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| Visions & Revisions |
A Distant Mirror
Douglas McWhirter
08/02/2004
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During the period of the 1880s to the end of the Second World
War, the empire becomes an area of aristocratic interest, as a place to invest,
to settle, to go as part of the proconsular elite. They see the empire as an
alternative area of activity from Britain itself. But of course when the empire
goes, that alternative area of activity goes, and that does help to contribute
to the decline of the public role the aristocracy created for itself. So yes,
there is a connection. Aristocracies, in the traditional sense, no longer exist in Western
societies.
In many European countries there are still people with titles, and with a
certain amount of residual prestige as a result of that. They certainly still
know who they are, and in a certain sense, have a different view of the world
from the rest of us. What they do not have is the sort of political power they
once did. In that sense—a definable, functioning, governing class—they do not
exist as they used to, and though some of them are individually wealthy, they
are nowhere near as wealthy as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. And they are no
longer leisured, which is one of the prerequisites of aristocracy: they have to
work.
Wealth in 19th-century Britain was defined by a feudal system of land
ownership.
The wealth structure in Britain in the 19th-century is more complicated
than in any other period. The industrial revolution in the empire generated
wealth in unprecedented quantities for large numbers of people—people farther
down the social scale than ever before.
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