ABSTRACT
This chapter indicates briefly and imprecisely that aristocrats are those persons in aristocratic empires who occupy and compete for the higher positions in a government whose minimal functions consist of tax collection and, almost invariably, warfare. Warfare and governmental and religious administration are always functions of the aristocracy in aristocratic empires, but nonaristocrats, too, may be involved in them, which may blur definitional lines. If the possession of aristocratic titles or the designation of a group and aristocracy cannot serve to define the aristocracy for us, neither can aristocratic heredity. The Chinese bureaucracy might also be mentioned, for it was recruited on the basis of examinations, not of heredity. The matter of heredity is related to that of mobility. The aristocracy, looking down on the nouveaux riches, perceives such a tendency as a threat and may take deliberate measures to prevent mobility. If it succeeds, commercialization may, in fact, bring only relatively little mobility.
