What war consider as middle class during 18th century
Answers
Answer:
For centuries the aristocracy had been the most powerful section of British society. But from the last quarter of the 18th century, the middle classes began to grow in power and confidence. Land was no longer the only source of wealth. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, it was now possible to make a fortune from manufacturing and trading goods. There were all sorts of new professional, technical and clerical roles that required a high degree of education and training. The number of people who counted as middle class began to swell, and men became defined by their jobs rather than their family background. In 1840 the graphic artist George Cruikshank produced a caricature entitled ‘The British Beehive’ which showed English society divided up by class and occupation, with the royal family at the top of the hierarchy, a broad middle section including booksellers, mechanics, weavers, jewellers, glaziers, tea dealers and inventors; and at the bottom the cabmen, shoeblacks, coalheavers, sweeps and dustmen. By using the image of the Beehive, with its rigidly organized layers, Cruikshank was celebrating the class divisions at work in British society and also depicting them as natural and unchanging.Up and down the country middle-class men managed factories, traded stock, wrote in ledgers, oversaw building sites, and sparred in the law courts. They made their fortunes and tested their metal by competing with their colleagues. Even before Charles Darwin’s ideas about natural selection started to circulate in the 1860s, the middle classes understood that life was essentially one long competition.