ONE ARISTOCRACY REPLACING ANOTHER. Shannon Love’s comment on this post I linked to yesterday is brilliantly illuminating. I suggest you read the whole comment, but here is the first paragraph:
“For some reason, modern readers of history seem to assume that the invasion and domination of group A by group B means that a significant percentage of group B migrated to the lands of group A. I think that in the era of nation states, we unconsciously identify ruling caste with greater population. Yet, throughout history, most “migrations†or “conquest†simply meant the replacement of one small ruling sub-population with another. For example, we say that Alexander the Great conquered the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean world but he actually displaced less than 1% of the total population of the regions he conquered.”
Love goes on to add that until recently most people were governed by a military caste that was ethnically different from them. The aristocracy usually consisted of newcomers.