What if?????
Printed From: History Community ~ All Empires
Category: All Empires Community
Forum Name: Historical Amusement
Forum Discription: For role playing and alternative history discussions.
URL: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5109
Printed Date: 09-Jun-2024 at 16:22
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Topic: What if?????
Posted By: eaglecap
Subject: What if?????
Date Posted: 19-Aug-2005 at 15:14
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I use to get these what if comics by Marvel. Like, what if Wonder Man has lived etc.
What if the Byzantine arny had defeated the Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 AD? What would the world be like today? What if the Normans had lost in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 AD? same question! The Normans are amongst my favorite bad guys in history!  ------------- Λοιπόν, αδελφοί και οι συμπολίτες και οι στρατιώτες, να θυμάστε αυτό ώστε μνημόσυνο σας, φήμη και ελευθερία σας θα ε |
Replies:
Posted By: Spartakus
Date Posted: 19-Aug-2005 at 19:34
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Shouldn't this be in the historical Amusement forum? ------------- "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. " --- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996) |
Posted By: Cywr
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 06:40
Yes. -------------  Arrrgh!!"
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Posted By: Kenaney
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 08:58
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What if.... you dont dream so much? i will repeat a preverb that almost all civilisation say it; "if my aunt had testicles, she would be my uncle" take youre conclusions.... ------------- OUT OF LIMIT |
Posted By: eaglecap
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 09:29
Ok THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS 1066 It is still a valid question but if Manzikert is too touchy with the Greeks and Turks then let's just stick with the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and leave Manzikert out. What would England be like today and what would the English language be like if King Harold had defeated the Normans????? I don't think the English and French will get too upset over this topic. The English language would probably be more Germanic and it would not have the Latin and French influences it has today. The British Empire would have probably never existed or even possibly the American colonies. ------------- Λοιπόν, αδελφοί και οι συμπολίτες και οι στρατιώτες, να θυμάστε αυτό ώστε μνημόσυνο σας, φήμη και ελευθερία σας θα ε |
Posted By: Maju
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 09:35
Where do you get the idea that the Norman invasion was so important as
to create the British empire six centuries later? These events don't
seem to have any connection at all. Why couldn't the Anglo-Saxons do
the same if the Norman aristocrats would have been defeated at
Hastings? The country is still called England and not Normandy...  The linguistic part is much more convincing but not so relevant. ------------- 
NO GOD, NO MASTER! |
Posted By: Zagros
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 09:46
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The Normans brought a new generation of technology that eventually made England a leading European power which it otherwise would not have been or if so, at a much later date. Many English historians agree that the Norman invasion was one of the most important events in the history of the country. ------------- |
Posted By: Belisarius
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 09:52
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Normans as bad guys, eaglecap? Sure they might have been base, heartless mercenaries, but bad guys? The Norman invasion brought Britain back to Europe. For years the island was a 'Europe' of its own, with many factions struggling for supremacy. The Normans united most of it and took the first steps into making it a first-class power. ------------- |
Posted By: Gavriel
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 12:55
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Unlike the Saxons the Normans were great builders,building Castles and
other defensive structures would of helped strengthen England. On the issue of the Normans being "bad guys" ,William the bastards doomsday book is a great help to us now, but at the time i imagine the peoples experience of this act to be far from good.Some foriegner takes the English throne and sends his henchmen/tax collectors out to document every single thing of any value in the Country,so he knows how much money he gained. |
Posted By: Maju
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 18:53
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Wastn't England already united before Hastings? I understand that the
Danes had been expelled and all kingdoms had been united under Wessex,
shouldn't that mean that England would eventually be able to develope
more or les as it did? Besides, not wasting time and resources in the
Hundred Years' War 8which would not have taken place without the Norman
vinculation between the two shores) would have allowed England and
France to be ready to compete for America and other overseas colonies
in the 16th century, possibly overshadowing Spain and Portugal from the
beginning.
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NO GOD, NO MASTER! |
Posted By: Komnenos
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 19:54
But without it, England might have stayed in the Northern European/Scandinavian sphere of influence and might now be a country with a decent football team (1:4 against Denmark last Wednesday), functioning welfare, health and education systems, lots of tall blond women and a liberal attitude to sexuality. ------------- [IMG]http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i137/komnenos/crosses1.jpg"> |
Posted By: Belisarius
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 20:45
Much of modern England was united under Wessex after the expulsion of the Danes, there was not an absolute unity. There were many earldoms around the kingdom of Alfred the Great, as well the Picts, Scots, and Welsh kingdoms. Northumbria was never completely subjugated by Wessex. Under the Normans, practically all of modern England was united under a single ruler. ------------- |
Posted By: Gavriel
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 20:49
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we got beat 4-1 because we have a filandering scandinavaian manager who couldnt give a toss about English football. With no Norman invasion and consequently no war with the French would England have become a world power?i imagine a lot of money was gained during that 100 years.If the Normans never came someone would have. Gavrriel |
Posted By: Maju
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 21:06
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Well, Scotland and Wales, don't enter in the normal concept of England.
I canperfectly imagine Wessex (England) dominating them without any
Norman help, after all that's what the Anglo-Saxons had been doing since they conquered post-Roman Britain: conquering the natives.
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NO GOD, NO MASTER! |
Posted By: Belisarius
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 21:25
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Yes, but the Anglo-Saxon were divided into many kingdoms. Alfred was successful in uniting most, but not all of them. Also, it was not 'England' that became a world power, but 'Britain'. The English could not have been a major European power if it could not even control its own island. The Angevin Empire only occured because of the foothold in France that the Normans left behind. ------------- |
Posted By: Constantine XI
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2005 at 22:22
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Of course the Norman invasion was critical to English evolution. It brought a vastly updated military, a much more efficient and centralized government, greater connection with continental Europe, the acceleration of trade and agriculture, the establishment of one of the most efficient bureaucratic structures in the whole of Christendom. The Norman invasion saw England soldify into a state with a powerful military, stable and centralized government, and a much more expansionist attitude. After centuries of invasion after invasion the Normans turned England into a military power capable of protecting its sovereignty and becoming a major player in European politics. ------------- |
Posted By: Maju
Date Posted: 21-Aug-2005 at 01:40
The English were already a major power without controlling Scotland. Scotland wasn't untied to the British crown before 1603. But in nay case I can imagine that between 1066 and 1603 (more than 5 centuries!), the Anglo-Saxon monarchy could actually unify all Britain. I see no reason for them not do it. The Angevin Empire that you mention is a perfect example of how England could play major role without controlling Scotland. Still I have always seen those wars as meaningless. Maybe if the english crown would have conquered France the subsequently unified state could have played a bigger role in European and World affairs but that never happenend, so it was only a waste of time and resources for both countries, specially for England, as France was at least fighting for their own sovereignity and "national" union. In fact it was the Hundred Years' War and no other reason what retarded the French and English colonial empires, giving all the initiative to the Iberian kingdoms. -------------
NO GOD, NO MASTER! |
Posted By: Ahmed The Fighter
Date Posted: 21-Aug-2005 at 02:45
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Why the Norman didnot change the name of the island after they conqured it they defeated the Anglo-saxon what after that ? ------------- "May the eyes of cowards never sleep" Khalid Bin Walid 
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Posted By: Maju
Date Posted: 21-Aug-2005 at 04:22
It wasn't an invading migration, like that of Anglos, Saxons and Jutes, it was more like when Goths took Aquitaine and Spain, they naver renamed their posessions, they just formed the ruling elithe. The Normans didn't give either their name to any other of their conquests: Naples & Sicily, Byzantium, Jerusalem... the only country that took their name was Normandy and that is because Normans or Danes had occupied it earlier at the time of the ikig invasions. But when the Normans with that French name started their campaigns all around Europe and the Med, they were just a fierce group of French knights and and not anymore a separate ethnicity. hey thought in non-ethnical feudal concepts where most countries had the name they found them with more or less. Another reason I can think is that often the names of realms at that time were often born from popular usage rather than because any monarch decided anything. Still, they probaly imposed their French diffuse concept of Anglia/England to all the Anglo-Saxon territory, despite the realm they conquered had the name of Wessex (that is: Western Saxony). Anglo realms proper were only East Anglia, Mercia (already extinct at 1066) and Northumbria (in proccess of anexation too) but guess that the Norman invasion helped to diffuminate whatever differences remained between Anglos, Saxons and Jutes. -------------
NO GOD, NO MASTER! |
Posted By: Belisarius
Date Posted: 21-Aug-2005 at 09:12
True, though perhaps I was not clear when said 'major European power'. What I meant was Britain as a dominant world colonial force, as Eurocentric as that may sound. As I said, the Angevin Empire only occured because of the former Norman lands in France, now controlled by England. This was a firm foothold where armies could be launched, rather than having to send them across the channel. ------------- |
Posted By: Cywr
Date Posted: 21-Aug-2005 at 09:25
The Normans were French-Latin speakers, and used the Latin name Britannia as the base for their name for the Island. The modern name, Great Britian, is simply the Anglisation of the name the Normans used - Grand Bretagne (literaly Greater or Big Britannia) as opposed to Britanny, or Bretagne (regular, or little Britannia, on account of the Brythonic people living there presumably) as its called in French. So they didn't rename the island, but rather kept with the naming tradition that goes back to pre-Roman times, but did introdice their interpretation of the name, which was then re-interpreted into English as Great Britain. ------------- Arrrgh!!"
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Posted By: Maju
Date Posted: 21-Aug-2005 at 10:10
Precisely my point is that the Norman feudal interfernce in British affairs, using England as source of manpower for their dynastical quarrels in France actually retarded the potential for colonial expansion of England-Britain. If England wouldn't have been tied in French wars since 1314 to 1558, when the last British enclave in the mainland, Calais, was conquered by the French, they would have had more free time and resources to make expeditions to the newly discovered lands and possibly North American colonization and British colonization elsewhere would have started earlier. So I actually suspect that the Norman influence was rather negative for England in this matter. It can be seen as positive for other potential rivals of France, though, as this country, the most populated and rich of all Europe at the time, had its hands full with the Anglo-Normans. Else the French might have tried to domnate all mainland Europe or something. -------------
NO GOD, NO MASTER! |
Posted By: eaglecap
Date Posted: 22-Aug-2005 at 17:26
Just a little sarcasm Belisarius. Having a little French and English ancestry they could easily be my ancestors. I went through the posts and agree with much of what you have said. ------------- Λοιπόν, αδελφοί και οι συμπολίτες και οι στρατιώτες, να θυμάστε αυτό ώστε μνημόσυνο σας, φήμη και ελευθερία σας θα ε |