History 1401E Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Bourgeoisie
15 Dec 2014
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A society of orders or estates : the three orders: clergy, nobility, and third estate, key principles. An acceptance of legal distinctions between people: privileges. Social structures are not static, they imply a perspective (a view and criteria put upon society and key structures) i. e. today we tend to use wealth to define class structures. Early modern european societies did not use wealth as a main criterion to determine social standing (wealth still mattered, but less-so than other characteristics) They tended to use status instead, and defined it by a combination of birth and occupation. Society was spoken of as society of orders or estates. Most people understood their societies to be made up of three estates (not everywhere, sometimes there were only two or as many as four), this is called a tripartite foundation. In most parts of europe, there was generally room for one official church.
