These volumes comprise a unique and original work which provides
comprehensive biographical information on all 884 persons who left
personal estates of GBP100,000 or more in Britain from 1809, when
these sources begin in a usable form. GBP100,000 is the equivalent
of about GBP10 million today.This work by Professor William D.
Rubinstein, the leading academic expert on wealth-holding in
Britain over the past two centuries, comprises a series of volumes
which will provide similar information on all persons leaving
GBP100,000 or more down to 1914.For every person included, accurate
information is given about his or her occupation or source of
wealth, parentage and family background, education, marriage,
children, and heirs, religion, political involvement, and land
ownership.Virtually none of this information has ever been compiled
before, and this work provides a unique, accurate, and realistic of
the wealthy elite in Britain during and just after the Napoleonic
Wars.The picture which emerges is a surprisingly conservative one,
with wealth centred not in the new industries of the Industrial
Revolution, but in London, especially in the City of London, as
well as in the landed aristocracy, in fortunes made in the east and
west Indies, and riches derived from "Old Corruption," by
government employees and placemen. The Introduction to this work
provides useful summaries of the main trends.This set of volumes
will be of considerable interest to economic, social, and political
historians, to genealogists and family historians, and to local
historians and historians of local communities.
General
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