Noble-Profiteers
The term Noble-Profiteer refers to a heterogenous class of aristocrats in various regions of Great Neritsia distinguished by their prominent role in the development of Estatism and the Industrial Revolution as industrial magnates and financiers. The closest analogue in Messenia is probably the bourgeois merchants and captains of industry.
The Ellish term is a translation of the Rashimic albīru, from the Lacrean ālbīrō (pseudo-bīrō, fake bīrō), which originally referred (somewhat derogatorily) to the petty aristocrats who took over the property of the former great Bīrōs of the Lacrean League after the Eternal Treaty of Nardash (1617). The Lacrean word was quickly borrowed into other languages, where it was used to describe (among others) the Dekoralese aristocrats who took over the trade of Malarat and Meshrati and the more limited group of nobles in Great Pestul who seized control of provisioning. Although Nardash had effected a massive transfer of property to this rising class, it did not create it: Branch Houses of the Neritsovid High Nobility everywhere had been competing with the Bīrōk and the Bgheets of the Rashimic Littoral in commerce for several decades before this. From 1617 onwards, however, they enjoyed complete dominance of the upper ranks of commerce as well as some aspects of urban production.
The pioneering Noble-Profiteers were, for the most part, not members of the Duodecimvirate of senior houses, although some belonged to other sovereign houses not subject to clientelistic relations with the interior. Indeed, one of the reasons that the Great Pestul region initially had a relatively underdeveloped Noble-Profiteer class was because of the prominence of the Duodecimvirate in that region; those such aristocrats who were present were often southerners who had moved to the capital or the surrounding region. This made them part of a broader group of Branch House middle nobility, whose privileges did not match those of the most senior members of the aristocratic class - to whom they often owed more or less feudal dues. The Noble-Profiteers thus served as a vanguard of the broader upward thrust of the middle nobility that was given its greatest expression by the Exorcism of the South and subsequently the Great Imperial Restoration, which set off a series of events that ended with the general levelling of the High Nobility. This process drew more and more aristocrats into the 'Noble-Profiteer' class, in the sense that they increasingly sought profit wherever they could find it, and this stratum produced the great captains of industry of the 19th century.
The high noon of the Noble-Profiteer class lasted from the late 18th century through to the mid-19th century, during which time massive business conglomerates dominated the economy of Vaestdom. In the late 19th century, however, their power began to be undermined by an increasingly totalitarian state and its Scholar bureaucracy on the one hand and an ever more assertive managerial class on the other. The great demediatisations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the reworking or abolition of aristocratic privilege largely broke up the vast family estates and replaced their leadership with internally appointed managers and Scholars, most bloodily in Azophin during the War on Petty Kings. Some Noble-Profiteer dynasties nonetheless continue to control significant business interests.
Why aristocrats rather than an independent burgher class came to dominate commerce and industry in Outer Joriscia is a much-disputed question in academia. It is well known, of course, that the Eternal Treaty of Nardash effected a massive transfer of property and responsibility to various aristocrats: the former merchant class found themselves reduced to managers or middle-men or forced to migrate to the Seranias. But this is not the whole story. Nobles had already been prominent in economic activity even before this period, and clearly showed sufficient business acumen that they were able to assume the Bīrōs' functions with relatively little disruption. This was due in part to continuity in personnel, but can also be attributed to an existing culture of profit-seeking and good management (reflected by a proliferation of guides on estate management) that had begun to take root against the petty aristocrats of Greater Dekoral in the 17th century and spread elsewhere. Long-standing connections between Dekoralese merchants and aristocrats have been identified as one possible origin of this culture, as well as petty aristocrats' desire to assert themselves outside the political sphere and the well-guarded avenues of elite noble culture. Once some nobles had begun to act in a profit-seeking way, a virtuous circle developed, with major implications for Outer Joriscia: the medieval ruling class would continue to dominate society in one form or another until the 20th century.