History glossary
aristocrats
members of a privileged elite whose status often rested on family background, land and inherited rank.
- Category
- Social class
- Region
- China
- Date range
- Varies
What it means
Aristocrats were members of a privileged social and political elite. In the Warring States world, aristocratic families could hold land, offices, military status and local influence by birth. Qin reforms aimed to reduce their independence by rewarding service to the state more directly.
Related terms
Stories using this term
The Roman Republic
From the expulsion of Rome’s kings to the rise of Augustus, the Roman Republic built a powerful mixed constitution, expanded across the Mediterranean, and ultimately collapsed into civil war and one-man rule.
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution began in Britain and spread globally, transforming economies, societies and everyday life through machines, factories and new energy sources.
The Norman Conquest of England
From Viking settlers to conquerors, the Normans reshaped England, Italy, and the medieval Mediterranean.
The Fall of Rome to Early Medieval Europe
From the arrival of Gothic peoples at the Danube to the crowning of Charlemagne, this story traces how the Western Roman Empire fragmented into successor kingdoms and how a new medieval world took shape.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a civilisation of city-states, sailors, philosophers, soldiers, artists, and political experiments whose influence reached far beyond the Aegean world. From Athens and Sparta to the Persian Wars, democracy, philosophy, drama, and Alexander the Great, Greek history helped shape ideas about citizenship, empire, knowledge, and culture. Its legacy survived through Rome, Byzantium, Islam, and modern Europe, making Ancient Greece central to the story of the classical world.
The Persian Empire
From Cyrus the Great to Alexander's conquest, the Achaemenid Persian Empire turned regional kingship into a vast realm held together by conquest, roads, tribute, local cooperation, and royal power.
Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic World
From Philip II's military reforms to the fall of the last Hellenistic kingdom, this story follows Alexander's conquests, the wars of his successors, and the spread of Greek culture across the ancient Near East.
The French Revolution
From royal debt and social inequality to republic, terror, and Napoleon, the French Revolution dismantled the old order and produced the political ideas of citizenship, rights, and nationalism that defined the modern world.
