he bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in the 11th century when

the bourgs of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated to commerce. This
urban expansion was possible thanks to economic concentration due to the appearance of
protective self-organisation into guilds. Guilds arose when individual businessmen (such as
craftsmen, artisans and merchants) conflicted with their rent-seeking feudal landlords who
demanded greater rents than previously agreed.
In the event, by the end of the Middle Ages (c. AD 1500), under régimes of the early national
monarchies of Western Europe, the bourgeoisie acted in self-interest, and politically supported
the king or queen against legal and financial disorder caused by the greed of the feudal lords.[citation
needed]
 In the late-16th and early 17th centuries, the bourgeoisies of England and the Netherlands
had become the financial – thus political – forces that deposed the feudal order; economic
power had vanquished military power in the realm of politics. [7]

From progress to reaction (in the Marxist view)[edit]

According to the Marxist view of history, during the 17th and 18th centuries, the bourgeoisie were
the politically progressive social class who supported the principles of constitutional
government and of natural right, against the Law of Privilege and the claims of rule by divine
right that the nobles and prelates had autonomously exercised during the feudal order.
The English Civil War (1642–51), the American War of Independence (1775–83), and French
Revolution (1789–99) were partly motivated by the desire of the bourgeoisie to rid themselves of
the feudal and royal encroachments on their personal liberty, commercial prospects, and the
ownership of property. In the 19th century, the bourgeoisie propounded liberalism, and gained
political rights, religious rights, and civil liberties for themselves and the lower social classes; thus
the bourgeoisie was a progressive philosophic and political force in Western societies.
After the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850), by the mid-19th century the great expansion of the
bourgeoisie social class caused its stratification – by business activity and by economic function
– into the haute bourgeoisie (bankers and industrialists) and the petite
bourgeoisie (tradesmen and white-collar workers). Moreover, by the end of the 19th century, the
capitalists (the original bourgeoisie) had ascended to the upper class, while the developments of
technology and technical occupations allowed the rise of working-class men and women to the
lower strata of the bourgeoisie; yet the social progress was incidental.

Denotations[edit]
Marxist theory[edit]

Karl Marx
According to Karl Marx, the bourgeois during Middle Ages usually was a self-employed
businessman – such as a merchant, banker, or entrepreneur – whose economic role in society
was being the financial intermediary to the feudal landlord and the peasant who worked the fief,
the land of the lord. Yet, by the 18th century, the time of the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850)
and of industrial capitalism, the bourgeoisie had become the economic ruling class who owned
the means of production (capital and land), and who controlled the means of coercion (armed
forces and legal system, police forces and prison system).
In such a society, the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production allowed them to
employ and exploit the wage-earning working class (urban and rural), people whose only
economic means is labour; and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the
sociopolitical challenges by the lower classes, and so preserved the economic status quo;
workers