Book launch of The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire (Princeton University Press, 2019).

While the nineteenth century has been described as the golden age of the European bourgeoisie, the emergence of the middle class and bourgeois culture was by no means exclusive to Europe. The Global Bourgeoisie explores the rise of the middle classes around the world during the age of empire. Bringing together eminent scholars, this landmark essay collection compares middle-class formation in various regions, highlighting differences and similarities, and assesses the extent to which bourgeois growth was tied to the increasing exchange of ideas and goods. The contributors indicate that the middle class was from its very beginning, even in Europe, the result of international connections and entanglements.

Essays are grouped into six thematic sections: the political history of middle-class formation, the impact of imperial rule on the colonial middle class, the role of capitalism, the influence of religion, the obstacles to the middle class beyond the Western and colonial world, and, lastly, reflections on the creation of bourgeois cultures and global social history. Placing the establishment of middle-class society into historical context, this book shows how the triumph or destabilization of bourgeois values can shape the liberal world order.

Panel:

Peter Burke is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at the University of Cambridge. He has published 23 books, including The Italian Renaissance (1972), Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978), The Fabrication of Louis XIV (1992), The Art of Conversation (1993), A Social History of Knowledge (2000), Eyewitnessing (2000), What is Cultural History? (2004) and Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (2004) and has been translated into 28 languages.

Catherine Hall is Professor Emerita of Modern British Social and Cultural History at UCL. Her books include Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (1987), White, Male and Middle-Class: Explorations In Feminism And History (1992), Civilising Subjects: Metropole And Colony In The English Imagination, 1830-1867 (2002), Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (2012).

Mike Savage is Martin White Professor of Sociology at LSE. Among his main publications are Urban Sociology, Capitalism and Modernity (1993), Rethinking class: culture, identities and lifestyles (1995), Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method (2010), and Social Class in the 21st Century (2015).

Response:

Jürgen Osterhammel is Professor Emeritus of Modern Hitory at the University of Konstanz. His books in English include The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (2014) and Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia (2018). In 2018, he received the Balzan Prize for Global History.

David Motadel is Associate Professor of International History at LSE. He is the author of Islam and the European Empires (2014) and Islam and Nazi Germany's War (2014). In 2018, he received the Philip Leverhulme Prize.

See pictures of the event.

Sponsored by the department's Conflict and Identity in Europe since the 18th Century and Modern World History research clusters.

The Department of International History (@lsehistory) teaches and conducts research on the international history of Britain, Europe and the world from the early modern era up to the present day.