Aristocrats have more influence now than 150 years ago, research claims
Aristocrats have more influence on society today than 150 years ago, new research has suggested.
Hereditary peers are now almost three hundred times more likely than the wider British population to be listed in a reference book that records the lives of influential figures.
It has cast doubt on the popular impression that aristocrats are a relic of the past with little tangible impact on 21st century Britain.
The study focused on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a prestigious record of more than 60,000 posthumous biographies of “significant, influential or notorious figures who shaped British history”.
Researchers counted the rate of hereditary peers being included in the book after their death compared to the total number of aristocrats who have died, versus the rate for the British public as a whole.
They found that in the decade to 2018, one in eight of the 224 aristocrats who died in this period were added to the reference book, compared to one in 2,343 of the more than six million non-aristocratic Britons aged over 35 who died in this time. This offset the high amount of child deaths in the 19th century.
This meant that aristocrats were 292 times more likely than the public to feature in the reference book.
By comparison, between 1858 and 1867 – at the height of the Victorian era when many would think the nobility had far more sway than today – aristocrats were only 221 times more likely to be added to the guide.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has traditionally been an important indicator of influence within British society, as aristocrats earned their entries by their actions and were not automatically included.
Dr Julien Morton, who co-led the study from London South Bank University, said it was “common currency amongst historians and the wider public that the British aristocracy are a fallen group whose wealth, power and status have diminished so substantially that they have become entirely marginal to British life.”
Aritocracy’s ‘relative advantage’
But he told the British Sociological Association’s online annual conference that, in fact, “the British aristocracy have seen an increase in their relative advantage compared to the UK population”.
He added: “There are no real attempts to measure status of elite groups over time by historians, and so the use of something like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography becomes particularly powerful and important. There is a higher bar of entry for the dictionary, higher than for Who’s Who, where, for example, aristocrats are automatically included.”
The current edition of the dictionary, published by Oxford University Press, runs to more than 72 million words. It is edited by the distinguished historian Prof Sir David Cannadine, working with more than 50 expert editors and more than 400 external advisers.
In their analysis, the researchers discounted those aristocrats who were the first in their line to be entered into the dictionary, as this was likely for achievements prior to becoming a member of the hereditary aristocracy, meaning they would not have benefited as much from the status the title brought.
Dr Matthew Bond, who also carried out the study, said: “What can explain these results? It could be the aristocrats’ historical closeness to political power. It could be that they are using connections to old boys’ networks.
“It could be that the hereditary aristocracy pulled back from out-and-out fights with the forces of democracy after the early 20th century, and instead concentrated on less visible forms of power such as wealth and status.”
