Would England have been more or less relevant over the centuries if it remained under Anglo-Saxon rule...

Would England have been more or less relevant over the centuries if it remained under Anglo-Saxon rule? Would Britain have become as powerful as it did? Would Britain even exist?

Attached: 800px-Flag_of_England.svg.png (800x480, 469)

Are you talking about in the absence of Roman occupation? If so, they wouldn't have developed anywhere near as much culturally. Without that development they would not have become anything like they were. It may eventually exist as a unified country but only through some international intervention like war from the north or east.

>anglo-saxon rule
>the roman occupation

The brainlets on this board.

Attached: 1521814764837.png (796x1082, 94K)

>Are you talking about in the absence of Roman occupation?
No, in the absence of Norman occupation.

England wasn't Anglo-Saxon until after Roman rule.

Small brain - less relevant since its foreign policy would be more oriented towards Scandinavia
Medium brain - as relevant since muh geographic determinism
Large brain - impossible to know
Giant brain - more relevant since Anglo-Saxons were superior to n*Rmans

Henry II, John and Henry VIII introduced hugely significant reforms that had long-lasting social and political ramifications for centuries to come. Slavery was also abolished.

Western Europe was always more relevant than Scandinavia, so the fact that the Normans got England involved with this region can only be a positive as it meant the country became more connected. Conversely, the Anglo-Saxons were much more isolationist. so that alone means England would have remained less relevant in the grand scheme of things.

The Norman invasion was only detrimental to the aristocracy and the peasant class, and even then it was only short-term, By and large, the positives outweigh the negatives.

England would probably be more similar to Denmark or Norway if it wasn't conquered by the Normans.
England only engaged in its wars with Ireland, Scotland, Wales and, above all, France because it was ruled by the French. It was the French elite of England that was set on expansion after conquering England. The Hundred Years' War was just French kings of England trying to conquer their native land. Without the Norman conquest, I doubt England would be placing itself as the rival and foil to France, constantly trying to out-compete it and forging the empire in doing so. The Anglo-Saxons were less expansionist than the Normans.

Without the 1066 French colonization, I'm pretty certain England would've remained as irrelevant as Scandinavian countries and Ireland

>England only engaged in its wars with Ireland, Scotland, Wales and, above all, France because it was ruled by the French. It was the French elite of England that was set on expansion
This.

The Saxons had also fought wars with Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

No
We wouldn't see the english fucking around in france, instead we would see france centralizing and growing in power until they could 1v1 the HRE
The anglos probably wouldn't have fucked around in ireland or scotland either
The most we would see is colonization and probably some shit storm when the reformation rolls in

>Are you talking about in the absence of Roman occupation?

Attached: homer-simpson-brain.jpg (320x240, 22K)

Probably less and I'm an angloboo
The norman conquest made england look more to France and the broader continent rather than simply scandanavia and the british isles.
Anglo-Saxon england was, contrary to the sentiments on this board, a very sophisticated country but masonry and cavalry for instance existed but were not popular.
The Normans were the most formidable warriors of the era and a profoundly industrious people.
It's hard to argue they were a catalyst for progress and they caused irrevocable damage demographically and culturally but its even harder to argue that England would be more relevant without the invasion

It probably would have been a better place in terms of politics and living standards since Anglo-Saxon leaders were elected instead of inherited. This means no in-fighting and petty squabbles for who has the best claim to the throne and definitely no constant warring with France.

That said, Anglo Saxon England was always under the threat of invasion from snow niggers at any given point and that probably would have continued had the Normans lost. In that sense, the land itself was more secure with Norman rulers.

The norman victory tied england to france
Before that britian was heavily tied with scandinavia

Well, yeah, I never said otherwise.

this, the danelaw and anglo danish lords were still very much a force until william’s harrying of the north. i wonder if they would have culturally assimilated or remained a distinct subculture, or eventually chimped out with danish/norwegian assistance

Most likely.
A large, centralised island nation in the most relevant continent.
The Norman conquest didn't actually have much impact except in linguistics. England already had significant cultural ties to the continent before 1066 and Edward The Confessor had imported lots of Normans into administrative roles.
I think people over-estimate the effect of the Norman invasion and not realise that most of England's success was environmental.
Also technically the Anglo-Saxoms ended up marrying back into nobility.
Saying they're still Norman is like an American saying they're Irish because their great great great grandad's friend's dog was Irish

>positives outweigh the negatives
Except the destruction of the Witan, English saxon law, creation of a french-speaking aristocracy, hundred years war

HYW was when we got to show those damn Frenchies what for, but then we gave up and went home

>Except the destruction of the Witan
It was no longer necessary with the Norman political reforms

>English saxon law
The Normans gave us common law

>creation of a french-speaking aristocracy
Which is the reason for the very language we speak today

>hundred years war
I'll give you that one.

>Norman political reforms
Ah yes the revolutionary concept of feudalism

>What is Parliament

Based on the Anglo-Saxon Witan and started in 1265, 200 years after the Normans invaded

It's hard to say. The Anglo-Saxons were initially isolationists and content to fight amongst themselves in their petty kingdoms but when Alfred took power and began the unification of England we saw a shift from isolationism to imperialism (maybe that's not the right word, English not first language, but opposite of isolationism). Aethelstan, Alfred's grandson, was not an isolationist whatsover. Aethelstan is the one who completed the unification of England but he didn't stop there. He established his influence over Scotland, Wales and parts of Ireland making the kings and petty kings of those regions swear loyalty to him. This is not an isolationist action, it's a very imperialistic and expansionist action. It's worth mentioning that he followed his grandfather's way of expansion. Before Wessexian troops ever entered Mercia Alfred firmly established his control of the kingdom through marriages, oaths and swearings of fealty so that by the time Wessexian troops entered Mercia it's as if it had already been Alfred's for a decade. Aethelstan was doing this same exact process, one could argue he way laying the groundwork for an English invasion of Wales and Scotland. Had the Danes not invaded to interrupt this plan, I'd confidently say Scotland and Wales would have been under English control before 1000AD. But of course the Danes did invade and mess this plan up. I only studied up until Aethelstans death in Uni so beyond that I don't know shit. Obviously in 1066 the Anglo-Saxons didn't own Scotland and Wales so either Aethelstans dream was forgotten, scrapped or postponned until the kingdom could be fully stabilized. That's why it's hard to say. The Danish invasions after Aethelstans death could have put out the flame of ambition and made the Anglo-Saxons abandon imperialist dreams and become isolationists again or it could have just postponned the dream of expansion and one of Godwinsons descendents could have picked it back up. But who knows.

Again, sorry for bad English. It's my 4th language

What, you think the British Empire would have existed with no Norman conquest?

You have incredible knowledge of English history for someone whose first language isn't English

Probably

Not him but it's entirely possible. The Anglo-Saxons were undoubtedly the strongest kingdom in the British Isles and it would have just taken an ambitious king or two to subjugate Wales and Scotland.

Anglo-Saxon England was my major in Uni. I speak Anglo-Saxon but modern English is more difficult

>I speak Anglo-Saxon but modern English is more difficult
hahahah wow

Personally i believe the Anglo-French rivalry was inevitable based on geographical reasons
As Europe developed the two nations would economically compete and this will turn to wars and inevitable age of discovery expansion

Crikey

do you mean great britain or the colonial empire?
first is certainly a possibility, at the very least wales would be a juicy target
as for a colonial empire id say itd be possible

Anglo-Saxon is simple, English has lots of French and Latin in it which is gay and stupid for me

Yeah, but it was established under the reign of Henry III, a Norman descendant.

I think it's fair to say that Norman impacts were initially limited to military only and by the time medieval England was undergoing reform, the Normans were so indistinguishable from the Anglo-Saxons due to intermarriage and assimilation that you couldn't really attribute it to Norman

It would probably be a high-wealth but sparse and irrelevant island like the Scandinavian countries.

Yeah but you can't just call it Norman anymore as Norman is an identity of people from Normandy. It's like attributing US inventions to their Irish or German ancestors

That's fair enough, I suppose. Still, my main point is that it probably wouldn't have come to fruition if not for the Norman invasion centuries earlier.

Germans and Irish were immigrants in the US, not conquerors, which means that had to assimilate

But Normans were conquerors in England, which is why they didn't need to assimilate and which is why the first post-1066 English king to speak English natively was born in 1399, more than three centuries after the conquest

Interesting fact. Due to medieval climate change, England was warmer and so crops and such flourished more which lead to population growth and prosperity.
Many people fail to notice and instead attribute these successes to the Normans
The climate just so happened to change when Normans invaded

Normans did assimilate though. The only ones that didn't were the kings because they held lands in France

That's quite a big assumption

We're dealing with almost 1000 years worth of headcanon in lieu of how things actually happened, quite literally everything we say here is an assumption.

True. Personally i think environmental factors have a bigger influence than human ones

This is true. From King Edward all the way until King Harold Godwinsson England was a medieval utopia with consistently good harvests.

On that note, the reason the Kings of England eventually assimilated was probably due to John losing the Angevin lands.

I believe this is true. While it is the case that kings spoke French as a native language, they could now just as fluently converse in English, furthermore they were more culturally connected to their subjects than to the French who themselves saw a disparity between English and French nobility, particularly in pronunciation, clothing and funnily enough, hair styles. (Ok that last part i seem to recall hearing from a documentary but I'm sorry i can't recall what it was)

Tolkien would be proud

That could be the case, but I subscribe to the notion of William's descendants playing the most vital roles in how England was shaped.

>Tolkien
Wasn't he massively autistic about 1066?

>WHY DIDN'T THEY FUCKING USE HORSES FOR FUCK SAKE?!

Tolkien once dressed up as an Anglo-Saxon warrior and chased his neighbour at night

Is this compliment or bad compliment? I don't know who Tolkein is.

He was the author of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Wow what a stupid man

They're international bestsellers

Fantasy books are gay to me. Why fantasize about what's not real? It's gay.

That's the most retarded thing I've heard on this board all week.

t. gay

Because what's real sucks

t. retard

t. gay retard

Please be bait

Nah, I think the British Empire wouldn't exist with Anglo-Saxons as rulers. Even if they managed to unify all of Britain, they were still a very inward-looking people. They didn't bother with expansion and imperialism like the Normans did.

1066, þe wyrst gear of minum life.

Attached: Darth Vader.jpg (2848x2136, 1.35M)

This. The English already had alliances with Welsh princes. The Welsh assisted the English against the Normans and the Vikings, they had a good thing going in actuality, a bit of a bromance going from Alfred the Great and Rhodri the Great to Harold Godwinson and Bleddyn ap Cynfyn. It wasn't until the Normans invaded the Welsh for raiding them that "England" (Norman England) and Wales became enemies.
The same is the case with the Irish and possibly the Scots. Once the initial Anglo-Saxon conquest had been finalised and the nation of England was created, very little English expansion was seen. The Irish had been just as expansionist as the Anglo-Saxons until 1066, and the Welsh too if you look at Brittany.

>creation of a french-speaking aristocracy
not necessarily a bad thing unless you're part of the previous Anglo-Saxon aristocracy. Outside of the aftermath of the conquest it wouldn't have had any effect on the social mobility or welfare of the average peasant, and it led to an English government which was reoriented towards western rather than northern Europe in foreign policy which led to greater historical relevance

So, would England be viewed as a Scandinavian country today instead of a western European one? That's weird to think.

When it comes to the question of whether the Norman conquest was ultimately good or bad, I suppose it comes down to perspective. Would you rather keep your national identity at the cost of your country being much less relevant throughout history, or become very relevant to history at the cost of your national identity?

I disagree here. The Anglo-Saxons never engaged with war in France. They had zero interest in doing so, it would seem. To assume that they would have requires a leap of faith. I would imagine they would have engaged with even less war in France.

But I also imagine they would have been more isolationist and not as likely to engage in colonisation. Unless some kind of unpredictable change occurred, the Anglo-Saxons would have become a hermit kingdom of mildly heretical Christians, concerning themselves with scripture, art, and internal warfare.

Although Anglo-Saxon England was very relevant, the British Isles would have been less relevant if they stayed in power

The unification of the island under england would probably have not happened.

Saxon england was prosperous but isolated, they would also probably not become protestant. No 100 years war either.

So what do you disagree with exactly?

I look at Japan as an example of a country that was primarily isolationist for the majority of its existence. I guess an Anglo-Saxon England would be similar to that, except maybe not as aggressive to outsiders.

I must have (You)'d the wrong post

That's because you're uneducated and know nothing about Anglo-Saxon England.

He's half right. England wouldn't have been as relevant if it remained under the Anglo-Saxons. As irrelevant as Scandinavia? Probably not.

The Normans didn't just copypasta French systems on England. Sure there was Feudalism, but THings continued in the local level and a Parliament was established by the Normans which is their adoption of the Witan.

Maybe the Anglo-Saxons would have made Scandinavia relevant.

Its a compliment. I know this isnt Veeky Forums but how do you not know who Tolkien was?

Just like you, he found the many foreign Lian words in english a mistake and was a massive anglosaxonboo

*loan

No it would be closer to Germany and the Netherlands than Scandinavia

They'd probably understand eachother with the dutch

The Anglo Saxons were pretty advanced and had a pretty high population. They weren't on the level of Frankish successor kingdoms or byzantines, but they were thriving culturally