Back to the OP. Perhaps you could supply us with that “list.” Then let us know which battles are not studied sufficiently.
I’ve already put in my vote as an English speaker–the Norman occupation changed our language considerably.
I don’t remember much emphasis on the Battle of Hastings in school. It was just part of a chapter in “World History”–which was quite Eurocentric in those days. But we learned lots more about the Battle of San Jacinto…
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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.
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No, he’s right. Great Britain was a pissant, *local *power throughout the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance - i.e. most of recorded history. During those times the big movers and shakers in Europe were France, Germany (when and where it managed to pull its shit together) and northern Italy. And of course, the various Muslim caliphates/sultanates/empires, though by the 15th/16th they were already past their prime.
That’s exactly why England (and Spain, and Holland) went at exploration and then colonization so hard : they needed outside sources of wealth and influence to match or shift those already extant on the continent. The other European nations joined the party later when they saw what good it had done (and there again, mostly for Spain, which had become the world’s bank and fleet almost overnight), and they were driven mainly by a desire to renew the old balance of powers.
But before that, what did England *do *for anyone ?
Some would consider the Hundred Years War rather as a Civil War, given the results of Hastings meant that England was effectively ruled by a French dynasty.
I don’t think you can claim that Hastings established “a clear line of fealty England < Paris” when William did not own Paris nor was anything important in France. In any case I don’t think you can claim either that France won the Hundred Years War - we just called it a draw as Joan undid the almost completed conquest of France.
It was only when we finally got rid of the French with the death of Richard III in 1485 and establishment of the House of Tudor could we finally move on from a position of stability and entrench the English Renaissance.
The whole struggle to unite the realms of England and France was a complete waste of focus and resources let alone lives. A wasted three hundred and twenty years since the Battle of Hastings knocked us off course.
Bastard French.
The History Place - Top Ten Battles of All Time #2 on this list
10 epic battles that changed history | Live Science #8 here
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0769941.html
Please don’t challenge my cites; I just grabbed the first three that came up from my google search.
I don’t think y’all are giving the Anglo-Saxons enough credit. You make it sound like Britain would be another Ireland if not for William the Conquerer.
Rubbish.
For ‘most of recorded history’ none of the States you mention existed. It isn’t the time period that matter thought, it is what you achieve and the impact you have.
It is silly to ask what England did for anyone - England wasn’t doing it for anyone but itself or at least its Ruling Class any more than France or Spain were dong anything for anyone but themselves when they were top European dogs (I don’t think you can include Germany in the list - they really have been irrelevant for all but the last 100 to 150 years).
Great Britain established global economic hegemony for the first time, certainly on economic terms and largely on military terms. Pax Britannica indeed - well not Pax exactly but the Royal Navy really did control the world’s shipping lanes. Only the USA have repeated that global dominance to date.
Everybody else has just been locally significant. Pretty historically important I would say.
But we are getting a LONG WAY off the OP. Back to the Battle of Hastings - see my post above…
Interesting lists–very different. (But I wonder at the first one. No, the Brits were not occupying New York & Boston when they lost the siege of Yorktown. The Massholes had convinced them to leave in 1776.)
Why don’t you give us your list? Not just Something You Googled. Even better, set up a Poll to determine the Big Ten Battles. This place is full of history buffs & I’d be glad to read the arguments.
Thomas Jefferson was a big fan of the Anglo-Saxons–he considered the Norman Invasion a great blow to Our Ancestral Freedom. (Not *my *ancestors…) When the great seal of the USAwas being designed:
I do enjoy reading about history, but I’m hardly qualified to give you a quality list.
I’m not trying to dismiss the importance of Hastings, but on several lists, I’ve seen it ranked ahead of Stalingrad which makes no sense to me. Maybe I’m looking too closely at immediate ramifications from a battle rather than the long term ones.
Doyle - yes I think that is exactly what you are doing.
Decisiveness is surely one of the criteria. Hastings was a single knock-out blow that removed a good deal of the ruling class at once (most of the Kings supporters choose to go down with their master - as all good Anglo-Saxons were supposed to do for their liege Lord). There are only a handful of battles that produce that result.
For an example, the USSR could still have lost the War after Stalingrad - Kursk was arguably the point at which they could not longer lose the War and after that it was a matter of time.
The Battle of Britain, in contrast, simply avoided defeat. Close analysis has since shown that logistically it was almost impossible for the Germans to win it. They simply didn’t have the appropriate weapon to do so - they had a battlefield tactical support air force not a strategic one.
Thomas Jefferson goes up in my estimation - he was already pretty handily placed to be honest.
I share his view that the Norman Conquest replaced a system where they King was essentially elected or at least acclaimed, to a much more hereditary concept. The following three hundred years was a dismal tail of England being used as a mere pawn or play thing to further dynastic ambitions rather than the King doing anything for his people.
Those lists are interesting. The ONLY battles on all three are Hastings and Waterloo. All three lists regard WWII and the American Revolution as important enough to be in the Top 10, but they disagree on the critical battles. They all devote 2 slots to WWII (and none to WWI). They are definitely American and Eurocentric.
It seems to me that in addition to the Eurocentricity, they have a fondness for the LAST battles of wars. Yorktown is on two lists but represents the surrender of the British army; in my understanding several other battles were much more significant because if they had gone the other way the Rebels would have been crushed. Even if the Rebels had lost at Yorktown they would not necessarily have lost the war.
Waterloo, again by my understanding, was even more so the last gasp of Napoleon. If he had won Waterloo he would have had an enormous uphill climb to any stable victory. The battle for Moscow was much more significant.
Regarding the Napoleonic Wars, the significant battle - from which there was really no return for Napoleon - was Leipzig (also known as the Battle of Nations) in 1813 after the retreat from Moscow.
Leipzig lost Germany and with it the French source of cavalry remounts. Without a strong cavalry arm Napoleon could win battles but he could not inflict the decisive defeats that were necessary to win back his Empire.
Historical events in China are unimportant by comparison because China never became a global power.
To be fair, the map isn’t claiming that England always won, just that they attacked. Even so, I would not be surprised if the map was less than fully accurate even allowing the exaggeration.
Thanks for making me check.
The Angevin Empire, anyone?
The Hundred Year’s War?
How about “at times, ruled much of what you have identified as one of the ‘movers and shakers’ during the period you have identified”?
The map cheats a little; it includes:
That pretty well takes care of any countries in the Carribian or South America, and much of Africa.
Even without that, of the map was resrticted to actual armed invasions by British armies, it would be an impressive list, though - ranging from Argentina (invaded during the Napoleonic Wars) to Tibet (invaded in 1903).
Actually by the time of Hastings they were not. The Normans had rapidly become Frankified and retained very few Norse loanwords in a dialect that was pretty similar to that in Paris.
By contrast Anglo-Saxons and Danes were still basically speaking dialects of the same language.
I think folks may be misunderstanding my point. It wasn’t that England was an unsophisticated backwater and the Norman invasion catapulted it into a more sophisticated milieu. Feudalism was already coming, trade with the continent was already heavy and England as has been rightly pointed out was far more centralized than any continental state at that point.
What I am saying is that England wasn’t under threat from Scandinavia, it was part of Scandinavia - the wealthiest, most populous, most advanced part ;). Well, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. The Anglo-Saxons at the end of the day seemed to have no great problem being ruled by Christian, Norse king - it was the AS nobility that petitioned Harthacanute to return from Denmark and take the throne. It was sheer happenstance that Edward the Confessor ended up on the throne - it could just have easily ended up being Magnus the Good.
Hastings ( and the campaign of 1069 was the cherry on top ) severed that quasi-geography and cultural ties, permanently. That was the impact.
Agreed. Hastings is actually unusual to the degree it altered a historical trajectory. For example I’d have no problem saying Bouvines was one of the most decisive battles in the 13th century and set the stage for the dominance of France in the European system from that point until the mid-14th century. But it did not have the profound cultural impact that Hastings did.
Now that’s just silly, in a number of ways.
This is exactly the idea that I disagree with. The battle of Hastings is important because it’s important in Britain’s history, and many centuries later Britain became an important power.
If you go this way, pretty much everything that ever happened in a country that played a significant role at any point in history is of paramount importance because if this event had ran differently the world as we know it would be different. And the more you go back in time, the more events become important because more things change. Again, the most important battle ever becomes Og vs Gog for the girl. And the day when Cassius, legionnary in Britain, caught a bad cold, died, and as a result didn’t become a common ancestor of all currently living Britons beats Hastings any day for its enormous consequences (No Harold and no Hastings to begin with and who knows what the history of the world would be like).
You can argue that the UK creating a worldwide empire is an important world event. But claiming that, as a result, anything that happened in Britain before is also a major world event because things would have turned differently otherwise is nonsentical for the reason I explained (pretty much everything becoming a major event in the history of the world). It’s technically true but nonsentical. To determine what events would be worth recounting in “A brief history of the world”, you must take into consideration their direct consequences, or else you can’t decide that one is more important than another.
You misunderstand me.
I wasn’t saying the Normans were essentially Scandinavian, but that they were just as Scandinavian as the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. In other words that neither were.
If the Anglo-Saxons were that integrated into the Scandinavian world then the institutions and customs and language would have been very similar and NONE of those were. Language may have been closest but I would like some authority for your statement that they were essentially dialects and mutually understandable.
My understanding was that the Anglo-Saxons spoke a Germanic rooted language whilst the Scandinavia language group differed to a marked degree. If being rules over by Scandinavians were indeed not a cultural or legal problem then the Danelaw would not have had to been defined - culturally they differed enough that it was a distinct and essential divide whose influence survived.
England simply was NOT part of Scandinavia. Cnut’s reign was the exception to a long term trend and had little or no impact on the populous or even much of the ruling class.
That would not be my argument. My argument is that a single decisive battle that lead directly to substantially re-shaping a culture are actually quite rare and Hastings falls into that category. That it happened to occur in Britain is a minor historical footnote.
No, thats ridiculous. While if things had gone differently, the ultimate result would have been altered in most battles, the issue is if it leads to fundamental changes down the line. That is fairly easy to tell when trajectory is changed. If Hastings had gone the other way, the British Empire would not have formed. If the Meccan Pagans had won at Badr, the Arab conquests would probably not have happened. On the other hand, certain battles would not have changed history much even if the result had been changed, Roman defeats outside Ctesiphon would not have changed history much (I am talking, Trajen, Severus, Marcus Aurulius here), nor would (or did) victories have ensured lasting Roman rule in Persia.
SOme battles are certainly overrated in terms of effects, Tours, Tuetonberg Forest for instance. But, not Hastings.
ETA: Referring to clairobscur
