Louis XIV used table manners and ceremony to tame his nobles
At Versailles, etiquette was a political weapon. Louis XIV built an elaborate code of court ritual that kept France's proud aristocrats busy competing over who stood where and who handed the king his shirt. The system bound them to the throne and dazzled the foreign envoys who visited.
Etiquette means the accepted code of polite behaviour in a society, class or group. The French word étiquette, meaning a label or tag, entered English around 1750 and is related to the word for ticket, perhaps hinting at good manners as a pass into society.
Guides to proper conduct are astonishingly old. Around 2375 to 2350 BCE the Egyptian vizier Ptahhotep compiled maxims praising truthfulness, self-control and kindness, advising people to learn by listening, avoid needless conflict and lead with openness, and warning that greed lies at the root of evil. In China, Confucius stressed sincerity and correct relationships. During the Italian Renaissance, Baldassare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier of 1528 became the model manual for behaving at court.
The young George Washington copied out by hand 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour, adapted from an earlier French text, which urged humility, restraint and respect. Stung by critics such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who thought him unpolished and poorly educated, he took the maxims to heart, and they shaped his public bearing. Benjamin Franklin, by contrast, distrusted showy formality. His autobiography of 1791 set out thirteen virtues, among them sincerity and humility, and he valued manners mainly as tools for cooperation and avoiding pointless quarrels.
In the eighteenth century, learning etiquette became a deliberate project of social climbing. Ambitious members of the middle classes studied elegant dress, graceful conversation, when to show feeling and how to treat women courteously, adopting upper-class tastes to be recognised as genteel. Manners, in other words, have long signalled not just kindness but belonging.
Source: Etiquette
