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To: middie
It was a battle and outcome that shaped the political face of Europe for all subsequent history.

I'm curious to know if you think the shaping of Europe that occured after Hasting was for good, or ill, or neither, or both or something else? I've no motivation to ask, other than curiosity.

21 posted on 10/14/2006 12:17:22 PM PDT by TimSkalaBim (will have to get used to the new ordering method)
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To: TimSkalaBim
The resulting period of Norman England changed world history that remains to this day. William's rule and subsequent rulers detached England from any claim by Scandinavian ruling familes' claim to the English throne. The Normans imposed a mandate on landed estate to provide trained fighters at the call of the crown. They dissipated the largest land holdings. The combination over time of the social and political changes created what passed down through English history as the gentry and royal classes that had the loyalties of those working the land under their protection.

When the Normans were sent packing and the Cornwellian dust-up was supressed, England was left with a society ripe for the evolution of the common law and an institution of popular representation--Parliament. Social institutions that promote popular and peaceful (relatively speaking) participation grow distinctly different from the royalty and ''Divine Right'' concepts of governing that remained and persisted on the continent until the Franco-German War of the mid-19th Century and the end of the Balance of Power philosophy of foreign affairs that resulted in WW I.

So, yes, in very few words, the introduction of, and eventual elimination of, Norman rule in England was the seminal cause of many beneficial effects on European as well as world history. I doubt that the exploration and settling of the part of North America that turned out to be the U.S. would have evolved in a popular government as it did. The post-Norman England from the 15th Century and its need for raw materials, hence the growth of its sea power, and trade developed in a way that I believe would have been starkely different but for the expulsion of the direct Norman rule but with distinctive remaining influence of Norman instituted social constructs from their time of rule; both a European flavor and a ever-evolving demand for popular government and equity in law. And this doesn't even consider the influence of the Scots and Irish (post-Cornwell).

25 posted on 10/14/2006 4:53:04 PM PDT by middie
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To: TimSkalaBim

One other note to your question about the Norman era of England: The language, social customs and political/law heritage of central Europe likely would have been different circa 9 A.D.by the political, strategic and fiscal decision of Caesar Augustus to abandon plans to colonize territory that has become first the Germanic states and now a more compact Germany. The language of Rome was not superimposed on the barbarian/Sandinavian tongues as it was on the Franks and Flemish along the North Sea littoral. The Indo-European languages prevailed and skipped in a linguistic crockpot to the English. Thus, we see today the mixture of an English language that contains Frankish culinary terms with Romanace Language, Latin origin lexicon of government and law with Saxon adjectives, nouns and verbs that cross all aspects of our language.
Norman England left a legacy of language that only partially filled out the lexicon and the rest from its later Saxon ties.

I don't mean to belabor the point but you asked a probing question.


33 posted on 10/15/2006 10:55:40 AM PDT by middie
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