The First World War greatly affected the structure of the British aristocracy. The most obvious impact of the War was the death of a large proportion of young male aristocrats: the First World War was responsible for a greater proportion of the aristocracy dying than any conflict since the Wars of the Roses (1455-85). Personal testimony suggests aristocratic sons were especially keen to enlist – Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (educated at Eton and Oxford) recalled that his peers’ ‘major anxiety… was by hook or by crook not to miss’ the war. To add to this, aristocrats died at a higher rate on the battlefield: over 18% of Oxford and Cambridge students who enlisted died in the War, compared to the national average of 12%. These statistics are far from perfect, but it seems clear that aristocrats were extremely likely to become officers, who suffered much greater casualty rates than their men (sometimes even twice as high).

This sudden wave of deaths had profound impacts on the rest of aristocratic society. Marriage patterns were necessarily affected, with aristocratic women forced to either marry down or become spinsters for want of aristocratic men. Contemporaries were aware that the aristocracy had disproportionately suffered, and talk of the “lost generation” of the nation’s bravest and boldest young men was based on these statistics. The concern this evoked from the upper classes indicates the trauma inflicted by such steep casualties. The aristocracy was far from wiped out by the War, but those who had served were also changed by their experience. Returning to the example of Macmillan, wartime service shaped his political outlook: when criticising government policy some 70 years later he referred to British miners as ‘the best men in the world’ because ‘they beat the Kaiser’s army and they beat Hitler’s army’. Macmillan’s personal journey was not typical of every aristocrat’s wartime experience, but demonstrates that experience of war necessarily affected aristocrats’ reactions to later events.

Scholarship on the English aristocracy in the 20th century has focused primarily on its declining status, and the First World War played a significant part in this process. David Cannadine’s landmark survey “The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy” rightly stresses that the War did not initiate this decline – since the late 19th century land values had been decreasing, forcing aristocrats to adopt survival strategies such as marrying American heiresses. However, the deaths and increased tax burdens (the almost doubling of Death Duties on estates worth over £2 million in 1919 was the most significant) resulting from the First World War resulted in a scramble to sell land whilst its price was still high. The years immediately after the War saw the greatest transfer of land since the Norman Conquest. Before the War, aristocracy was essentially synonymous with the possession of a country estate; aristocrats who sold their land were removed from the list of Burke’s Landed Gentry. By the end of the interwar years, however, one third of the families listed lacked any land. The First World War thus indirectly changed the economic basis of the aristocracy as a class.

Economic decline was mirrored by decline in the aristocracy’s political and cultural status. Before the War, the aristocratic members of the House of Lords had fought (and lost) a protracted political battle over tax increases, resulting in the 1911 Parliament Act greatly reducing the House of Lords’ power. Their declining influence is clearly demonstrated by the fact that successive Conservative governments failed to reverse the Death Duties increases which the landed aristocracy so loathed. As F.M.L. Thompson has observed, in the aftermath of the War there were still plenty of aristocratic politicians, but they spoke more as individuals.

Finally, it’s also worth noting that aristocrats based in Ireland were affected differently by the War. It would take a while to explain how the War affected Ireland’s delicate political situation, but the radicalisation of Irish nationalism following the Easter Rising of 1916 (which can in turn be traced back to the wartime situation) led to two bitter wars during which some 250 “Big Houses” belonging to Anglo-Irish aristocrats were burned. This situation would require a whole separate answer to address, but I just wanted to raise it as an exception, providing an example of an aristocratic class which was hit harder by the First World War and events related to it.

Sources:

David Cannadine’s “The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy” (1991) is the leading study of British aristocracy in the 20th century. Its coverage is about as comprehensive as it gets, and is definitely the place to start (and most likely finish, given its length).

Most studies of the First World War will give you little information about aristocrats beyond discussing individuals – the historiography of the First World War has been much more focused on the War’s impacts on the working classes.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Anglo-Irish experience, let me know and I’ll give suggestions. It’s a hugely controversial topic, with a great deal of disagreement because the issue si caught up in Irish national identity.

Other statistics and examples for this answer came from:-

F.M.L. Thompson – ‘Presidential Address: English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century I Property: Collapse and Survival’ – Trans. Royal His. Soc. 40 (1990) (See also the other three parts)

JM Winter – ‘Britain’s ‘Lost Generation’ of the First World War’ – Population Studies 31(3) 1977

Mark Rothery – ‘The wealth of the English landed gentry, 1870 – 1935’ – The Agricultural History Review – 55(2) 2007