England’s nobility absorbed bourgeois functions to preserve the ruling system

Evidence

E. P. Thompson first used the term “brigandage” to describe this phenomenon. In 1965, while describing power in England as it assumed form in the second half of the eighteenth century, he wrote: “It should be seen less as government by an aristocracy … than as a parasitism—a racket, which the King himself could not break into except by becoming the croupier. It was not wholly a parasitism: the business of the nation had to be carried on, from time to time the ‘independent’ gentry—and their representatives in parliament—had to be appeased, there were even occasions (although one after another these are called into question as the disciples of Namier break into the archives of the last of the great mafiosi) when the interests of the nation or the class, rather than the family or faction, were consulted. Nor was it only a parasitism: being conducted upon so gigantic a scale, from bases in private and public wealth of such magnitude, and commanding influence which reached, by the most direct means, into the army, the navy, the chartered companies, the Church, the Law, it was bound to congeal into something that looks almost like an estate; to surround itself in a cocoon of ideological apologetics; and to nourish a style of life, of conspicuous—indeed, spectacular—consumption which is associated with a true aristocracy.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1972 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

E. P. Thompson first used the term “brigandage” to describe this phenomenon. In 1965, while describing power in England as it assumed form in the second half of the eighteenth century, he wrote: “It should be seen less as government by an aristocracy … than as a parasitism—a racket, which the King himself could not break into except by becoming the croupier. … Nor was it only a parasitism: being conducted upon so gigantic a scale, from bases in private and public wealth of such magnitude, and commanding influence which reached, by the most direct means, into the army, the navy, the chartered companies, the Church, the Law, it was bound to congeal into something that looks almost like an estate; to surround itself in a cocoon of ideological apologetics; and to nourish a style of life, of conspicuous—indeed, spectacular—consumption which is associated with a true aristocracy.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1972 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Colonial racism was a major element in that conception of ‘Empire’ which attempted to weld dynastic legitimacy and national community. It did so by generalizing a principle of innate, inherited superiority on which its own domestic position was (however shakily) based to the vastness of the overseas possessions, covertly (or not so covertly) conveying the idea that if, say, English lords were naturally superior to other Englishmen, no matter: these other Englishmen were no less superior to the subjected natives. Indeed one is tempted to argue that the existence of late colonial empires even served to shore up domestic aristocratic bastions, since they appeared to confirm on a global, modern stage antique conceptions of power and privilege. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bourgeoisie rule can hide behind the facade of old aristocratic classes; Bourgeois rule absorbs and assimilates society, unlike closed-caste prior ruling classes; Eighteenth-century English ruling power operated as a parasitical racket — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1972 (+8 more)

Related

• Eighteenth-century English state power functioned as aristocratic parasitism (similarity 0.89)
• Eighteenth-century English ruling power operated as a parasitical racket (similarity 0.88)
• Across nineteenth-century Europe the bourgeoisie integrated into aristocratic regimes rather than overturning them (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Eighteenth-century English ruling power operated as a parasitical racket #corroborates (0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1972
• Eighteenth-century English state power functioned as aristocratic parasitism #corroborates (0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1972
• Eighteenth-century English parties’ shared aristocratic pact blunted genuine conflict #corroborates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 309
• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule #expands (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571
• European absolute monarchies emerged from the suppression of feudal nobility #complicates (0.75) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2042
• Race-thinking supplied a natural aristocracy to replace the feudal nobility #contradicts (0.75)