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What would have happened if the Normans had lost the Battle of Hastings?
- beschizza 10y agoTo recap: - there might have been more interest in the early English kings. - 11th c England would be darker to history, because there wouldn't be a Doomsday Book. - Harold II would have a great-king reputation for beating Tostig, Hardrada and William. - England would have remained politically chaotic, including ... - A likely civil war between Harold II and his own relatives. Not addressed: - Changes to English society and life. Would feudalism have been imported anyway? - No diaspora of English nobility, many of whom left rather than become subject to Normans Paul Kingsnorth's novel The Wake is an intriguing historical novel imagining how the Norman conquest affected everyday English folk.
- kirian 10y ago"No diaspora of English nobility, many of whom left rather than become subject to Normans" - do you have any other links or more information about this comment, i.e. which nobles and where did they go? I'm curious to find out more as was not aware of this aspect. Thanks
- berntb 10y agoWell, you got an influx to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard "Composed primarily of Scandinavians for the first 100 years, the guard began to see increasing numbers of Anglo-Saxons after the successful invasion of England by the Normans. [..] the Guard was commonly called the Englinbarrangoi (Anglo-Varangians) [after a point]" (That is all I really read about that subject.)
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoThough I seriously don't think that not having English Varangians would've changed the course of Byzantine History-Manizkert, the Crusades, and lots of infighting and civil wars would've probably still happened. Manzikert was only 5 years in the future.
- berntb 10y agoI was answering a question about where the Anglo Saxon nobility went after 1066. I didn't touch the main subject of this discussion (how history would have been different). Edit: But please expand on the subject, as if I had meant that. It would be interesting. :-)
- berntb 10y agoWell, thinking about this a bit more... you could argue that my position is really simplified. Christianity wasn't that nice either. Exterminating all competing religions (Asatru, Catharism, South American religions etc) and probably even worse pogroms than the Muslim world, etc.
- phillc73 10y agoHarold's mother, Gytha, left England with other prominent nobles. I seemed to recall her going to Flanders, Wikipedia (that credible source) suggests somewhere in Scandinavia instead.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gytha_Thorkelsd%C3%B3ttir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gytha_Thorkelsd%C3%B3ttir Edit: Worth listening to are these BBC 4 In Our Time Podcasts. The Battle of Stamford Bridge: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011jvlt http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011jvlt The Domesday Book: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040llvb http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040llvb
- mc32 10y agoThere were periods prior to the Norman conquest when England was at the center of progress and learning. Also, they had enjoyed some gender equality whereas the Normans introduced feudalism and its regressive society. On the whole, though, looking back, it's remarkable that their conquest indirectly lead to where we are today --not dominated by Spanish, or Portuguese or French or Ottoman or even Chinese or Russians or anyone else who might have filled the role the English played in how the world organized and developed laws and international relations. One of the take-aways from this is that the upheaval from conquest can lead to interesting new societies.
- gadders 10y agoListening to the History Hit Podcast [1], apparently the Normans got rid of slavery which was common in the Anglo Saxon world. So that's a vote for them. [1] http://www.historyhitpodcast.com/1066-battle-of-hastings-mark-morris/ http://www.historyhitpodcast.com/1066-battle-of-hastings-mar...
- cbyto 10y agoThere's an intriguing suicide note as well which claims even more widespread effects of Norman conquest. “The Saxon/Norman origin of liberal democracy in the English-speaking world is the key to understanding why the discoveries of sociobiology have appeared to be so congenitally politically controversial.”
- ghaff 10y agoI'd also wonder if England and the British Isles more generally wouldn't have ended up more aligned with and culturally similar to the Nordics. Though there were of course already a history of ties to Southern Europe because of both the Romans and proximity.
- willvarfar 10y agoThe Normans were "nor man" were "north man". They were norwegians who had been given lands on the French coast as payoff to stop sacking Paris.
- berntb 10y agoThey had already lost the language, the religion and much of the culture. In the beginning, they burned and pillaged the churches and the cloisters. When they went to England, they had already started to build them instead. BBC had a good tv series about the Normans btw, worth seeing. I didn't know much about the Italian history, for instance. (Re losing the religion -- as a hard line atheist from the Nordic countries, I'll admit that even Christianity was a step up from what was before. :-) )
- ktRolster 10y agoI'll admit that even Christianity was a step up from what was before How can you know that? What sorts of historical documents (and practices) are you thinking of?
- berntb 10y agoIt was a religion for a violent clan society, think Somalia or something. Check e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmgang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmgang A good illustration is the Swedish "peace laws" from the 13th century -- it became forbidden to steal women, kill people in church and attack others during harvest. Consider what that means about the time before those. :-)
- willvarfar 10y ago
- DonaldFisk 10y agoEnglish would be much more like Frisian/Dutch/Low German than it is now?
- trengrj 10y agoYeah I think the language change would have been the most interesting thing out of this. So many French words came into English via the Normans.
- caf 10y agoI have heard that this is why there is the dichotomy in modern English between the words for meats and the animals from which they come, where the former (eg. pork, compare modern French porc) tends to have a Norman origin and the latter (eg. pig/swine, compare modern German Schwein) an Old English one.
- rfrey 10y agoI've heard that too... the Norman aristocracy was eating the meat and using Norman words (pork/porc, beef/boeuf) and the peasants were tending and raising the animals in old English (pig, cow).
- pygy_ 10y agoIndeed, and you can add mutton(mouton)/sheep and (to a lesser extent in modern English) poultry(poulet)/chicken to that list.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago>So many French words came into English via the Normans. // IIRC those words were not yet French; it always gets a bit confused with languages when we're referring back like this IMO. This is a thorough working - https://slmc.uottawa.ca/?q=french_history https://slmc.uottawa.ca/?q=french_history - it appears to concur that French as a language used across France arose in the 13th Century. To recapitulate: In 1066 France wasn't called France and didn't speak French and yet we [common people of England] talk of the French coming and bringing French language to the English court.
- mark_l_watson 10y agoHistorical what-if questions are fun enough. My favorite is what would have happened if the English pirate [1] Francis Drake had captured Cartagena Columbia. He had several ships and about 5000 marines for his third attempt and almost captured the city. Imagine if England and not Spain had the gold and jewels flowing from Central and South America. History would have been very different - and that last battle could have gone either way. [1] Both times I have been in Cartagena, I heard someone refer to Sir Francis Drake as a pirate. Personally, I have nothing against the guy :-)
- mlinksva 10y agoHe was a slaver. That's at least one thing to hold against him, to say the least. Everything named after him should be renamed, all statues of him in public places should be toppled.
- AlexeyBrin 10y agoWhy not re-write all history books in the name of today's political correctness? If we don't like something just erase it.
- mlinksva 10y agoI don't want to erase slavers from history books, only from positions of honor. Stalin and Hitler should be remembered accurately, not honored. Same for other slavers.
- Balgair 10y agoGod I love what-ifs. My favorite is What if the Bronze Age Collapse [0] never happened? Quick recap: due to some crazy things (the enigmatic 'Sea Peoples', maybe famine), all Mediterranean civs died in a 40 year timespan (best guess) back in 1200 BC. Like, this is just when we have civilizations in more than just Eqypt and Sumer, and blammo, ancient sea barbarians just wreck face in 1 lifetime. The Greek Dark Ages follow this up, as expected, and you just have all these terrible things happen to the people alive then in the area. Like, Rome and the rest of Egypt come out of what is left of these peoples after this event. Its like taking the Cambrian Explosion and then snuffing it out. Humans had finally figured out this city thing, we have palaces and kings and priests and the barest merchant class, and then whammo, sea peoples come and mess it all up. We have this Cambrian proliferation of cultures and we start having wars and stuff and its all fun happy evolution times. Yay! Art n stuff! Yay history! Yay literacy! And then a flippin meteor that is sea peoples comes in and kills all the dinosaurs (wow, I am straining metaphors here). Anyways, if the Collapse had not happened, things would be just radically different in terms of culture and human history. And the best thing is that no-one really knows this happened, it was so long ago. Like, we had this whole history and civilization thing just starting out, it's silenced before it really starts, and then we all go 'meh' and try it again. We live in at least civ2.0, if not even later. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
- yesbabyyes 10y ago"Civilization is always older than we think, and under whatever sod we tread are the bones of men and women who also worked and loved, wrote songs and made beautiful things, but whose names and very being have been lost in the careless flow of time." -- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization
- dcsommer 10y agoI'm watching a great presentation on the topic of the Bronze Age Collapse right now, in fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk
- m_mueller 10y agoFor one, I think our writing system would likely be more similar to Korean and Japanese syllable systems. Linear A and B, the Bronze age greek versions of that, died in that collapse. The greek dark ages apparently deserve their name much more than the medieval ones - AFAIK Greece lost literacy for around 400 years after that event!
- WalterBright 10y agoWith the Butterfly Effect, one can't even speculate on the consequences of stepping or not on a bug. If your parents had done anything the slightest bit different before you were conceived, you'd be a different person entirely (1 sperm out of zillions). In my own life, there are several rather obvious nexus points where if things had gone slightly differently, the course of my life would have changed dramatically and unpredictably.
- scentoni 10y agoMy favorite English history what-ifs are: 1. What if Catherine of Aragon had borne an heir to Henry VIII? England might have remained Catholic and been spared a few bloody wars over religion and royal succession. Or maybe the English Civil War would have started earlier. Certainly the balance of power in Europe would have been different. 2. What if Henry VIII's older brother https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur,_Prince_of_Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur,_Prince_of_Wales had survived to become King Arthur?
- joey_meyer 10y agoDan Carlin has an episode[0] of Hardcore History on this exact topic. I highly recommend it (along with the rest of the podcast). [0] http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-10-the-what-ifs-of-1066/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-10-the-wha...