The term bourgeois originated in medieval France, where it denoted an inhabitant of a walled town. Its overtones became important in the 18th century, when the middle class of professionals, manufacturers, and their literary and political allies began to demand an influence in politics consistent with their economic status. Marx was one of many thinkers who treated the French Revolution as a revolution of the bourgeois.
Source: Britannica
I was in an art gallery and so confused about the use of the term with respect to art contemporary to the French Revolution. So I looked it up lol
Historically the assholes who laid claim to high value land and defended it with walls, cutting out all the nomads and tribes that still depended on those areas for their yearly season cycle.
Oh, so was it derived from “burgher?”
Well spotted! Looks like it’s very closely related.
bourgeois(adj.) 1560s, “of or pertaining to the French middle class,” from French bourgeois, from Old French burgeis, borjois “town dweller” (as distinct from “peasant”), from borc “town, village,” from Frankish *burg “city” (via Germanic from PIE root *bhergh- (2) “high,” with derivatives referring to hills and hill-forts).
burgher(n.) 1560s, “freeman of a burgh,” from Middle Dutch burgher or German Bürger, from Middle High German burger, from Old High German burgari, literally “inhabitant of a fortress,” from burg “fortress, citadel” (from PIE root *bhergh- (2) “high,” with derivatives referring to hills and hill-forts). Burgh, as a native variant of borough, persists in Scottish English (as in Edinburgh) and in Pittsburgh.
What was life like if you were a lowly serf living outside the walls of these cities when they got besieged?
I’m sure if you had crops those were getting used to feed the invaders, but like, would they just kill you?
Did they ever go “okay Todd, you’re poor, you shared your cabbages, you live outside the walls in squalor, mind just ignoring us and we’ll let ye be?”
Edit: crops not cross
I did a little searching and found a website that had all sorts of interesting info, but didn’t dig into sources/validity etc. Apparently:
- sometimes commoners would be recruited into joining the siege
- it was common to plunder the countryside to starve the city
- sometimes commoners got compensation for being plundered or harmed.
Todd would run into the woods, probably a day or so b4 invaders come. Hide his valuables. Most armies were just poor suckers who would pull a few teeth for Todds stash. Even friendly armies would ravage their fellows landscape.
Depends on the invaders and their goals, sadly.
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“Citizen” (from “city”) has a similar origin, and used to refer to those living in a city in a way recognized by the city authorities, i.e. the burghers (bourgeois). In the early modern period, there was a caste system which included citizens, peasants, clergy and nobility, which little possibility for social mobility between castes. Eventually, the castes gradually disappeared and fused together in just a single “citizens” caste, albeit today with a new caste of “non-citizens.”
Some historians argue that revolutions and changes typically come from the middle class.
It makes a lot of sense and is applicable today. Many of the people consistently hurt are poor uneducated rural individuals. Who’ve been conditioned to hate the educated and vulnerable minorities. Most of the people calling for specific change and revolution. Are disproportionately college educated, and typically at least from families that were better off financially.
If you’re constantly having to work and struggle just to not fall further down. You don’t have a lot of time to look around or even think about anything else. That’s part of what’s kept people so trapped in the system. Just trying to keep up and not fall out of it. It’s why they try to keep unemployment low but under employment high. And make all the welfare programs they cannot abolish as much work as possible to use. Unemployed starving people turn violent very fast and rightfully so. They are starting to rapid fire into their feet at this moment though. Planning on AI replacing everyone. They are also banking on having robot bodyguards sooner rather than later that won’t turn on them. But I don’t think even that will save them.
I notice it on my parents. Even though they largely grew up poor, my mom’s family is rural and little less well off, while my father’s family is lower middle class who owned a business in a small town. My mom is quite broad minded but she has a typical conservative mindset to just “just keep your head down. Do what you’re told and no questions asked”. Or worse, bury the head in the ground and pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, my dad is more on the left and more knowledgeable because he is a wide reader than my mom. He encouraged my siblings and I to pursue more varied interests and he voices more political thoughts than my mom. She has a more tunnel vision of life than my father, because struggle and work is what mom had known more. Whereas, my father probably had more time to think because some financial cushion enabled him to pursue other interest without being distracted by constant anxiety of poverty, which my mom had experienced more.
I would be interested in hearing more about this thought if you would like to share. (Or clarification if this is in agreement with the quoted text, contrary to it, or independent?)
It was a short video from a historian on social media which I saw it from so I’m afraid I can’t find it anymore. But now that I think about it, it is possible that they themselves are inspired from Marx’s views.
Thanks for responding and for taking a look for it.
For what it’s worth my understanding is that in Marx’s time the term middle class applied to the people he called bourgeoisie because they were in the middle between aristocrats and peasants. Aristocrats made money from their land (taxes, rent, tributes, etc), peasants were either serfs/sustenance farmers and the middle class made their money from capital.
As the industrial revolution progressed more of the bourgeoisie made money directly from the labour of others and the peasant class was replaced by the proletariat as they shifted to wage labour from serfdom.
So I don’t think saying the French Revolution was a revolution of the bourgeoisie is different than saying it was a revolution of the middle class, at least using the word as it was used at the time.
I think I could have guessed it originated in France
