There 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.
Listening 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.
"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
Harold'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]
"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]"
Though 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.
Well, 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.
I 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. :-)
I'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.
They 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. :-) )
I was replying to the query as to whether England would have ended up more like the Nordic.
My reply was that the Norman lords were literally Norse.
Christianity had spread to Scandinavia by this time too. Everyone involved was Christian, and from the 1000 foot view the Anglo Saxons, Danes, Norse, Normans and even Gauls were much the same. Feudalism was evolution not revolution, although William used the opportunity to install lords who owed him. After his death the tail end of Norman rule was just as chaotic and splintered as the pre Norman infighting.
Interesting, but there was a viking invasion from Scandinavia weeks earlier!
This was 1066, not 1200+ or something. Christianity was then quite old in Normandy and very new in Scandinavia. (Also, the population density was really low, compared to France -- changes must have been slow, hard to control what happened at distant farms.)
Most of what I have read say that south of Scandinavia they were beyond a clan society at this time, but you still had it at least in Sweden/Norway (Denmark ought to be more connected, from geography.)
Edit: If I'm wrong here, I'd expect a dozen old SCA members or something to show up, with primary sources. :-)
Edit 2: I'm not really contradicting, I'm noting that afaik, Norway/Sweden (uncertain about Denmark) was quite a bit behind the rest of Europe in development. Especially 1066. (It was not until the 13th century they tried to get more of feudalism into Sweden, iirc?)
(This thread is too old for the SCA to turn up ;) )
The "Viking invasion" that Harold Godwinson defeated just weeks before was by Harald Hardrada, who is often considered by some as the "last true Viking".
But Harald Hadrada was Christian. He served in the Varangian Guard of the Holy Roman Empire, and he built an awful lot of churches when he returned to Norway. (He had a very eastern slant on his Christianity, and this made Norway was slightly unorthodox long before the schism.)
Harald Hadrada pushed Norway quite far on the path towards feudalism by trying to unite his kingdom and enforce hierarchy among the chieftains. So on the one hand he is a Christian Viking who uses Viking-style raiding to wage war, and on the other he is modernizing.
Sweden was at this time basically the area where the Norwegian and Danish kingdoms stopped. It was not nearly so united. But at the time kingdoms were just the areas where kings toured, extracting taxes in promise for protection. In modern terms kings were racketeers! In generally, it wasn't very populous. The harsh weather limited agriculture. This actually meant that plagues didn't really impact Sweden to the same extent that they did other countries as it was too sparse with a pocketed population.
Look at Harold Godwinson's name; its oozing norseness! He was actually a descendent from King Canute who united England and Danmark.
By this time England was ruled by a mingled Anglo-Saxon-Viking elite who were culturally mingled.
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. :-)
There'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.”
- 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.