Seems like anytime you see a list of the most important battles in history, the Battle of Hastings most times is on the list. Sure, French became the language of royalty and Anglo-Saxon rule ended, but those didn’t seem to affect much of anything outside of England. Please explain to me why it is considered so important.
Well, it certainly affected the Hundred Years’ War, and that was primarily in France.
Not all important battles affect much outside of the affected countries. Hastings was important and pivotal because it changed the course of English history in a rather fundamental way, displacing the Saxon king and nobility and setting the stage for centuries of English/French conflict…which kind of means it affected quite a bit outside of just England.
OK, I’ll give you its contribution to all the strife with France, but I still don’t see as being one of the most important. Seems Eurocentric to me.
No, it is Britannocentric, and justifiably so: The Battle of Hastings was one of the most important battles in history because it changed the course of the history of England, which is and has been one of the most important countries in the history of the world.
Well sure it’s Eurocentric…it was a pivotal battle in Europe, after all. I guess I’m not seeing the issue. Hastings was a pivotal battle which shifted the course of England, putting it on the road to the United Kingdom and eventually the British Empire. An empire that dominated the world. And it all stemmed from that one key battle. What battle are you thinking of that was more important? Can you give some examples so I (or anyone else not getting it) can understand where you are coming from?
The Norman conquest didn’t just replace one dynasty with another. William the Conqueror changed the political structure of England; moreover he really was a great Conqueror! England had been ruled by a Dane as recently as 1035, and another Dane attacked in 1069. After his 1066 conquest, William destroyed the Danes in 1069 and conquered Northern England. He also invaded Scotland and Wales, and his Anglo-Norman successors conquered Ireland.
This all might be considered insignificant if England were just a backwater, but Britain eventually led the Industrial Revolution and established a great Empire. The history of England can be considered prerequisite for other great English-speaking countrie(s).
Right. Before Hastings England was very much in a Scandinavian orbit with a Scandinavian-tied aristocracy ( Harold was a Norse name, not Anglo-Saxon ), a dominant Germanic language which at that point was loosely mutually intelligible with Scandinavian dialects and a recent history of Scandinavian kings. If Canute/Harthacanute had lived longer a semi-permanent North Sea Empire would have been…well, not super-likely ;). But possible.
Regardless England had been on a northern, Scandinavian trajectory. Hastings permanently altered that to a western, Franco-centric trajectory. As such it stands out in historiography as probably the cleanest and most dramatic example of a genuinely decisive battle that changed the course of history.
Sure, the Battle of Hastings mostly just affected the two nations that were fighting it (directly, at least). But then, how many battles have there been in history for which that hasn’t been true? What battle would you propose should displace Hastings from its place on the list?
The Norman Conquest also had quite an effect on the Anglo-Saxon language. Or Old English–which Chaucer & others eventually began writing as Middle English. Which evolved into a great world language.
If the OP thinks we’re ignoring other important battles, I’d be glad to hear about them. Always glad to learn something new!
The Battle of Hastings brought a France-centric dynasty to the English throne, therefore increasing English interest in things happening on the continent, instead of making them an insular nation with little in the way of interests outside of the British Isles. That didn’t change the history of the world?
Because you’re living in a country that has close historical ties with the UK and as such are much more familiar with UK history, and so are the authors of the lists you’re reading (in English)?
I’m pretty sure that if you were Chinese and reading “important battles in history” written in Chinese, the lists would be strikingly different, and include battles you never have even heard about. How many battles that occured in China can you name? Probably none at all, even though given its size and historical influence, there certainly have been there battles much ore significant than Hastings in the grand scheme of things.
Can you name a battle that was significant in the unification of China under the first emperor? That occured during the Mongol invasion? A battle that allowed Moscow to gain control of Russia? To get Russia rid of the Tatars? A battle won by the Moghols in India? By the Arabs against the Persian empire?
If you can’t, your response is there. Your lists just aren’t reliable, and are heavily biased towards the history of your country and of countries your own country has close historical and cultural ties with. I’m pretty sure that the average British is very aware of the “peninsular war” and convinced it was important, while not knowing anything about Leipzig, and the other way around for the average German.
Lists are almost never objective. Their authors most often don’t even try to be objective and to educate themselves as needed. It’s quite obvious when you read “10 most whatever” lists on dedicated english-speaking sites that they cover mostly people/events who are famous/happened in the USA and to a lesser extent in other English speaking countries. Lists of historical events are no different.
Which of course is as much bullshit, unless you can give the date of the invasion of, say, Brazil, by the UK and tell me how long the occupation lasted.
What people are saying here is that Hastings is a very important battle because it was important in the history of Britain, and Britain was important in the history of the world. But Hastings didn’t play any role in the creation of a British colonial empire.
Sure, without Hastings the history of Britain would have been completely different, and as a consequence the history of other nations. But you could say that about any significant battle anywhere. And going this way, the most important battle ever was when Og kicked the ass of Bog 180 000 years ago and got to sleep with the girl.
It is regularly obvious that people on this board, being mostly Americans, Canadians, etc…have an exaggerated perception of the importance of Britain in history (and they aren’t the less informed bunch there is). For instance overestimating the strenght of the British army(), the lenght of time during which it was an influential power, the size of its past population,etc… Or the importance of its battles. For most of its history, Britain was a small, scarcely populated, country, without much economical, military or cultural significance, and not even with a good navy (British naval dominance dates back only to the second part of the 17th century, and even then it wasn’t overly dominating), and what happened there was mostly irrelevant for the rest of the world, continental Europe included (with the exception of France and probably the Flanders/Low Countries).
() Especially Americans. Since they beat it, they like to think that the British army at the time of the independance war was kick ass, the best in the world, whatever…While this reputation at the time belonged to the Prussian army, and the UK wasn’t even amongst the contenders. Didn’t even have an interest in being a contender, in fact.
I think you are really overplaying this angle - or at least conveniently ignoring the fact that the Normans were just as Scandinavian too. The Norse influence was strong, especially in the North and East (in the ‘Danelaw’ area unsurprisingly). Indeed the the influence is still noticeable especially in place names and certain words of local dialect. But the south of England was on the rise again in the run up to Hastings, essentially due to better local administration and regional and central government organisation - basically a more efficient state. All the long term trends suggest the Scandinavian ‘threat’ to England was rapidly diminishing and Anglo-Saxon rule throughout England was where it was heading.
Indeed the Anglo-Saxon state was at the time probably the most advanced in Northern/Western Europe in its institutions - certainly far more so than Normandy. It could raise more troops for longer, maintain a navy and keep fixed fortifications maintained due to it’s high tax base. That indeed was why uncivilised adventurers like William the Bastard and Harald Hardrada were trying their luck with invasion.
It was not a co-ordinated invasion and basically William got lucky that the English army was in the North defeating Hardrada when he landed. If not, he would have been roundly defeated and be a mere footnote in history at best.
The Norman conquest was an unmitigated disaster for England - putting us back decades if not centuries. Not only by involving us in hundreds of years of Anglo-French conflict but by imposing feudalism which was a far inferior system of government.
How many of the battles you see alongside Hastings on these lists involve no European power? Or to put it another way, why are you suprised to see Eurocentrism in lists written by a Eurocentric culture?
If these charges are valid, then the Battle of Hastings, good or bad, was very significant – answering OP’s question in the affirmative.
I’ll let the experts decide whether your charge is valid. But my impression was that the strength and wisdom of the Conqueror’s great-grandson, King Henry II, helped England lead the way for Europe’s long climb out of the Dark Ages.
Oh come off it!:rolleyes:
Yes, Americanitis is endemic on this board, but to deny Hasting’s importance is rewriting history. Britain was the epicenter of a world wide empire, one whose influence and effects are still felt today, (for me, its the reason I speak English, play cricket and study the common law). The Battle of Hastings, took England away from the Scandinavian World, into the Western European one. Its directly responsible for the rise of England as a great power and later the UK. On its own, yes, its not an important battle. But, in a macro historical sense it is.
Same with say battle of Badr, a small skirmish compared to the titanic battles fought contemporaneously between Rome and Persia, but much more important then them because of what would have happened if the results had been reversed.
I’m not an expert, I’m a keen amateur - and on reflection maybe I could have deleted “unmitigated”.
But I am pretty sure that England did not lead Europe out of the Dark Ages. If you are using the Petrarch understanding of the Dark Ages as being ended by the onset of the Renaissance then Italy aided by Sicily and the Muslim states surely have to take the majority of the credit. I don’t think England can take any.
If you are using the modern concept of the Dark Ages as being the Early Medieval period and ended by the High Medieval period, then that is generally accepted to have been 500 to 1000 AD - so before the Norman conquest and long before Henry II.
I have no idea why you form the view of Henry II you have. All he seems to do to me was set the a fashion for Civil Wars within the House of Planagenet that was another disaster for England (and Wales).
Actually, the HYW affected most of Christendom to some extent - sure, the brunt of the fighting took place on French (well, proto-French) soil both between the French & English (but also a number of other powercenters either pulling away from or pulling towards those big two; it was a civil war as much as it was a war between states) ; but Europe at large became divided between supporters of the French or the English claims to power & crown. Because it affected their own power structures & legitimacies.
The general power blocs that formed *around *the HYW were at the roots of many conflicts and antagonisms that followed, and the war itself spread around some too (notably in Britany, Spain and Portugal).
That being said, **clairobscur **has a point - he and I are French, and in *our *schools the Battle of Hastings gets a mention in passing at best, and only inasmuch as it (and the Bastard’s new kingdom) established a clear line of fealty England<Paris which would become slightly important down the line. But to us, the Really Important Slaughters in History are more like Charles Martel beating back the Saracen hordes (732 ! Poitiers ! I *still *know that shit !), winning the HYW (hi, Joan ! Bye, Joan !), Napoleon prodding buttock up and down Europe until he was brought down by the perfidious Albion and then that business with Zee Germans. Twice.
I’m sure in Spanish (and South American) schools they get real hard into the Reconquista or the formation of the Spanish Empire and its kickass fleet, and the Clearly Very Important battles are those between Aragon & Castille (& Portugal, & Cordoba, & Valencia) that led to the rise of a central authority over Spain as a whole, without dwelling too much on the War of the Roses and such.