ABSTRACT
Lawrence Stone, one of the pioneers of the renewal of the image of the aristocracy, confessed in 1965 that he had approached the topic with certain preconceptions. Historians for their part have seen the aristocracy as a class lacking rationality in administering their inheritances, devoted to irrational and conspicuous consumption, obstructive of economic development, and, for some, in semi-permanent crisis. The foregoing argument also has another side sometimes forgotten, and obviously neglected in the traditional view of European aristocracies and colonial elites. Given that the European aristocracies and also the colonial societies and elites differed so much among themselves, the very definition of what is meant by each of them is very different. The 'crisis of the aristocracy', in part provoked by the corrosive effect of inflation on aristocratic incomes, was not only a process of degeneration of the English gentry, but also reflected more complex causes.
