What you can learn about medieval Europe if you focus on peasants
laphamsquarterly.org
laphamsquarterly.org
The popular view of all-powerful, romantic nobility and dumb peasants also comes from this mischaracterization. In reality, the period's instability after the Roman empire fell really made kings and nobles more akin to local warlords playing at Roman customs, and there were exceptions to the rule like prosperous city-republics. Peasant life was also sophisticated, rational, and complex, completely attuned to local weather and crop cycles. A good blog series goes into detail about this here:
https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...
The important thing to realize is that no matter how difficult it was, how long ago it occurred, and how foreign the customs were for a certain period, people are still people. They have emotions, worries, good days, and struggles. If you take things in perspective and empathize with the people that preceded you on this world, history will lose a lot of its mystery.
This seemed to start because of the "compromise" status of Venice and Rome after Charlemagne's conquest of Italy; after that the floodgates opened and other cities tried to get away with it. A thousand years later, the kings have finally been kicked out (mostly).
We are happy to talk about Ancient Greece, but when it comes to talking about the influence of the Umayyad Caliphate in Europe, then people quickly become aggressive and start saying "no, no, no, we don't talk about this here".
Why? because the Islamic civilization were our rivals and acknowledging that we owe them our modern lifestyle is highly taboo, especially among people with Conservative views.
I am talking about the 12th century.
♦♦♦
The bibliography used to kickstart the Reinassance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_translations_of_the_12th...
♦♦♦
Paper, and by extension, scalable libraries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Paper_in_Euro...
> The oldest known paper document in Europe is the Mozarab Missal of Silos from the 11th century, probably using paper made in the Islamic part of the Iberian Peninsula.
No paper = Books made out of parchements = Prohibitively expensive books = No libraries = No scholars
♦♦♦
"Our" modern higher education system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijazah
> George Makdisi, professor of oriental studies, theorized that the ijazah was the origin of the university academic degree as well as the doctorate.
No universities = No doctorates = No advisors = No science
♦♦♦
"Our" modern astronomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonsine_tables
> The Alfonsine tables were the most popular astronomical tables in Europe and updated versions were regularly produced for three hundred years. Nicolaus Copernicus, known as the father of modern astronomy, bought a copy while at the University of Cracow.
No astronomic data = No modern astronomy = No laws of gravity and motion = No physics
♦♦♦
"Our" philosophy that is tolerant to science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism#Early_Scholastic...
> This period saw the beginning of the 'rediscovery' of many Greek works which had been lost to the Latin West. As early as the 10th century, scholars in Spain had begun to gather translated texts and, in the latter half of that century, began transmitting them to the rest of Europe.
No tolerance to science = Scientists harassed by the church = Science becomes impossible to conduct.
♦♦♦
"Our" understanding of optics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law
> The law eventually named after Snell was first accurately described by the Persian scientist Ibn Sahl at the Baghdad court in 984. In the manuscript On Burning Mirrors and Lenses, Sahl used the law to derive lens shapes that focus light with no geometric aberrations. The law was rediscovered by Thomas Harriot in 1602.
No optics = No astronomy = No age of exploration
No optics = No microscopes = No biology = No modern medicine
♦♦♦
... And the list goes on, and on, and on. The Reinassance is the legacy of the Islamic civilization. It is overwhelmingly clear. Your school teachers lied to you, and their teachers lied to them.
Don't believe me? Take a look here: https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/extrema.php
The first doctoral advisors were Islamic. Every known scientist is somehow a student of them. Follow the chain of doctoral advisors and learn the unavoidable truth.
Enjoy your new, more historically accurate perspective on the world. Downvote all you want, eventually your descendants will learn the truth in school one day anyways, when we are done undoing the revisionism.
In general, if you want people believing you, try not to use throwaway accounts and pre-typed copy-pasted answers, but instead engage in dialogue.
Have you ever asked yourself "how was paper adopted in europe?", "where do universities come from?", "what was needed in order to be a scientist in the middle ages?", if you haven't, try to find an answer to those questions.
There's a eurocentric answer to those questions, and a non-eurocentric answer. The eurocentric answer either ignores or downplays the importance of all the influence coming from the Islamic civilization through the Iberian peninsula and Italic peninsula.
It was bloody all around, because there wasn't a whole lot of stability. But this didn't stop these different cultures from exchanging knowledge and goods as well, as Islamic empires, Italian merchants, and other players all had high levels of development and innovations that were quickly copied. I'm sure the sacking of Constantinople did lead to an influx of knowledge into Western Europe, but it was all these different factors that led to the appearance of the Renaissance.
It was an exceptional event. Most wars in that era were nobles fighting over thrones; the Islamic invasions were a bit more intense than that in that they were from a totally separate religio-cultural tradition and would overturn the entire power structure and ultimately even push peasants to convert.
In a war between kings of the same religion, the priests/imams and lower nobles (i.e. intellectual and writer classes) could potentially stay in their posts even as the front line moved over them. Not so true when it's an entirely different religion.
The funny thing is that Ottomans saw this whole event through a very different lens. They didn’t call themselves the Ottomans or Turks. They, along with their predecessors The Sultanate of Rum (Rome), and the Seljuks, considered themselves the continuation of the Roman Empire.
After the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II crowned himself the Caesar of the Roman Empire.
Turks waged a war of expansion to reclaim the Roman Empire for themselves. The religion was just a side effect.
They claimed these titles because they intended to or did conquer Roman territory, and it was a prestigious title.
See https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/59352/did-the-se... for a reasonable discussion.
Yeah I guess the calling it a cultural continuation of Rome is wrong.
It's kind of hard to describe this in words because "culture" implies so many things like language, customs, and religion. The "Turkish Rome" didn't really inherit any of those traits.
However, while this probably originated just as a manufactured claim, a casus belli for the Roman lands, over time it seems to have still evolved into something a bit more. Owning Constantinople didn't make people Roman in terms of culture, but it did make them an empire. Sulatane of Rum existed next to Rome for many years and seems to have considered itself a "better Rome than existing Rome".
Makes me think of a parallel with the Holy Roman Empire, which similarly clung on to the title, but not the culture of Rome.
Well yes, that's how feudal systems work. If you take over a country, you get to have its titles. This is how e.g. an English king could conquer Scotland and crown himself king of Scotland. It doesn't mean he always identified as Scottish.
The language "reclaim the Roman empire" is really a stretch since it implies that the Ottomans had some sort of self-image as the natural heirs to Rome before they took Constantinople. Is there any evidence for this?
Why would they need to conquer Constantinople to do this, given that the Byzantines weren't trying to conquer, y'know, actual Rome?
I'm not saying you're wrong. People come up with lots of rationales for wars. And claiming historical right is a popular one, but that goes alongside other motivations as well.
My outside-view assumption would be that this is modern-day politically-motivated interpretation. These days, progressives rules the universities and the history departments. Therefore, they want to advance progressive goals. The see Muslims as a victim class, which means they don't want Islam to be seen in a negative light. Therefore, they would want to avoid historical interpretations wherein Muslims are conquering for self-understood religious reasons like ISIS did so recently. So I think they'd come up with something like, "Oh no, the Ottomans just wanted to reclaim their Rome."
Any time you read history you need to take into account the incentives faced by the people writing it.
In any case, when I refer to Islamic invasions I'm referring to the whole string of them going back to the Abbasid Caliphate - the conquest of Egypt, Arabia, Persia, all of north Africa, Spain, India, etc etc motivated by a self-declared doctrine of holy war (itself used for political ends by individual rulers, of course). I see Constantinople 1453 as just one small episode in this 1400-year story.
> After the Roman Empire fell, its knowledge, writings, and customs were somewhat preserved in Western Europe, but their real preservation and translation occurred in the Byzantine Empire
This is, of course, because the 'Byzantine' Empire was the Roman Empire, and continued to operate as such for almost a millennia after its loss of territories in the West, some of which it regained and lost again during that time.
> and Islamic world.
Many, many texts were lost and destroyed during the very violent Muslim conquests. It wasn't until much later that mostly ex-Roman and ex-Persian subjects began reviving learning from what had survived.
> hen in the 15th century the lifestyle, innovations, and preserved writings from these places and others as far as China gained traction in Europe again.
An important factor in this was the threatened, and then eventual, destruction of the Roman capital, Constantinople. Learned scholars fled as refugees to the west, bringing their books with them. Without the Turks destroying what was left of the Roman Empire, there might have been no Renaissance.
It’s a shame that outside of historical circles and the well read nobody knows who Charlemagne is, or they know he was a person but have no idea what he did. To me the “Dark Ages” are just as, if not more, fascinating that the Imperial era of Rome. I also do think that (Dark Ages) is a good term if applied a little earlier to right after the fall of Rome until the rise of Charlemagne.
Except for all the French, and neighbouring French-speaking countries... (and probably other European countries, but I wasn't exposed to their education system).
Of course not everyone knows what he did. Most people aren't all that interested in history. You could say the same thing about most historical figures. As a quick guess Julius Caesar, Napoleon and Hitler are the most obvious of a pretty short list of counterexamples that are so well-known that almost everybody has at least some idea of what they did. Even that is going to be pretty limited: I suppose a lot of people here in Belgium are aware of Caesar because he came here to conquer, and provides the oldest written sources of our regions. But not a lot of people are aware of his role in the end of the Roman Republic.
Pepin of Heristal was the most powerful man of Austrasia, from one of the most powerful families in the Frankish world (descended from Rhenan Frankish royalty). His ancestry includes extremely prestigious bishops and lords.
There's nothing about him that screams "nobody".
The Dark Ages are from ~500AD to ~900AD and as a term were first used in the 14th century. I don't know how else you would describe a period in which population was reduced to less than a quarter of what it had been at the peak of the Pax Romana.
Wikipedia agrees but I am certainly no expert in this:
The "Dark Ages" is a historical periodization traditionally referring to the Early Middle Ages or Middle Ages, that asserts that a demographic, cultural, and economic deterioration occurred in Western Europe following the decline of the Roman Empire.[1][2]
Petrarch, who conceived the idea of a European "Dark Age". From Cycle of Famous Men and Women, Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla, c. 1450 The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's "darkness" (lack of records) with earlier and later periods of "light" (abundance of records).
Petrarch, the 14th C dude you're referencing, believed in a two age history demarcated by the fall of Rome and that he was living in dark, post-Roman world. The three age history of light-dark-light that would give us the term middle ages/medieval wouldn't come til the 15th C with Bruni when he tacked a modern age onto Petrarch's scheme.
The dark ages is not a synonym for the medieval era. It's a sub-division of the medieval era - one of three.
The dark ages is a period after the fall of Rome. It's named for the fact that very little written output was produced during this time. It ran about 500-1000AD.
The high middle ages came after, and there was a lot more writing going on during this period. This was about 1000-1250AD. When people think 'medieval', this is usually what they think, if not the late medieval period (the third sub-division).
Then came the Renaissance, then the modern period.
The dark ages actually were pretty dark, mysterious, and primitive, as evidenced by the very low intellectual and cultural output during these years, low populations, low levels of social organization, and so on. Generally, the good parts and achievements of the medieval period that you're gesturing at were during the high and late parts.
There was international trade and military activity ranging from Scandinavian societies raiding into Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as the Crusades starting up near the end of this period. The Christian church of the Roman empire, otherwise known as the Roman Catholic Church, was alive and well, becoming one of the most powerful institutions for the next several hundred centuries. "Dark Ages" is an antiquated term - think transition, not Camelot (although the legend did originate in this period). It is often called the "Early Middle Ages" these days.
No kidding! As documented in the Hyperion Series, by Dan Simmons, I suppose.
Same for achievements like silver mining or iron plows. Obviously many individual things happened.
It's a statistical trend where this period is lower than both those before and after.
Here's a chart if you like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_Output_of_Manusc...
Actually, it originally was. The "Dark Ages" was coined during the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance to refer to the entire period following the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of "modern" knowledge. It's only recently (20th century) that the term is shrunk back to refer to the Early Medieval period.
> It's named for the fact that very little written output was produced during this time. It ran about 500-1000AD.
There's your problem. The drought of manuscripts runs from about 500-800; the Carolingian Renaissance (and Albert the Great's concomitant reforms) brings back the manuscript production.
If you don't like the term, we could call it "the age where total population, urbanization levels, manuscript production, trade volume, lead pollution, [placeholder for other convenient or inconvenient metric] in Europe[1] stayed far below peak Roman levels" - but that's kind of a mouthful...
[1] 'western' Europe in particular, but some of the effects are visible at continental scale, or even globally
https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-tel...
is a good post about that, and the Dark Ages myth. There's a lot of propaganda from this time period that people still believe today because it was used to justify a lot of the European nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
It might have killed over 8 million people.
I think among the most striking examples here aside from the obvious one (Holocaust), is Belgium, because it just seems to slip under a lot of people's radar. Belgium has an evil, brutal and vile history, especially in relation to its colonialism and the included human rights violations which in my opinion are massive compared to the country's size and geopolitical abilities.
Belgian citizens are oblivious, but at least slowly "waking up" as the BBC calls it [1]. To be clear, it's the system and leadership that I struggle with. Not the citizens.
To this day, Belgian schools do not in any way teach that Belgium is solely responsible for the Rwandan genocide in the early 90s. It was the sick Belgians who separated fake ethnic groups in Rwanda in the first place, depending on how ethnically white the shape of your skull appeared. And later they used these synthetic groups for political purposes and control.
The Belgian government/leadership has a long history of inhuman behavior, violence and murder that goes nearly completely ignored within Europe and it sort of rubs me the wrong way. Guy Verhofstadt said 'I beg your pardon' once in Rwanda, and that was basically it. 800,000+ are dead and Belgium says 'sorry' once. What?
Belgium isn't about chocolate, it's a country which is completely fine with not teaching its citizens about the common practice of chopping off children's arms for not meeting labor goals for the day. When Belgians travel to places like Rwanda they are dumbfounded by the realities of their own history.
And those people want to tell China something about human rights, yelling from some tower in Brussels. It's breathtaking.
We are not taught about the atrocities of our ancestors and how the Greece the 'mother of all cultures' was infact filled with traitors and slavery, especially Athens.
Our 'great' past is ,beat, almost literally into our heads. We named one of the worst warlords in history 'Great' and instead of talking about the slavery and death he brought, we call it 'liberation of the barbarians', with 'barbarians' meaning all who are not greeks (::winky face::).
When it came to the Romans, we were still the winners because conquered them with our culture.
The worst of all is that this becomes so ingrown, even in young people, that for many it becomes a corner-store of their identity; any critical discussion is met with attacks because it literally shakes the foundation of their world.
There were two distinct tribes in Rwanda, the Tutsi and the Hutus. It's quite common for some Africans to identify by tribe.
There is a great/depressing book by a UN general who was in Rwanda at the time. [0]
> human rights violations
To be pedantic, there were no human rights violations as there was really no legal concept of human rights at all. The what-is-now Chinese were slaughtering each other long before any White Man set foot in the place.
[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shake-Hands-Devil-Failure-Humanity/...
Edit: It is mentioned a bit in the article about the Hamite theory (a racist theory that formed the academic legitimization for many colonial decisions in Africa): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Hutu,_Tutsi_and_Twa
and it's also mentioned in the articles on the two tribes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutu#Origins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutsi#Origins_and_classificati...
Not only is this factually untrue - perhaps Belgians highlighted ethnic divisions between the two Bantu peoples, but they did not create them - how about you leave the peoples of Rwanda some agency? Nobody made them commit genocide. They are their own people, with their own culture, attitudes, beliefs, and minds. Sometimes they do good things and sometimes they do bad things. In the 1990s they committed a genocide, as many if not most other peoples in history have.
They did this for their own reasons, not because genius Belgians manipulated them into it. They did it because they're people just like you or me. Pretending that Belgians are uniquely awful and responsible for the actions of other people is just a different kind of paternal superiority.
Inequality and discrimination have long term consequences.
Basically, Belgians decided that one group was superior and cooperated with them. The other group was deemed inferior and treated rather badly. A lot of resentment followed. The groups were pre-existent, the level of resentment was not.
The genocide did not happened out of nowhere, the two groups hated each other ever since and committed small scale atrocities against each other after. Which created situation that was easy to be exploited in Rwandan internal power struggles.
So, it is combination of factors. The culture, attitudes and beliefs that caused genocide were the one growing from colonial system. The minds and decisions were Rwandans.
Making the cackhanded pre-1970s Belgian administration "solely" responsible for the 1993 genocide is an exceptionally unorthodox (i.e. stupid) hot take, so it's no wonder that no school is teaching it.
That's comparable to claiming the the US, British and French are "solely" responsible for the Holocaust because they forced Germany to sign the Versailles treaty. Yes it might have played a role, but it's clearly ridiculous.
It's true that the Belgian colonial history slips under many people's radar, and I agree that it should be discussed more. Too few people know that more people died under Belgian colonialism than e.g. in the holocaust. (I guess that people historically were less bothered by the deaths of so called "primitive bush people" than "educated white europeans")
> Belgian schools do not in any way teach that Belgium is solely responsible for the Rwandan genocide
I disagree with this claim. Colonial history was taught in my school and iirc it's part of the obligatory high school curriculum. That being said, this was not the case some decades back, and awareness is definitely not on par with e.g. Germany. For example, there exists a "Leopold II street" not too far from me. Imagine having "Adolf Hitler street" as the main street trough a German town. Especially among the older generation there are still people of the "we also did a lot of good in the congo" opinion.
I feel that a lot of belgians kind of feel disconnected from the colonial atrocities. The colonies were a long way from belgium, and few people were involved or even knew about what happened there, far from actually going there. What further complicates the matter is that the during the initial (and most cruel) colonial period, the colony was not actually property of Belgium, but of the belgian king. Hence the government and some people feel like they had little to do with it. These reasons do not justify the ignorance, but do in some part explain it.
On a similar note, you claim that Belgium is "solely responsible for the Rwandan genocide", but said genocide occurred over 30 years after the Belgians had left. I'm certainly no expert on the matter, it's possible that this is an indirect result of the colonial administration, but I find the "solely" a bit reductionist. Neighbouring tribes were killing opposing tribes before the europeans arrived. (Although I'm sure the colonizers exacerbated this to play divida et concera). I'm not saying the belgians are not to blame, just saying that this is a nuanced discussion.
> To be clear, it's the system and leadership that I struggle with. Not the citizens.
This is indeed an important distinction to make. I feel that making sweeping claims like "Belgium has an evil, brutal and vile history" will cause people to feel attacked. It's counterproductive and will make people deny your real points. "I am Belgian and did not commit crimes so I guess his broader statements are false too"
> Belgium isn't about chocolate, it's a country which is completely fine with not teaching its citizens about the common practice of chopping off children's
I disagree. Belgium _is_ about chocolate. But it's also about a lot of different things. The history _is_ taught. But a country is not defined by the bloody pages in it's history book. Just like germany is not defined by the nazi's or americans are not defined by their genocide of the natives. I feel the past is too complicated to allow general statements about "country X" is good and "country Y" is bad.
> And those people want to tell China something about human rights, yelling from some tower in Brussels. It's breathtaking.
In contrary, the crimes of our forefathers just only fuel us to fight harder for our fellow humans.
It would be wise to point at the real perpetrators such as Leopold II and other financiers and executors involved rather than 'Belgians'.
But I disagree with you on the other spectrum. Mostly how the argument is presented. "If only those nasty Europeans never existed, the world would be at peace". Yea, no. Every civilization, whether Asian, Persian, African, Pacific Islands, pre-European native Americans and everyone else I missed were perfectly cool with destroying some other tribe/clan/city. Hell, Hawaiians were a very warrior centric culture before Cook arrived.
We suck as humans. Doesn't matter where you were born, you suck because you're a human. No one's hands are clean. Pointing at one culture as the cause of the world's problems doesn't solve much and just spins the wheels of hate and war some more. And hey, dont get me wrong, when Merkel has negative things to say about how Poland and the US conducts themselves, the first thing I always think of, "Really chancellor kraut?". It is laughable when Brussels or Berlin or London or DC wants to take the moral high road. However, at some point we have to cut our losses and just quit being douches to each other or we are forever doomed to repeat the bad parts to history.
My hands are clean. I washed them.
On a more serious note tho, I particularly don't like the mixing of people and time. For example: There is no point in accusing German people for the war crimes of WWII when they were born decades later.
It does make a bit more sense when you look at current (war) crimes of your country (or collective in general) tho, but the extent to which you are to blame is probably still very very low (but not zero) and gets lower the bigger the collective is, if you have (close to) no political power.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Rim-Sterling-Seagrave/dp/039914...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_...
I've had heated debates with friends just trying to explain that people are people, and they do mean things to each other. Sometimes. Often, actually.
(Similar to other types of condescension-masquerading-as-respect, such as "women are too pure to debate politics".)
The funny thing is that the person who expressed this usually strongly believes it is genuine respect, and will get outraged if you suggest otherwise. Like, is there a higher compliment than to be treated like a child? But at the same time, we do not consider children competent, and we feel comfortable making the important decisions for them.
What they did to the Congo is sickening.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/11/irish-presiden...
Well, depends on the Europeans. Some of us Europeans have been victims, rather than perpetators of colonialism for example...
I don’t want to minimize the atrocities of the Belgian Congo. But the Belgians are not and can never be held “solely responsible” for the Rwandan genocide. The agency, and the moral responsibility, for that genocide rests primarily in the hands that gripped those machetes and used them to gruesomely murder and dismember their neighbors, and those hands were not Belgian.
Everyone who has ever committed an atrocity had some historic excuse for it. The lesson of the 20th century is that no historical excuse or context provides a justification for mass murder. Belgians have committed horrible atrocities in the past, but that doesn’t justify or somehow transfer the blame for the atrocities committed by the descendants of their victims against each other.
One of the most interesting things I find about ancient history is just how _alien_ the culture must've been. The problem with a lot of historical texts is no one thinks to write down what to them is mundane or ordinary and it doesn't take long until the mundane becomes almost incomprehensible.
Thing is, you don't need to go back thousands of years to see this. Even 100 years ago you find totally different attitudes (eg the willingness to be conscripted and to volunteer to go to war).
Go back a little further and you find the culture shock to Victorian England with Pacific cultures.
My point is it can be a bit of a trap to take too much for granted in terms of a human baseline.
Despite their strange practices, this is what is normal to them, and they aren't any less human whether in the form of perfection or fallibility. They worry about the future, love their families, have wants and ambitions, get angry sometimes, and have their biases. We would find them to be comically relatable to your life, just in a different form.
I think the answer is that both things are true. Killing, abusing and enslaving people was always wrong. But the cognitive basis for those acts can be more mundane than pure evil.
I think as a society we experience a larger version of the free will problem. Our future path is tightly bound to our history and culture. We do not have complete free will. Breaking away an asserting agency can be be both an opportunity and a risk. Nelson Mandela broke with history but so did Hitler and Stalin. We shouldn't assume that we are the former.
It's impossible, so it doesn't matter if it's fair: we’re not transporting reward or punishment back to people in the past.
Our decisions about who from the past we hold up as role models, and how, isn't about fairness to people in the past, it's about fairness to people in the present.
What do you mean by that? What does breaking with history means?
All three were subjectively sure they are righteous and in the right.
Of course late feudalism became extra intolerable once kings stopped protecting peasants and started pulling them into new wars instead.
Not to mention, (modern) states offer much more than military security. They offer healthcare, food, care for the disabled, infrastructure, education, and many other services. And, especially in smaller nations or at local levels (think town, not US state), there is quite a lot of real democratic power, certainly incomparable to the realities of serfdom.
Okay yeah that’s not de jure feudalism. Inching closer and closer to de facto, though.
Edit: to say this again, because apparently it’s needed. I am not in favor of feudalism.
I disagree. We overestimate the freedom we have and underestimate theirs.
For example they had much more free time than we do today. We on the other hand are still "free" to choose where to work (as long as we aren't in poverty, which is unfortunately untrue for too many, with no prospect of future change), but the workplace is as undemocratic as it gets.
Forget our (tech) golden workplaces. Most people spend 2/3 of their lives in authoritarian workplaces that they can't leave because they need their shit job to survive.
Where is the practical difference with being a serf?
Even in the west, most of us don't live a democracy, except for the minority of their time.
I can’t believe I need to explain this, but democracy is nothing like feudalism.
There are better ways to critique our current system without such hamfisted comparisons.
In all areas they had fewer rights and more obligations than freemen; there’s a reason why being reduced to serfdom was often done out of economic need, and why freedom often had to be bought.
0 - Some types of serfs were literally slaves and could be traded as such. See Russian Kholops.
I would also bet that if the peasants had a sufficiently thorough history, they would probably hate first peasants to have entered into serfdom for protection. While that might have seemed like a good idea right after the fall of Rome, it probably looked less good a few centuries later.
Also it's worth pointing out that literacy rates across Europe plummeted as the Roman empire fell apart. I read that even Charlemagne "struggled with his letters".
Have you read the article? I can tell you it's a correct summary of an established views on medieval society, such as it is.
A common misconception is to view medieval serfs, free peasants and wage laborers as "oppressed masses" from a modern perspective, colored with romantic glasses from 19th century tales such as Robin Hood or Ivan Hoe. That's just incorrect.
Sure, there were plenty of peasant revolts (Jacquerie - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquerie) against the nobility. Both those were generally not against the foundations of the societal system from which manor lords derived their authority, but rather prompted by the precarious living conditions these groups found themselves in.
People didn't revolt because they felt "oppressed or terrorized", they would revolt when they got too hungry or felt unprotected.
The Jacquerie happened against the backdrop of the 100 years war. Warbands consisting of unemployed English, German and Spanish mercenaries roamed the French countryside. French nobility was pretty much powerless to do anything at the time. That's what prompted the lower classes, who felt unprotected, to engage in a violent uprising.
Most of the times, the legal framework which governed the relationship with a manor lord wasn't questioned since that's what provided a sense of stability and order.
Also, the "medieval age" spans 1.000 years if you use commonly accepted termini ab quo / ad quem (476 - 1453). But manorialism itself extended well into the pre-modern age up to the French Revolution and, depending on where you lived, well into the 19th century (Russia, serfdom was abolished in 1861). It certainly wasn't a catch all system: there were many variations and adaptations.
Because the same argument could be made about literally any authority. Whether it's an autocratic rule, a modern democratic state, a feudal lord or a mob boss.
What makes all the difference is how "good" gets defined. You, I and the next person will likely have differing opinions on that. And I'm pretty sure that the medieval precariat and nobility will have an entirely different perspective on that as well.
Medieval times weren't lawless times either. The legal framework at the time was based on customary laws which eventually evolved and coalesced into the formal legal systems we know today. Common Law as it first originated in England is rooted in such customary laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customary_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manorial_court
As far as "terror" is concerned: the notion of "human rights" is quite modern and only started to become widespread during the late 18th century. Torture, corporal and capital punishment were par for the course in severe criminal cases.
These weren't times where one enjoyed the same freedoms as one does today either. But that doesn't mean people were constantly and randomly subjected to horrible fates at the slightest perceived transgression either.
Moreover, rather inhumane methods of asserting and delivering justice rooted in Frankish, Germanic, Saxon or Nordic traditions were rooted out rather early. Trial by ordeal was abolished by the Church in the early 13th century, for instance.
As I said, we're discussing over 1.000 years of history. And depending on the time and location, you'd be more or less at risk of finding yourself at the tentative mercy of authority such as it ruled.
Feudalism was largely rooted in the Late Roman fiscal system that incentivized industrialized agriculture with large estates and self-sufficient villas in Gaul and Britain. When imperial authority failed they became political forces, and the regional military forces started acting out as peace-breaker and eventually became sovereign polities (the so-called barbarian kingdoms).
Nowadays historians have become increasingly suspicious of Late Roman land-owners, as there are quite a few known cases of families switching from seemingly Latin names to seemingly Germanic ones.
The Medieval castle's just a villa with a military streak. The purpose isn't as much pillaging the direct surroundings as it is to protect your assets from the next land-owner over.
Peasants did not had all that much say in that choice.
And I’m sure the first peasants had some choice. Later ones ... not so much.
Peasants weren't exactly property like for example in the US, but in practice were bought and sold with the land (number of people living on a land was a large part of valuation) and could be mistreated or killed with no legal recourse.
Peasants, as opposed to slaves, were integrated into the civil society, although on very disadvantageous terms. Even on private land, they had their own judicial "councils" (look up 'sąd dominialny'), of course entirely on the mercy of the lord in practice. (There was also the state/crown land with marginally better conditions.)
All this didn't stray qualitatively from the broad Eastern European baseline. A Russian, Prussian or Hungarian noble wouldn't get punished for killing his peasant either, unless he'd seriously screw up his relations with the local regime. A French one pre-1789 would have to play his cards right. PLC got much flak in the period for peasant oppression because 1. it often didn't have raw political power to distract from it 2. there was the perceived hypocrisy in its political system, very loud about liberty, equality etc.
Except as I told, they did not made that choice. People who could raise the castle decided by themselves where they want castles. Castles were military and administrative buildings for actual powers.
You get to rule that land in exchange for set days of military service for king and in exchange of ensuring taxes are collected. Peasants opinions were not important.
> And I’m sure the first peasants had some choice. Later ones ... not so much.
Why are you sure?
I believe the main offering was pain. Submission was a good way to avoid it, and peasants were not stupid enough to pass on it.
On the other hand, our definition makes it look like the relation was consensual, and a good deal for everyone involved.
The purpose of the article, as I read it, is to identify that this claim was written into history by the nobility.
Bret Devereaux, for one, constantly reiterates on his (awesome) blog you linked that people in the past really did often act, relate, and believe very differently than we do.
Anachronism is a trap just as much as romanticism, only from the opposite extreme.
-L.P. Hartley
Try watching old movies, something from before WW2. The scripts and the acting aren't just different because of tech, but because the people are different. The similarities, usually in the vices and not the virtues, are eye opening too.
Now that 'drift' from our reality continues all the way into the past, sometimes with violent changes, sometimes more slowly.
It's not to say that the rest of The Middle Ages was particularly innovative, but The Dark Ages were the The Middle Ages of The Middle Ages.
Well, not that wrong, as the "transition from Roman imperial rule" (in the Western part of the empire) was followed by huge decline in government, standards of living, safety, and so on, that lasted many centuries.
(There's a recent trend to downplay this, as there was a trend to overplay how dark the dark ages where in the past. But if one can see through the temporal trends in the historical discipline, they can also see that those times were bad, and the numbers and facts support this).
No one lives there.
Then who is your lord?
We don't have a lord.
What?!
I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as sort-of-executive officer for the week ... But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting...by a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs...but by a two thirds majority, in the case of more major...
Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Order, eh? Who does he think he is?
I am your king!
Well I didn't vote for you.
You don't vote for kings!
How'd you become king, then?
The Lady of the Lake,... her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king!
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Be quiet!
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Shut up!
I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
Shut up! Will you shut up?!
Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Shut up!
Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP, HELP, I'M BEING REPRESSED!
BLOODY PEASANT!!
They also seem useful to contrast the American / protestant view of work as the path to salvation with the European / catholic view of work as something pitiful
EDIT: See e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the...
For a modern review see Laborem Exercens: http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/do....
Hearty, independent farmers, strong communitarian values, some degree of independence, faith and fealty are to be admired as virtuous, a form of 'working nobility'.
I don't think the contrasting view of them as 'lowly' has anything to do with faith or religion but rather just a measure of perspective in culture. Ancient world vs Newer World.
My grandparents were farmers, and were amazing people. I never worried about telling people that in North America. In many other parts of the world, it's the equivalent of saying "my grandparents were illiterate, stupid, servile, serfs".
In many parts of the world, a few generations ago it was either 'Rich and Powerful' or 'a Stupid, Servile, Plebe' and there really wasn't much in between, and that to have Money, Wealth and Power was to be something inherently admirable in and of itself.
I think there's still more to understand re: "cultural view towards people" (the dynamics behind those views) in relation to a point that's central to the Catholic ethos operative then and now: Christ crucified, the power of God and the wisdom of God (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:18-31).
> That... doesn't make a lot of sense, at least on face value. In the Protestant view, your work (human effort) has no effect on your salvation. In the Catholic view, it has a lot to do with it.
I think he got it wrong. IIRC, the "Protestant work ethic" comes from a belief one's work ethic and success is proof of salivation, not the cause of it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic:
> Since it was impossible to know who was predestined, the notion developed that it might be possible to discern that a person was elect (predestined) by observing their way of life. Hard work and frugality were thought to be two important consequences of being one of the elect. Protestants were thus attracted to these qualities and supposed to strive for reaching them.
>Is this a British centric view of history? It seems very one sided... reply
With that quote.
This phrase:
>In some cases, the superiority of English archives stems from the more careful record-keeping of its administrators, but, in most cases, it has been a matter of survival through the centuries
Look at the words and order in which they appear "superiority", "careful record-keeping of its administrators". Starting from the lesser important cause to the main one, luck.
In fact what it's saying is:
> We can especially study peasants in England because the archives there are especially full, stemming from the simply fact that they survived through time, whereas in many other places they didn't due to many diverse factors"
It goes on on the following phrase:
> Thanks to a strong legal system, a relatively stable social order, and a hefty dose of luck, England’s medieval archives have survived especially well.
Again the wording and the order, luck is the last item, although in the writer's defence, they wrote "hefty dose of luck". Nonetheless, when you read that phrase the first thing that is imprinted is the "strong legal system", "relative stable social order", and lastly luck no matter how hefty.
And this is proved by the following remarks about how in France and Scotland a presumably high number of documents were lost, which invalidates the supposed "careful record-keeping" being a relevant reason. There's other examples where sacks, destruction or natural phenomena destroyed complete archives of many states, in Europe and elsewhere.
This is not to say that the conclusions of the article are wrong or that in fact English book keeping wasn't good or even better than any of the other mentioned here, in some, a few, many or all cases, it's just the way it's written.
*edit formatting
Anyway, I just found it ironic in the context and I still see it as, consciously or not, that idea is projected by the choice of their words, specially given it's in written form, if this were two blokes talking to each other it would be different - and there's nothing wrong with it either way, plus, I can be wrong, which is fine too - the same way I don't want thought police for me I don't want it for anyone else either.
Weber points out that even though there were always wealthy classes all over the world - he is quite eclectic and treats ancient India, Babylon, China and Japan - modern capitalism and earning money for the sake of earning money, not for enjoying resulting luxuries, is Protestant in nature.
I am not an expert on Catholic viewpoint, but many religions (other than Calvinism as Weber sees it) tend to see wealth as a hindrance to salvation - e.g. camel through the eye of the needle etc. But the doctrine of karma etc. do tend to emphasize work for work's sake. So I am not sure I completely agree with Weber (he has works on Hinduism, Judaism etc. which are also insightful and unique takes on religion).
> Andersen et al found that the location monasteries of the Catholic Order of Cistercians, and specifically their density, highly correlated to this work ethic in later centuries;[18] ninety percent of these monasteries were founded before the year 1300 AD. Joseph Henrich found that this correlation extends right up to the twenty-first century.[19]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic#Criticis...
I actually don't think they had it bad. Sure, they worked very hard, but that was their life. The good part is that they were fully self-reliant. They had food, were able to protect themselves, were able to fix anything that was broken, they had a strong community with the other farmers in the neighborhood. In rough times, I think this is very valuable.
I'm sure they didn't want to become knights and die in some war. Just because the scholars looked down on them, didn't mean they looked down on themselves, or were all stupid. Because back then you didn't have as much chances to study, I'm sure the intelligence of farmers was very diverse. About 50% of my cousins have a university degree, and most of the rest bachelor. So our genes can't be that stupid ;).
History told only from the winner's point of view is what makes a lot of people not know that the US lost Vietnam war.
Our generation is a bit worse than the previous ones in terms of how we preserve our culture and media. Digital media is way hard to preserve for posterity. That is why I think preserving geocities is so important. Long live the work made by archive.org and project gutenberg; they really deserve our respect.
>”... told only from the winner's point of view is what makes a lot of people not know that the US lost Vietnam war.”
This is confusing. VN winning means people don’t understand the US losing? Or VN wining meant they wanted others to believe the US won the war? Or the US actually lost but never the less your assertion doesn’t apply?
You have to look beyond the war. VN is doing well now, but overall the US is far richer and more powerful. So they are the "winner" in that sense and can project their view accordingly.
How common is that belief on a whole?
In Vietnam or China, it's common knowledge (and celebrated) that Vietnam won the war.
In the US, I can't imagine talking to someone over 40 that's unaware of how the war ended.
China celebrates Vietnam winning that war? Perhaps, but it'd be pretty surprising. Vietnam won it in spite of China. (The Soviet Union was a huge help though).
Happy New Year to both Vietnamese and Chinese peoples.
Life post-black death in Europe, for example, included a heightened QoL for many as population density was lowered.
Many peasants in Europe had their own plot of land but also had to spend some time working his lords' fields. Often the lords had to supplement this with paid work - peasants did not particularly like giving away their labour for free and as such did not work very hard.
My source is Patrick Wyman's podcast "Tides of History". He has a PhD in history. He has a Substack also: https://patrickwyman.substack.com/ and another great podcast, "The Fall of Rome".
I cannot ensure that my assertions hold for all of Europe :-).
Overall, a very grim view of the situation is a bit like trophic levels in a food web, with the farming peasants being the humble vegetation on which all others grazed, directly or indirectly. And certainly all of those tax records helped delineate just how much land was required. Fascinating stuff.
In it, Huizinga attempts to debunk some myths about the Middle Ages:
"[...] Huizinga presents the idea that the exaggerated formality and romanticism of late medieval court society was a defense mechanism against the constantly increasing violence and brutality of general society. He saw the period as one of pessimism, cultural exhaustion, and nostalgia, rather than of rebirth and optimism."
The original English translation is hard to read as he refers to many paintings in it, but no pictures. Luckily, on the book's hundred-year anniversary in 2020, a new, English translation (a tad expensive, though) with 300 full-colour illustrations was released.
https://www.smithjournal.com.au/blogs/history/3011-this-medi...
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/podcast-di-alessandro-bar...
The more things change. The more things stay the same.
Compare to the three estates of the French Ancien Régime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm#Kingdom_o...). The first estate was clergy (aka, "those who prey"). The second estate was nobility, original the "nobility of the sword" (aka "those who fight"), but later including administrators and judges as the "nobility of the robe". Note that the second estate was exempt from most taxes and forced labour, which underscores their power and prestige. And then the third estate was "everyone else", basically peasants, serfs, wage labourers, etc.
It was originally "those who pray", though "prey" may also be appropriate.
There's no real concrcete evidence for this. The British colonialists actually artificaly created most of the caste system rules and hardened them. Much like Leopold in Rwanda and the artificial invention of the Hutu vs Tutsi narrative which had devasting consequences later on.
"When the Belgian colonists conducted censuses, they wanted to identify the people throughout Rwanda-Burundi according to a simple classification scheme. They defined "Tutsi" as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical feature of a longer nose, or longer neck, commonly associated with the Tutsi. "
And social status flows from power.
In the beginning, you had just the fighting men of your barbarian post-Roman kingdom. The barbarians had their military egalitarianism, but what remained from the Antiquity's culture perceived soldiers more like we do (as a specialized force and not as the societal elite).
The warriors (which became knights) were supposed to hold the land on the condition of military service. But it gradually became hereditary. Over the centuries, holding the main form of capital in the society gave knights high position and tremendous clout. (Note that the other big landowner was the Church.)
"As “those who work” (in Latin, laboratores), peasants supported people more privileged—“those who pray” (oratores) and “those who fight” (pugnatores). Each of these three orders ideally helped the other, with clergy contributing prayers and knights providing protection, but the mutuality of the system was more ideal than real. Also, the three groups were not equal. A peasant might have benefited from the prayers of a nun or from the protection offered by a knight, but a peasant was deemed to do work of lesser value and to be a less worthy person. Born into this unexalted state, a peasant’s lot was to labor for the benefit of others."
It describes the life and customs of peasants during the four seasons. We're talking 19th century but the life and customs of peasants in that era haven't changed much except for extra rights they acquired in that century.
About the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peasants
I feel our current model would merit a third definition. The demographic partition is similar to what is described in the article: a very large group of workers, a smaller group of more comfortable workers, and the capital holding elite. The main difference is that workers have a few more rights and a different relationship to the world, the clergy-analog workers have a physical role in the economy (in the sense that unlike with the social function of prayer, machines and systems of production and control have to be actually designed and implemented), and the elites are, due to the increased virtuality of the economy and the skills of the clergy-analog class that assists them, no longer subject to the same type of pressures and responsibilities as their blue-blooded forebears. Perhaps our generation's Thorstein Veblen will tackle the question of identifying what the customs and mechanisms of the current elite are in more detail.
This is less and less an option, as technical progress helps enforcing a rule.
We sure can read, however for many/most of us it is mainly "Manufacturing Consent" all day long, and thus a way for the establishment to manipulate us.