Gentry
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The gentry is a social class of landowners.
In Chinese history, gentry has a specific meaning and refers to the shen-shi or the class of landowners that had passed the bureaucratic examinations in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
In European history gentry refers to well-to-do or wealthy English landowners below the level of nobility. They played an important role in the English Civil War of the seventeenth century. See landed gentry.
In American society, gentry refers to a highly-educated professional upper-middle class.pl:Gentry
