ABSTRACT
The Great Exhibition, held in London in 1851, was essentially a world's fair that showcased the latest manufactured goods and machines that were contributing to Europe's industrial progress. Ceremonially opened by Queen Victoria, the Exhibition marked the dawning of the age of Middle-Class Europe, when finally the political, social, cultural, and economic priorities of the bourgeoisie became predominant. In the nineteenth century, it was not necessarily any easier to define the middle class, because a transition was occurring in the concept of the class structure. During the eighteenth century, the term bourgeoisie or middle class had referred, broadly speaking, to anyone in society who was not a nobleman or a peasant or an urban worker. The middle class achieved some remarkable victories for the bourgeois political movements of liberalism and nationalism during the second half of the nineteenth century.
