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Nobility is a social class that possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than most other classes in a society, membership thereof typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be largely honorary (e.g. precedence), and vary from country to country and era to era. Historically, membership of the nobility and the prerogatives thereof have been regulated or acknowledged by the monarch or government, thereby distinguishing it from other sectors of a nation's upper class. Nonetheless, nobility per se has rarely constituted a closed caste; acquisition of sufficient power, wealth, military prowess or royal favour has, occasionally or often, enabled commoners to ascend into the nobility.

There is often a variety of ranks within the noble class. Legal recognition of nobility has been more common in monarchies, but nobility also existed in such republics as the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), the Republic of Genoa (1005–1815) and the Republic of Venice (697–1797), and remains part of the legal social structure of some non-hereditary regimes, e.g. San Marino and the Vatican City in Europe. Hereditary titles often distinguish nobles from non-nobles, although in many nations most of the nobility have been un-titled, and a hereditary title need not indicate nobility (e.g., baronet).


Nobility offered protection in exchange for service


In modern usage, "nobility" is applied to the highest social class in pre-modern societies. In the feudal system (in Europe and elsewhere), the nobility were generally those who held a fief, often land or office, under vassalage, i.e., in exchange for allegiance and various, mainly military, services to a suzerain, who might be a monarch or a higher-ranking nobleman. It rapidly came to be seen as a hereditary caste, sometimes associated with a right to bear a hereditary title and, for example in pre-revolutionary France, enjoying fiscal and other privileges.





French aristocrats, c. 1774

Noble privileges[edit]

A symbolic image of three orders of feudal society in Europe in late 18th century: The rural third estate carrying the clergy and the nobility.







In France, a seigneury (lordship) might include one or more manors surrounded by land and villages subject to the noble's prerogatives and disposition. Seigneuries could be bought, sold or mortgaged. But if erected by the crown into, e.g. a barony or countship, it became legally entailed for a specific family, who could use it as their title (although most nobles were untitled: "seigneur of Montagne" meant ownership of that lordship but not, if one was not otherwise noble, the right to use its associated title). However, any French noble who bought a countship was allowed, ipso facto, to style himself as its comte.

By contrast, in the United Kingdom royal letters patent were necessary to take a noble title, which also carried a seat in the House of Lords, but came with no automatic entail nor rights to the local peasants' output.

European nobility[edit]

Russian boyars




However, in many countries at this time, the nobility retained substantial political importance and social influence: for instance, the United Kingdom's government was dominated by the nobility until the middle of the 19th century. Thereafter the powers of the nobility were progressively reduced by legislation. However, until 1999, all hereditary peers were entitled to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Since then, a reduction has been undertaken, whereby 92 sit, with 90 being elected by other hereditary peers to represent the peerage.


In the Kingdom of Hungary nobles made up 5% of the population. On the frontiers of Europe, western and eastern alike, ongoing warfare against ethnic outsiders – Turks and Tatars in eastern Europe, Moors (until 1492) in Spain – gave large numbers of new men access to higher status; and the booty of conquest provided the material bases for their advancement.[6] All the nobles in 18th-century Europe numbered perhaps 3–4 million out of a total of 170–190 million inhabitants.[7][8]

Rank within the nobility[edit]

Polish magnates 1576-1586
Polish magnates 1697-1795

Nobility might be either inherited or conferred by a fons honorum. In its broadest manifestation and strictest sense nobility is an acknowledged preeminence that is hereditary, i.e. the status descends exclusively to some or all of the legitimate, and usually male-line, descendants of a nobleman. In this respect, the nobility as a class has always been much more extensive than the primogeniture-based titled nobility, which included peerages in France and in the United Kingdom, grandezas in Portugal and Spain, and some noble titles in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Prussia and Scandinavia. In Russia and non-Prussian Germany, titles usually descended to all male-line descendants of the original titleholder, including females. In Spain, noble titles are now equally heritable by females and males. Noble estates, on the other hand, usually descended by male primogeniture in Central, Western and Northern Europe. In Eastern Europe, by contrast, with the exception of Poland and a few Hungarian estates, they usually descended to all sons or even all children[9]

In France, some wealthy bourgeois, most particularly the members of the various parlements, were ennobled by the king, constituting the noblesse de robe. The old nobility of landed or knightly origin, the noblesse d'épée, increasingly resented the influence and pretensions of this parvenu nobility. In the last years of the ancien régime the old nobility pushed for restrictions of certain offices and orders of chivalry to noblemen who could demonstrate that their lineage had sufficient "quarterings", i.e. noble ancestry (matrilineal as well as patrilineal), to deserve to compete as equals with nobles of medieval descent for offices and favors at court, (although historians such as William Doyle have disputed this so-called "Aristocratic Reaction").[10] Various court and military positions were reserved by tradition for nobles who could "prove" an ancestry of at least seize quartiers (16 quarterings), indicating exclusively noble descent (as displayed, ideally, in the family's coat of arms) extending back five generations (all 16 great-great grandparents).


This illustrates the traditional link in many countries between heraldry and nobility; in those countries where heraldry is used, nobles have almost always been armigerous, and have used heraldry to demonstrate their ancestry and family history. However, it is important to note that heraldry has never been restricted to the noble classes in most countries, and being armigerous does not necessarily demonstrate nobility. Scotland, however, is an exception.[11] In a number of recent cases in Scotland the Lord Lyon Kings of Arms have controversially (vis-a-vis Scotland's Gaelic law) granted the arms and allocated the chiefships of medieval noble families to female-line descendants of lords, even when they were not of noble lineage in the male line, while persons of legitimate male-line descent may still survive (e.g., the modern Chiefs of Clan MacLeod).

In some nations, hereditary titles, as distinct from noble rank, were never recognised in law, e.g. Poland's Szlachta. Most nations traditionally had an untitled lower nobility (including, in continental Europe, hereditary knights[citation needed]) in addition to titled nobles. Examples include the landed gentry of the British Isles.[12][13] However, unlike England's gentry, the Junkers of Germany, the noblesse de robe of France, the hidalgos of Spain and the nobili of Italy were explicitly acknowledged by the monarchs of those countries as members of the nobility. In Scandinavia, the Benelux nations and Spain there are still untitled as well as titled families recognised by law as noble.

Some con artists sell fake titles of nobility, often with impressive-looking documentation. These may be illegal, depending on local law. They are more often illegal in countries that actually have nobilities, such as European monarchies. In the United States, such commerce may constitute actionable fraud rather than criminal usurpation of an exclusive right to use of any given title by an established class.

Other terms[edit]



Robert Lacey explains the genesis of the blue blood concept:


Eastern nobility[edit]

An aristocratic family in Lhasa, Tibet in 1936.
Emperor Farrukhsiyar Bestows a Jewel on a Nobleman

Many other non-European nations have had noble or aristocratic classes of various kinds: these are so diverse that it is somewhat misleading to try to translate them all into western feudal terminology.

For the feudal hierarchy on the Indian subcontinent, see princely state.






In East Asia the system was often modelled on imperial China, the leading culture. Emperors conferred degrees of nobility, which were not permanent but decreased a rank each generation. Imperial descendants formed the highest class of ancient Chinese nobility, their status based upon the rank of the empress or concubine from which they descend maternally (as emperors were polygamous). Numerous titles such as Taizi, and equivalents of "prince" were accorded, and due to complexities in dynastic rules, rules were introduced for Imperial descendants.

China had a feudal system in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, which gradually gave way to a more bureaucratic one beginning in the Qin dynasty (221 BC). This continued through the Song Dynasty, and by its peak only the Emperor's immediate family members were considered to be nobles.

This development was gradual and generally only completed in full by the Song Dynasty. In the Han Dynasty, for example, even though noble titles were no longer given to those other than the Emperor's relatives, the fact that the process of selecting officials was mostly based on a vouching system by current officials caused a form of quasi-hereditary nobility or peerage as officials usually vouched for their own sons or those of other officials. This process was further deepened during the Three Kingdoms Period with the introduction of the Nine-rank system.

By the Sui Dynasty, however, the institution of the Imperial examination system marked the transformation towards a full bureaucracy, though the process would not be truly completed until the Song Dynasty

Dynasties established by the minority, non-Han rulers via conquest in later years disrupted this ancient Han social class system. They compelled conformity to an ethnic policy wherein the Mongols and the Manchus were accorded higher social status than the Han majority whom they dominated.

In the Qing dynasty, many titles had been obtained or degraded through abuse and perversion of the original Qin system. Titles of nobility were still granted by the emperor, but served merely as honorifics based on a loose system of favours to the Qing emperor and the forwarding of Manchu interests: under a centralised system, the empire's governance was the responsibility of the Confucian-educated scholar-officials and the local gentry, while the literati were accorded gentry status based on lineage. For male citizens, advancement in status was possible via garnering the top three positions in imperial examinations.



Japanese samurai, 1798




A Tagalog nobleman and his consort depicted in the Boxer Codex.


Upon the islands' Christianisation, the datus retained governance of their territories despite annexation to the Spanish Empire. In a law signed 11 June 1594,[17]King Philip II of Spain ordered that the indigenous rulers continue to receive the same honours and privileges accorded them prior their conversion to Catholicism. The baptised nobility subsequently coalesced into the exclusive, landed ruling class of the lowlands known as the Principalía.

See also: Lakan of the island of Luzon

Tribal nobility[edit]

In tribal societies such as the Yoruba polities, the Kayapo bands and the Polynesian island states, the system of often hereditary tribal chiefs can also be considered a form of noble class.



Central and South American[edit]


Pacific Islander[edit]

Amongst the Native Hawaiians, the Ali'i are the traditional aristocratic class. They routinely provided the kings and nobles of the Kingdom of Hawaii prior to its dissolution, and have served as a bastion of Native Hawaiian revivalism since its occurrence. In Tonga, after contact with Western nations, the traditional system of chiefs was developed into a Western-style monarchy with a hereditary class of "barons", the Tongans even adopting that English title as a synonym for chief.

Nobility by nation[edit]


A nobleman from Bandoeng with his servant, Dutch East Indies, 1870s.
A Siamese noble on hammock, 1900
For the English Wikipedia category, see Category:Nobility by nation
Burmese nobles and servants

See also[edit]


  3. ^ The Dishonor of Dueling, Ariel A. Roth
  5. ^ Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites, p. 94
  6. ^ Jonathan, Dewald (1996). The European nobility, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press. pp. 22–25. ISBN 0-521-42528-X. 
  9. ^ The consolidation of Noble Power in Europe, c. 1600-1800
  10. ^ W. Doyle, Essays on Eighteenth Century France, London, 1995
  11. ^ An opinion of Innes of Learney makes an observation on the system in use in Scotland, differentiating it from many other European traditions, in that legal armorial bearings which are entered in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland by warrant of the Lord Lyon King of Arms are by statute "Ensigns of Nobility". However, this opinion has been challenged. Innes of Learney's perspective is, nevertheless, accepted in the Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia. Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia, 'Heraldry' (Volume 11), 3, The Law of Arms. 1613. The nature of arms.
  14. ^ The politics of aristocratic empires by John Kautsky

External links[edit]