The rich have always fascinated, sometimes in problematic ways. Medieval thinkers feared that the super-rich would act “as gods among men” — much more recently Thomas Piketty made wealth central to discussions of inequality.
In this book, Guido Alfani offers a history of the rich and super-rich in the West, examining who they were, how they accumulated their wealth and what role they played in society.
Covering the last thousand years, with frequent incursions into antiquity, and integrating recent research on economic inequality, Alfani finds — despite the different paths to wealth in different eras —fundamental continuities in the behavior of the rich and public attitudes toward wealth across Western history.
His account offers a novel perspective on current debates about wealth and income disparity.
Alfani argues that the position of the rich and super-rich in Western society has always been intrinsically fragile; their very presence has inspired social unease.
