Monday, June 20, 2005

Nobility of the Image 3

Another point that the historian demands be made here is that the rise of absolutism severely crippled the sword nobility for the simple reason that kings were no longer happy having a nobility that controlled private armies running around, possibly threatening them, and in France and England, legislated against such armies. Perhaps many of these nobles would have liked to keep warring with each other, but the growth of the central government required that they lose their primary justification, martial valor, for being nobility.

However, the nobility of the sword attempted to preserve their status in the society. As I have stated above, status never really changes in a society. The rich have status by virtue of the fact that they were smart or valorous enough to be born into a rich family and the poor have no status because they were not. Status is generally tied to whatever idea the nobility is using to justify its existence this month, and its values inevitably form the core values of the society.
This really is not a particularly radical interpretation of society; simply level-headed. I would imagine that the most right-wing conservative would be willing to admit that the rich stay rich, and the poor stay poor, for the most part. Quite boring really.

At any rate, this emphasis on descent and bloodlines eventually forms into basic racism. One bloodline is destined to rule and the other is destined to serve and never the twain shall have drinks together. Of course, these races are virtually indistinguishable, but it’s worth noting that race is the justification, flimsy though it might be, and not the first principle.

All of these debates were taking place in Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and so it is not surprising that “blood” becomes the justification for colonial expansion. One race is destined to rule and the other to serve. There is no better example of how nobility works than the American plantation economy. We have a planter class who is dominant for simple economic reasons and a slave class that is enslaved for even simpler economic reasons and the justification for this, racism, forms one of the core values of the society for the simple reason that everyone wants to become the master and nobody aspires to be the slave.

So, the general pattern seems to be that the economy shapes how the nobility becomes noble or stays noble. Their justifications change for various reasons, but often it seems to be in relation to very real economic shifts. Perhaps the American planters would have justified their existence based on valor if their economy was still growing via plunder. However, its economic existence relied on slavery, and so the justification was essentially racist.

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