Why were Victorian elites so effective?

jimbo456

Insane that this whole thing never mentions once the legions of servants who did their laundry, cooked their food, poured their Port and generally did all the work.

simonw

> Academic life was dominated by Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek. The exact share varied, but the classical languages took up generally at least half of teaching hours, and sometimes as much as 80 percent, especially earlier in the century. That's so weird to me. How did that tradition hold on for so long? Where did it come from? Who thought that was a good idea ?

martythemaniak

They got nothing on American Elites - the current regime is packed to the gills with TV personalities who are incapable of actually doing their nominal jobs, yet they've all done extremely well for themselves. This article really should not be surprising - the elite go to school to learn to rule - to socialize and develop networks of trust. Doing stuff is for the class below (PMC in today's terms).

cafebeen

Seems like an accurate picture of the Victorian elite, but it sounds like they were optimized for rent-seeking from an economy and an empire that others built and worked. That was success "on their own terms," as the article puts it, but not something to emulate.

anonymous908213

Completely faulty premise. The British Empire was already globally dominant before the Victorian era. You cannot attribute success nor failure to something that came after the fact; I suppose the Victorian elites were not time travelers. That the Empire has since collapsed does not give an especially strong vote of confidence in their stewardship, however. Moreover, the article presupposes the notion that STEM is associated with "success", but it has never been associated with the elite in any capacity. Generously, STEM might be considered elite for a peasant. Let us not forget who the current US president is, or the general makeup of both the American and British political systems. Hint: it's not composed of scientists and engineers.

Razengan

Something I've always wondered: What keeps the guards and thugs of the ""elite"" from just killing the elite and taking their money and position? The boss usually doesn't have any actual physical strength (unless maybe you're Genghis Khan or something) Imagine 2000 years ago: A merchant prepares a caravan of goods to trek across the wilderness to a far-off settlement. He hires some guards. He sells the goods and pays off the guards a portion of the profits. What keeps the guards from taking all the profit? Or a landlord hires some goons to go beat up a tenant for not paying rent on time. Why don't the goons beat up the landlord and take the income from ALL his properties? Or, after a miserly old oligarch pays off his bodyguards a few times, they'll eventually learn where he keeps all his money. What keeps them from torturing him to give it all to them? Why didn't Bronn just stomp Tyrion Lannister? He could literally SEE the chest where Tyrion kept all the gold! Why walk around with him and risk getting injured or slain?

graemep

I would say that being sexually abused by older boys (which what the male relationships at schools largely were) was in any way healthy of helpful to anyone. I think its possible that humanities based education made for efficient administrators.

tsunamifury

Those who automatically gain leverage of information network, rent seeking, and labor superiority are able to use immense leasure time to better process directional changes. This isnt' automatically true, many Victorian elites went bankrupt, but it is true for some. What the protestant work ethic is either wrong or intentionally dishonest about, is hard work may inform you of the technicalities of labor, but it rarely gives you the time, enenrgy or education to understand its organizational effeciencies or opportunties. This is incredibly timely as we have stories and visual evidence of our current oligarchs clearly high on drugs, drunk, or generally indifferent in a leaisure way to the serious science of running our society and business, yet seem to continually get the upper hand in doing it. Ask yourself ... why?

yubblegum

(Modulo d'oh because of the industrial revolution and the relatively easy wealth extraction that that enabled;) because the British public had internalized (I would venture to this day) the distinction between upstairs and downstairs and did not present a revolutionary risk to the elite. This then allowed the wise decision of the elite to permit social mobility to those who would work to further the broader cause of the Empire, in all domains including sciences. This is likely a very goldilock moment for any civilization: higher valuation of reason over dogma; a techological and economic production jump that enabled a categorical raising of one nation over many others; a mass population that did not think less of its 'betters' because they were slothful extravagents (as long as they 'acted' superior); and finally the creation of a productive and resourceful middle class that was satisfied to help in the administration and operation of an enterprise that was deemed a national cause: the empire.

ford

I think that extreme prosperity like this (another example - Baby Boomers in the US) is a lagging indicator of geopolitical/industrial power. Britain was prosperous in the 1800s because of colonialism and the industrial revolution. The US was prosperous in the second half of the 1900's because they capitalized on not being decimated by WW2. IMO Britain's success in this era was actually sustained prosperity driven by the working class, and the failure to maintain global leadership followed from the victorian attitude of the elite.

pipes

What a fantastic read. An interesting perspective on schooling. I've been thinking a lot lately if booze is actually a useful thing, it seems the Victorians saw that it is.

59percentmore

On the last supposition: they've managed something better for themselves, which is an order where they have substantial control over public policy without being subject to the full brunt of public inquiry or responsibility. You would have to force Sam Altman to run for office; Oprah famously laughs when questioned about pursuing the presidency.

iberator

Slavery and Imperialism money.

Archelaos

The answer is easy: The others did the work. Until the party was over and the money spent. The more interesting question is: why has so much from the Victorian era survived in Britain to this day, whilst it disappeared in most other countries?

InexSquirrel

Personal gripe - but I absolutely despise the term 'elites'. The emotive implication is always that there is a group of people that are just categorically better than everyone else, but on closer examination you find an equally (if not more so) flawed group of people which exhibit some of the worst traits and characteristics towards their fellow humans. Beyond their ability to extract money from anyone around them, I fail to see what is 'elite' about the group of people we currently assign the same classification to. I'm probably just salty that I'm not rich, is all...

jan_m_savage

"Oxbridge tutors believed overwhelmingly that the purpose of an undergraduate degree was not training for work nor even preparation for academic research, but rather a general moral and intellectual formation that would fit students for any professional role they might later pursue." This is what the Japanese are still doing; the top companies seek out top achievers regardless of the major, and then employ them, and teach them the things the employee lacks inside the company.

robotresearcher

I think part of the story is the competent Civil Service that deployed the newly created educated middle class. This competent machinery, and very firm social norms in place, the toffs (aristocracy) could delegate a lot of managerial work in addition to the labor they’d delegated for centuries.

Onavo

The modern elite education doesn't seem that different. If you ignore the weird Bay Area tech bro invented prep schools, your tech elites are mostly from the same few institutions. Forget about Eton, the Phillips Exeter to Ivy pipeline is pretty strong. If you look at the high school backgrounds of the Silicon Valley top founders, they are all mostly cut from the same cloth regardless of how "middle class" they all try to pretend to be.

NordStreamYacht

Old boys club.

smath

This has it backwards. The Victorian elite had a high standard of life because they had an empire that funded their decadent lifestyle - at the expense of their colonies! They were cushioned from negative consequences of their be debaucherous lifestyle. Such macro effects exist today as well, in certain countries, that enjoy exorbitant privileges. A focus on STEM is how a up and coming nation builds itself — innovation, and making something the world wants, rather than subjugation or rent seeking.