Comment by rayiner
1 day ago
I don’t think that’s a helpful explanation. This period was the age of empires. Why were the Victorian elites so much more successful at it than their counterparts?
1 day ago
I don’t think that’s a helpful explanation. This period was the age of empires. Why were the Victorian elites so much more successful at it than their counterparts?
One way of thinking about it, the success of the elite (meaning the aristocracy) may be separate from the success of the empire. Most of the work behind the latter was done by the industrial bourgeoisie, engineers, workers, colonized people, etc., so the question is, how big a direct impact did the elite have on the empire? How successful they were individually is a different question.
In most corporations, most of the work is not done by the CEO. Yet a good or bad CEO can still have a big impact.
True, but not universally, depending on whether they are involved day-to-day management or just acting as a public face to the org. Of course there's always just being in the right place at the right time. So I think it's worth looking at the specific decisions, policies, culture, etc.
This whole article is not about the aristocracy.
I guess the author doesn't cleanly define "elite", but it does lean heavy on the upper-class, and the depiction of social life seems to suggest that as well. But I guess during that period the makeup of upper-class shifted a bit from entirely aristocrats / nobility to include others too
They had a more technologically advanced society than anyone else at the time, which enabled their empire building.
The Industrial Revolution started in England, which gave them a technological leg up on everyone else, somewhat like playing a strategy game where you get to unlock certain techs before everyone else. If you have factories producing steamships while your opponents are still building sailboats by hand, you're probably going to win a naval conflict, which you can then use to start a colony.