11.1: Prelude to The Society of Orders

The 18th Century witnessed the end of absolute monarchical power, the aristocratic control of society in Europe, and the early modern period. Industrialism and revolution would mark the next phase of the modern period. Ironically, the enormous changes that happened were totally unanticipated at the time. No one, even the most radical political philosopher, believed that the political order or the basic technological level of their society would be fundamentally changed.

In 1781, philosopher and writer, Louis-Sébastien Mercier, published The Painting of Paris, which depicted a more orderly and perfect French society, where an enlightened king oversees a rationally-governed society and extends personal audiences to his subjects. The streets are clean, orderly, well-lit, and (unlike the Paris of his day) houses are numbered. Religious differences are calmly discussed and never result in violence. Strangely, there is no new technology to speak of, and the political and social order remains intact: a king, nobility, clergy, and commoners occupy their respective places in society - they simply interact more “rationally.”

The Painting of Paris was an idealized version of Mercier’s contemporary society. With the exception of Britain’s constitutional monarchy and strong parliament, the monarchs of the major states of Europe succeeded in controlling governments that were at least “absolutist” in their pretensions, even though the nobility and local assemblies had a great deal of real power almost everywhere. In turn, the social orders were starkly divided, by wealth, law, and custom. This set of divisions was summarized in the system of “Estates” in France, the societal descendants of “those who pray, those who fight, and those who work” in the Middle Ages.

Figure 11.0.1: A late-medieval portrayal of the three orders or estates. A reasonably accurate take on social divisions in the Middle Ages, but one that was increasingly out of date by the 18th Century.

The First Estate, consisting of the clergy, oversaw the churches, education, enormous tracts of land held by the church and the monasteries, orders like the Jesuits and Benedictines, while holding great influence in royal government. In Protestant lands, the equivalent was in the form of the official Lutheran or Anglican churches. However, the political power of the clergy in Protestant countries was generally weaker than the Roman Church in Catholic countries.

The Second Estate, the nobility, was divided into the elite with hereditary lordships of various kinds (Dukes, Counts, etc.) and a larger group of lesser nobles who owned land but were not necessarily very wealthy. In Britain, the latter was called the gentry and controlled the House of Commons in parliament. Meanwhile, the House of Lords was occupied by the “peers of the realm,” the elite families of nobles often descended from the ancient Normans. Generally, as a whole, the nobility represented no more than 4% of the overall population. Exceptions could be found in Poland and Hungary, which had large numbers of nobles, most of whom were scarcely wealthier than peasants.

The Third Estate was everyone else, from rich bankers and merchants without titles down to the destitute urban poor and landless peasant laborers. During the Middle Ages, the Third Estate was represented by wealthy elites from the cities and large towns. Despite being the majority of the population, the peasantry enjoyed no representation. By the 18th Century, the Third Estate was far more diverse, dynamic, and educated, though still had little political representation. As the century went on, a growing number of members of the Third Estate, especially those influenced by Enlightenment thought, came to chafe at a political order that remained resolutely medieval in its basic structure.

Composition of the Three Estates in 18th Century France