Rentiers, Farmers and Financiers

Abstract

The period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries saw the culmination of many of the trends traced in the previous chapter. The magnates and the gentry were forged into a unified class of landed rentiers which made itself the dominant economic and social force in the country. Together with a class of active capitalist farmers, the landed class revolutionised the countryside, both economically and physically. In the sphere of commerce, the haute bourgeoisie split off from the rest of the merchant community and became the core of a commercial class centred on London, but with offshoots in a number of provincial cities. As allies of the dominant fraction of landowners, the financial fraction of this commercial class monopolised the exercise of political power. But this was not simply a smooth process of evolution. Two major political revolutions punctuated the period — three revolutions if the American war of independence is included — and it was only through the means of these revolutions that the state and the economy were so thoroughly modernised.