A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

The Middle Classes 533

The family concert.

Diversity of the Middle Classes

The middle class expanded in size and diversity amid the ongoing economic
transformation of Europe. It included all people who neither held noble title
nor were workers or peasants depending on manual labor for economic sur­
vival. The terms “bourgeois” and “burghers” had first emerged in the Middle
Ages to refer to residents of towns like Liibeck, Bremen, and Hamburg that
enjoyed specific rights (such as immunity from some kinds of taxation) or
even independence granted by territorial rulers. By the nineteenth century,
the middle class made up roughly 15 to 25 percent of the total population in
Western Europe but a far smaller percentage in Sweden, Eastern Europe,
and the Balkans. The Russian middle class at the beginning of the century
accounted for no more than about 2 percent of the population, including
some intellectuals and Orthodox priests.
The nineteenth-century middle class encompassed a great range of eco­
nomic situations, occupations, education levels, and expectations. It can be
imagined as a social pyramid, topped by a small group of well-connected
banking families, industrial magnates, and the wealthiest wholesale mer­
chants, as well as a few top government ministers and ambassadors. Below
this extremely wealthy group came lawyers and notaries (both part of what
became known as “the liberal professions”) and families drawing more mod­
est incomes from businesses, rental properties, and lucrative government
posts. In general it required some resources, connections, and access to
credit to make money. Four out of five Berlin entrepreneurs were the sons