European Aristocracy Retains Power

With a PoD post 1814 the European aristocracy rejects Enlightenment based Liberalism & takes a much harsher line in retention of power and suppresion of warm fuzzy ideas. Does this extend the power & privilege of the aristocracy, or end it sooner in larger mid century revolutions?

Feel free to describe 19th & early 20th Century in either case.

My own take is it is possible. In part by recruiting the business and middle class into the birthright class.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
The old landholding aristocracy was for the most part overtaken by the new industrial aristocracy. And they were recruited into the birthright class (how do you think the UK got Jewish peers?), but true power was held by those with capital.

The best way to keep the old feudal class in power would be to have industrialization be state led endeavors so as to distribute resources to the ruling class. This would of course be less efficient and all encompassing, but there would be less risk of a new industrial elite developing.
 
I was wondering about the problem of the new industrial leaders gaining power through their money. I dont think the old guild system will do.

A alternative to state led endeavors would be the aristocracy forcing the industrialists into 'partnerships'. Sort of like the mafiosa becoming partners with the neighborhood merchants. Needs to be a way to control the urban labor & keep it in line. The American model Company Town might have some possibilities.
 
In order to retain their power while suppressing liberalism and egalitarianism, the aristocracy would have to invite new blood into their veins, allowing the most vigorous and intelligent (and therefore the most dangerous) of the middle class into the nobility. Otherwise the conditions such as those leading to the Russian Revolution would continue to build pressure (inbred imbeciles ignoring indigent indignant industrialists.)
 

RousseauX

Donor
The problem is that aristocratic rule has to deal with 1) the rise of the Bourgoise in the form of "new" money who outweights the traditional economic power of the nobility in the form of rural land holdings. And 2) the rise of an increasingly literate middle class and eventually working class culminating in the rise of mass politics in the late 19th-early 20th century threatens.

To forestall those you basically need to get rid of the trend of urbanization (because the nobility were always less in control in cities) and industrialization. Which sounds a lot like Russia and parts of Latin America.
 

RousseauX

Donor
My own take is it is possible. In part by recruiting the business and middle class into the birthright class.
The problem is that even if you do this the "new" nobility is going to outweigh the old because factories were much more important than farms and those two classes of nobles will have completely different interests. If you recruit the middle class too then eventually the birthright class is going to be 15-30%+ of the population which more or less corresponds to people who have voting rights in the early 1900s.
 

xsampa

Banned
Some members of the French nobility operated mines, as a quick search of Wikipedia reveals:

The rank of "noble" was forfeitable: certain activities could cause dérogeance (loss of nobility). Most commercial and manual activities were strictly prohibited, although nobles could profit from their lands by operating mines and forges.

There's always the option some nobles might decide to invest in the new industrial technology as they did with their mines, cornering out the power of the bourgeoisie. Of course, since the bourgeoisie could receive education to some extent, they would be skeptical of the nobility's right to rule, resulting in conflict.
 
I feel like nobles investing in industry or being required to be patrons to industrialists for a factory to open is the only way.
 
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