in 1885.

Among the deputies elected to the House of Commons a large number of

members of the titled nobility, and in particular baronets and knights

(Knights). This component of the nobility played no direct political role in

United Kingdom and did not enjoy any special legal or tax privileges, but their

title was nevertheless protected by the British State, and its members occupied a

formal place of choice in official processions and ceremonies, just

behind the hereditary peers. It was an extremely prestigious group,

hardly more than to which the monarch could choose to give

access by letters patent, following a procedure similar to that used for

appointments among the lords. The monarch could in principle carry out

appointments without limitation of numbers, but in one case as in the other there

always proceeded in moderation. In the early 1880s, the kingdom

thus included some 856 baronets, who placed themselves immediately below

460 hereditary peers from the House of Lords, followed by a few hundred

knights. The baronet title could also be used as a gateway to the payroll,

for example, in the case where peer lines disappeared without descendants. He does

the object still today of an official list, the Official Roll of the Baronetage

held by the UK Department of Justice11.

Finally, the House of Commons also had a large number of

members of the gentry, that is to say, the untitled nobility, who formed the group

numerically the most important within the British aristocracy to the eighteenth and

Nineteenth century, but which had no official existence of any kind, not even a

title recognized by the state or a place in processions and ceremonies.

The British aristocracy, a nobility

propriétariste

This structure of the British aristocracy into three groups (peers sitting at the

House of Lords, nobility titled except patry, gentry without official status) explains

besides, why is it so difficult to estimate in a perfectly precise manner

the evolution of the size of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The difficulties are of a

nature slightly different from those encountered in the case of France. At

Eighteenth century, the French nobility as a whole had a legal existence,

since all its members had political privileges (such as

choose the representatives of the nobiliary order at the states general), fiscal (as

the exemption from certain taxes such as size) and jurisdictional

seigniorial justice). But the state of nobility was first defined at the local level,

under conditions and in ways that have left disparate traces and

difficult to compare across provinces, so there are uncertainties

the total size of the group12. At the same time, the nobility

British group had on the one hand a slender nobility titrated (less than 0.1% of the

population), which included the hereditary, privileged

considerable political pressure, starting with the Chamber's right of veto

lords on all of the kingdom's legislation until 1911, and immense

land areas; and on the other hand the untitled nobility (gentry), which was by far the

more numerous, since it is generally estimated that the total size of the class

nobility was around 1% of the population in the 18th century and less than 0.5% in

the end of the 19th century (see Figure 5.2), but which had no legal existence

officielle13.

The gentry formed a class of prosperous proprietors, although broader than the

tiny British titled nobility but otherwise finer than classes

plethoric of little Spanish, Portuguese or Polish noblemen. Even if she does

did not have explicit political and fiscal privileges, it is clear that the

gentry benefited greatly from the UK's political regime. The

gentry consisted mainly of descendants of the younger branches of the lineages

titled (peers, baronets and knights), and more generally from groups

old Anglo-Saxon warrior and feudal classes, enlarged to new

groups of possessors, based on alliance and recognition strategies.

The rules determining the right to vote for elections in the House of Commons, as defined in

local level, generally favored land ownership and benefited

so indirectly the members of the gentry who had kept an important

earthly domain in relation to members of the new bourgeois classes and

merchants whose wealth was exclusively manufactured, urban or

financial.

But the central point is that the boundaries between these different groups of

owners were relatively porous: no one knew for sure where

began and where the gentry ended, which was only defined by the fact that

members were recognized as such by the other members of the group at

local. In practice, many land and aristocratic fortunes were

gradually reinvested in market, colonial or

during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so that many members of the

the gentry had diversified heritages. Conversely, many bourgeois

authentic and ancient merchants, with no feudal or warrior origins of any

so, had the good taste to acquire a soil earthen domain IDE, to adopt the mode

of adequate life and to marry properly, so as to enter

undisputed in the gentry14. An alliance with authentic descendants of

ancient warlike and feudal lineages, or with children of the nobility

more recent title, facilitated recognition as a member of the gentry, but this

was not an indispensable condition. The social and political system in force at

United Kingdom in the eighteenth century and for most of the nineteenth century reflected in

to a large extent a form of gradual fusion of aristocratic logics and

propriétaristes.

The conditions for the exercise of the right to vote were also defined by the

elites at the local level. It was not until 1832 that a first real attempt

electoral reform and national legislation. Social protest and

the mobilisations for the extension of the electoral "franchise" led to

that a law be passed for the first time by Parliament, not without resistance.

Some members of the Commons saw this as an opportunity to increase their

legitimacy against the Lords. The number of voters, which represented around 5% of

adult men in 1820, a distinctly smaller but significantly larger group

wide as the only gentry, increased significantly as a result of the 1832 law, all

remaining relatively weak, and clearly a minority. It was about 14% of the

adult male population in 1840, with considerable regional variation,

because the constituencies retained the privilege of defining the exact rules

governing the right to vote, depending in particular on the strategies of local elites, and

especially the gentry. These rules were no longer modified until reforms

truly decisive elections of 1867 and 1884. It should also be noted that the

secret ballot was not introduced until 1872. Previously each individual vote was

announced publicly and kept in registers (which can always be

to consult today, which is also a valuable source for

researchers). Before that date, it was not always easy for voters

display policy choices contrary to those of the owners or employers

the most powerful in the county. In practice, a large part of the seats were

challenged: the local deputy was reelected from election to election, and often from generation

in generation. In the early 1860s, the House of Commons had

a deeply aristocratic and oligarchic nature.