I found this here at Today in Social Sciences. It simplifies some things, of course. You have at first the “feudal lords” who fight with the “serfs and peasants.” That conflict gives you a winner: “city life.”

Then those who enjoy “city life” clash with the “guilds.” That results in a new group of victors: “entrepreneurs” who in turn then end up fighting with the “proletariat” and then we finally get the final outcome: “communism.”

That’s a whole lot of simplification of Marx even accounting for the fact that the image was made for an undergraduate course called “Cultural and Institutional History of Modern Europe.” I’m not criticizing a professor’s choices, but merely pointing out that there are multiple ways to communicate the essence of Marx’s ideas about history to a somewhat apathetic young student population. And that it’s easy to fudge things.

To wit: what is interesting here is the way two of the categories are chronologically positioned: the “City life” people come first, and then the “Entrepreneurs.” Yet, as should be obvious, there’s (a) a lot of overlap between the two and (b) there’s nary a mention of the bourgeoisie here. As my esteemed colleague has been ably chronicling here and here, it is almost impossible to separate the notion of “City life” from definitions of the “bourgeoisie.” In fact, conceiving one is impossible without the other.

My point here? Teaching Marx (even to apathetic teenagers) demands some care in definitions.

Sketch by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath (1791), which marked the emancipation of the French bourgeoisie, or the Third Estate, from the Estates-General.

Urban charters had grown out of collective efforts to sustain collective responsibility in the medieval town. Even though urban administrators were elected to their positions, medieval towns were not centers for democracy or equality. Quite the opposite, in fact. The medieval town was ruled by an urban oligarchy. A burgher was “elected,” or chosen, by his fellow burghers to serve at his administrative post. Prosperous merchants had the most to gain from charters, as it was they who controlled their towns’ governments. Generation after generation they looked out for themselves and their economic interests.

Did the development of urban charters and laws contribute to the bourgeoisie’s achieving class consciousness in the Middle Ages?

I would argue that establishing the customs of the towns—which emphasized the rights, privileges, and liberties of the medieval bourgeoisie— was a crucial process that set the bourgeoisie apart from both their seigniorial lords and the rural peasantry.

Sheila Delany provides a succinct overview of the reasons for which the medieval bourgeoisie began to claim for themselves specific legal freedoms and privileges, which she rather brilliantly connects to the bourgeois revolutions that marked the end of a bloody 18th century:

From the start the medieval bourgeoisie were in competition with feudal lords. They competed first for labour-power, for they required a pool of free workers and artisans to produce what they would sell. Free, that is, from feudal ties, free to move where they were needed, free to work when they were needed, and free from property. To this end most town charters guaranteed freedom to any serf who lived peacefully in the town for a year and a day…But the bourgeois himself, whether merchant, employer or financier, also required freedom from domination by lay and ecclesiastical lords. He wanted freedom to trade unimpeded and travel safely, freedom to hire and release employees, to raise or lower prices, wages or interest, to accumulate a fortune, marry a noblewoman or purchase an estate. The political privileges granted to the urban bourgeoisie were known as ‘liberties.’ Indeed the notion of ‘liberty’ was the distinctive contribution to European thought of the bourgeoisie breaking free of feudal bonds; it culminated in the slogans of French and American bourgeois revolutionaries of the 18th century.

I emphasize the last point of this passage to highlight the continuing relevance of the medieval bourgeoisie to our modern political discourse. Our modern conceptions of liberty and freedoms were derived, at least partly, from definitions that the medieval bourgeoisie had begun to codify in urban charters so that they could adequately protect and defend their economic interests.

frenchhistory:

Nicolas de LARGILLIERRE
Paris, 1656 - Paris, 1746

Le prévôt des marchands et les échevins de la ville de Paris
1689

@credits

The Provost of Merchants (prévôt des marchands), or Dean of Guild, headed the burgh council and the burgh’s merchant company

The merchant bourgeoisie painted in all of their glory. The rise of bourgeoisie as the dominant class in modern Europe has its origins with the development of a new class of merchant elites and their ability to exercise political power in their cities and towns. Because they were the first capitalists and thus the richest members of their urban communities, becoming part of the merchant elite afforded one with a whole host of opportunities. For example, holding political office (such as being part of the burgh council, as mentioned above) was contingent upon one’s membership to the merchant guild.

Detail from the frontispiece to De Regimine Principum by Giles of Rome (c. 1243-1316), Bibliothèque nationale de France

See part one here on the origins of the bourgeoisie.

Town members made considerable investments in the fortifications of the town, for whose upkeep they must have collected financial resources. Thus, urban governments and book-keeping were first developed for safeguarding the community.

Some fortified areas, or burgs, eventually became towns, for by the 12^th century a borough was a town or city, inhabited by burghers or burgesses, who will become to be known as the bourgeoisie. Even today, the association lingers in such places as Edinburgh in Scotland, Hamburg in Germany, and— to use U.S. city as an example— Pittsburgh!

Townspeople were initially subject to the tolls and taxes levied by the noble, bishop, or monastery within whose territory their town lay. But, at an early date, the town’s wealthiest inhabitants, primarily those who made their living by trade (the merchants), began to band together to oppose these taxes and to agitate for privileges essential to their calling: freedom from servile dues; freedom of movement; freedom from having to pay inordinate tolls at every bridge or castle; freedom to hold property without any feudal or manorial services; and freedom for legal self-management.

By the 12^th century townspeople began to obtain charters that guaranteed many or all of these privileges. The agitation for urban autonomy was so widespread that historians have labeled this phenomenon the communal movement of 12^th-century Europe. In effect, each charter issued to the bourgeoisie of each town helped them carve out semi-autonomous political and legal entities— called communes in many parts of Europe— which had their own local government, courts, tax-collecting agencies, and legal customs (which will be the subject of the next post in this series on the medieval bourgeoisie).

By W. Simpson, “Life in Philadelphia,” published May 1829.

Dialogue in image:

Fashionably-attired African-American woman
”Have you any flesh-coloured silk stockings, young man?”
French shop-attendant
“Oui, Madame! Here is von pair of de first qualité.”
[Meaning: “Yes ma’am, here is a pair which is of the highest quality.”]

The basic message of this cartoon sketch is that it would be absurd for a person of color to belong to American high society (check out the woman’s exaggerated costume). The very concept of a “black bourgeoisie” would have been absurd to many white Americans during this time.

So, my question to all of you: Does this sketch betray more of a ‘classist’ attitude on the part of the artist (rather than merely a racist one?) Or are class and race, as categories of social identities, entirely too interconnected that one can never quite disentangle them?

Woodcut Print of Medieval Town from the Liber Chronicarum (Compiled by Hartmann Schedel [c. 1493])

bourgeoisie
1707, “body of freemen in a French town; the French middle class,” from Fr. bourgeois, from O.Fr. burgeis, borjois (12c.) “town dweller” (as distinct from “peasant”), from borc “town, village,” from Frank. *burg “city” (see borough).  Communist use for “the capitalist class generally” attested from 1886.  

The bourgeoisie began as, and largely remained, an urban class in the Middle Ages. One must understand the origins of the bourgeoisie in the context of urban development. Even though the medieval bourgeoisie were lumped in with peasants as “those who work” (the other two socio-economic groups in this tripartite order being “those who pray,” the clergy, and “those who fight,” the knights and nobles) they were, of course, distinct from their rural counterparts. The driving force of the rural, peasant economy was agriculture—and, indeed, peasants represented, according to some estimations, over 90% of the medieval population.

The Three Orders: Cleric, Knight, and Workman [Image from the British Library MS Sloane 2435,  f.85.]

Agricultural surpluses can stimulate population growth and, most importantly, migration from the countryside to the town. Indeed, a town is at first distinct from the village because the urban economy relies on trade and manufacturing, not agriculture. Once a population can eat without having to rely on themselves for actually producing the food, then they can engage in other activities that do not involve farming.

So what sort of labor did townspeople do in the Middle Ages? Watch this space for more entries on this topic.