Brazil was no barrel of laughs in the 60s either, and it would get much worse with fallout and a collapse of global trade.
Fallout goes global. Period. The end. The Southern Hemisphere and a few degrees latitude does nothing to protect anybody unless it's a half a dozen bombs or less.
Some ideas:
That is a misconception. It may have been politically volatile, but structurally it was extremely sound. Anglo-Saxon England was by far the most efficient and centralised state in Europe. It simply had the misfortune of having two of the worst kings in history within a fifty year span. Yet even when everything was falling apart in the 1010s, the government still possessed the capability to raise vast sums of money for the Danegeld. Now, as to centralisation, most of the consequential nobility had possessions stretching across large parts of England, in contrast to the situation in France, where there were regional magnates. Partially as a consequence, and partially out of fear of invasion, the great families had a horror of civil war; there are passages in near-contemporary chronicles saying, almost in disbelief, that they were more afraid of it than anything. As a consequence, things were actually quite peaceable, compared with the situation everywhere else, and with the Norman years. Despite being far and away the richest and most powerful man in the kingdom, Harold waited for the Confessor to die, rather than deposing him. When Edwin and Morcar opposed him, he backed down rather than fight them, and when Godwin was facing ruin in the 1050s, he ran rather than fight; and, what's more, came back without a fight. The crucial evidence for the structural solidity of English government, apart from its ability to keep the country running through incompetent leadership, succession struggles and foreign invasion, lies in the reaction of the conquering Normans. They generally adopted English governmental systems, rather than imposing their own. English law was used, English administration was used, and so on. The shires laid down in the tenth century survived the conquest and remained virtually unchanged until thirty years ago. Perhaps most pertinently, the English system survived the complete extermination of its leadership. This is not the mark of an unstable government.
Not so much. Again, the great families held lands in every ealdordom. Sure, Northumbria was never as fully integrated as Mercia. And it may be said that the great ealdordoms were almost coterminous with the old kingdoms, and a great deal of significance may be attributed to that; however, that ignores the problem that the Godwins were gaining control over so many of them in those years, which rather undermines the idea of entrenched regionalism. The Northumbrian revolt may be seen as further evidence for regional antipathy. The real cause, however, was heavy handed centralisation efforts by Tostig; in essence, he was trying to make them pay taxes they didn't want to pay, which will always cause unrest. Even when the Northumbrians threw Tostig out, they did not demand independence; rather, they wanted a more amenable earl - an earl, mind you, who was not Northumbrian. And despite anything else, the fact remains that Engla-lond had a national identity at the time, when no other country in Europe did. When push came to shove, even the dissidents rallied around the king. The Northumbrians fought at Fulford when they need not have - and a century earlier would not have - the patriarch of the Leofric family fought at Hastings, and Edwin and Morcar resisted William to the last.
Bah! It's two in the morning, I can't sleep and I have to leave in two hours. I'm entitled to incoherence.
It's implicit. OTL England did not disintegrate; you have said that England under continued Saxon rule would have.
No it doesn't. Being English is more important to the people than being Mercian or being Northumbrian, and the passage of time does not magically cause that to change, particularly not when the trend for four hundred years has been to less regionalism. There is no reason for England to fall apart; the people who could make it do so are the ones who have the most to lose. Besides, why would Northumbria reunite it? It doesn't have the population to control the south, and never has.
Most, but not England, and things are no different without the Normans.
Normans had in many ways contributed to greater centralisation; history would show that foreign rule does tend to unite regions (see just about any post-colonial country). I fail to see any reason for England to be more centralised in the absence of a historical centralising factor.
Yes, I am sure. It's difficult to explain right now, apart from what I've already said. Here's an excerpt from an article I have though, if you will permit me to be lazy
The north just isn't as fertile as the south. Northumbria's previous dominance was undone partially by that fact.
What ways? Because the only major Norman addition that I can think of is the introducation of full-scale feudalism, which certainly does not contribute to greater centralisation.No, really.
I would suggest you are fitting the facts to the model.
There is such a factor. His name's Edgar, and people called him Peacemaker. In the same way that a Colt revolver is called a Peacemaker. I think you're missing the point, which is that England was already quite centralized before the conquest. The strong kings of England, Edgar, Aethelstan, and Canute, threw down the powerful at will. Canute had the ealdorman of Mercia, the man responsible for his victory, executed for no reason apart from being untrustworthy. Continental kings of the period can't do that, and I don't think it really happens again in England on the same scale until the Tudor recovery.
I don't know much about Kievan Rus, but I was under the impression that, although there was a Rus identity, it was largely confined to the elites around Kiev? At any rate, Kievan Rus did not have England's intensely pervasive Christianity, nor the English sense of being God's chosen people, nor the collective experience of completely shattering invasion.
Yes, but it is difficult to see how it can coexist with collapse into component kingdoms. China is the example there, of course.
One would, however, be arguing against all available evidence. At any rate, great magnates are the very personification of centralisation; more land being administered by fewer people from further away can scarcely be interpreted otherwise. In any event, England didn't have regional magnates. As I said earlier, the holdings of the powerful nobility transcended regional boundaries, and Harold had property and influence in literally every corner of England. This was not a new phenomenom, having been the case since at least the Half-King.
The Domesday survey was a good idea, but I would scarcely say it constitutes introducing a census. That was not their aim, certainly. They were really just counting the loot.
I don't think it follows that killing lots of people in one area will necessitate the gathering of authority in another. Besides, given all the problems caused by residual northern resentment over the next few centuries, I would have thought that the Harrying was the opposite of centralising measure.
But they were muted in England, and the reasons for that do not lie in the Norman Conquest.
I don't think it would have been that different from OTL, really. Certainly societal differences would become virtually negligible after a century or so. Politically, less feudalism, for a time at least, but also less royal authority in the short term. Probably more in the long term though; I suspect that English kings looking to English problems would be more willing to suppress the powerful. I do think that a failed Conquest would result in Harold attacking Normandy; the English have done it before, and Harold's got a longstanding grudge against the Normans. The probable loss of William and certain loss of the Norman army and aura in an abortive Conquest would seem to grant a good chance of success. Assuming success, which seems reasonable enough, the Anglo-Norman regnum comes into being backwards. The English preponderance in numbers might make it easier for them to control Normandy than vice versa, but I doubt it would be much more stable in the long term. After an English conquest of Normandy, the same problems of Norman England effect Saxon England, though the Saxon kings would look to England first rather than France. An interesting possibility is that an English king, in the course of suppressing the powerful, would carry Edgar's claims to protectorship of the church to their logical conclusion, bringing about the English Reformation a few centuries early. That would probably have some interesting effects on England and Europe in general.
One does need a strong power base fora proper centralised state, and clans certainly don't work like that in the long-term.
That's not a very good argument, and you know it. Look, civil war, revolt, Pilgrimage of Grace: yes. Germany style collapse: no. ;
Wonderful. Except that England wasn't really feudal before the French.
France does not exist except as a geographic expression. The King of France is so impotent that even in alliance with the Count of Anjou he could not defeat the Normans. Given the long history of war between Anjou and Normandy, I would expect Maine and Anjou to join in with England against Normandy. I am not even sure the king of France at the time would join in. Any attack would have to wait til 1067 at the earliest. By that time, the teenages year old Phillip would have taken the full control from the regency. Having been dominated by Baldwin, William's father in law, it seems clear that he would reverse his policies at the first chance, and become anti-Norman.
William brought about 8000 men. To do that, he had to strip Normandy clean, and even then only a third of his men were actually Norman. Even so, Harold almost won, and would have won if he had not left his archers behind on the march. Anglo-Saxon military power is not so small as you suppose. Besides, Normandy has the rather nice property, like England, of preserving Carolingian modes. You don't have to go around sieging every little fortress; if you beat the guy at the top, it'll fall into your lap.
Who could attack? The Vikings are done, the Welsh aren't a threat, the Scots are allied, and the only Frenchman with such ambitions is dead. There's the pro-Norman party in England, but they would have been on the descendant, and I suspect most of them would have changed their sympathies.
The point is not that they were decentralized. The point is that they were national, rather than regional. They had a vested interest in keeping the country together.
So why is the Conquest, which did not massively disrupt preexisting governmental systems, enough to prevent it?
Aethelstan, despite having rather more trouble than Harold in becoming king, had no problems beating the crap out of all his neighbours; same with Edgar. Past experience would seem to indicate that consolidation need not consume all his attention.
Don't think Catholic v. Orthodox, think St. Peter v. St. Columcille. The Anglo Saxons were origininally converted to the Celtic Rite, not the Latin Rite. The English only began to fall in line with the Latin Rite as opposed to the Celtic Rite at the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE. By this point in time, the Latin Rite holds most of the power, but the Celtic Rite is still very prominent throughout England. If the English were to drift away from Rome, it would be towards Iona and Lindisfarne, not toward distant and culturally nearly incompatible Constantinople.
It already had, and with the Viking threat gone there is no reason for England to go further down that path.
Why? Can't have foreigners holding French lands? I would remind you that a century earlier, they stood for the Viking conquest of Normandy.
Socially and politically not in the long term, and I said as much. Militarily is another matter. Again, the Normans were the most powerful fighting force in Europe at the time, and England still came within an ace of beating them. Moreover, should the northern Frenchmen become bogged down against the English, wouldn't Brittany, Aquitaine and the other southerners be inclined to take advantage?
The country won't look weak, though. It will look like a country that just defeated and killed both the last great Viking and the greatest soldier in Europe within a month of each other. Aside from that, I'll admit I'd forgotten about Sweyn, but the others aren't much of a threat. Flemish troops were a major component in William's army; Flanders has already tried an invasion. I find it difficult to believe that an Englishman could or would rebel against a Harold covered in battle-won glory, the most valuable commodity to the Anglo-Saxons, when nobody tried seriously against either Ethelred or Edward.
How so?
