this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
166 points (100.0% liked)
chapotraphouse
13530 readers
1356 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Gossip posts go in c/gossip. Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from c/gossip
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
in the Tudor case as I assume also in the french the centralisation of power in the crown rather than the lesser gentry was the feudal equivalent of Mao killing the warlords and thus no longer having the state precarious to being toppled by private ministates
I've seen that described in the sense that for the peasant very little changed. The poor did not gain anything, merely the barons and duchies lost something.
it did effect the peasantry in that it changed the way the state worked and the kind of policies that could then happen. The barons being broken made enclosure easier later for example
True, true. But I think the person's point was more that it wasn't something peasants had a part in. In the process of Absolutism they didn't have skin in the game, it didn't change their daily lives. The end result was cataclysmic for them as a class, but they didn't think of themselves that way. They were, as Marx said, a sack of potatoes.
yeah the political machinations of the Tudors didn't directly involve the peasantry in the decision making process which was typical for feudal politics
Peasants never get consulted. Its more that they didn't have much pressure one way or another. Compared to say the English Civil War in which they did influence the politics and their interests shaped events early on.
To a degree yes but the extent to which the Wars of the Roses leading to the Tudor dynasty were bloody is exaggerated from what I understand. The only battle which was very serious in terms of casualties was Towton (which might have actually been the most bloody battle on English soil we know of), but apart from that is was an on-and-off affair. The causality rate and absolute numbers were high in that battle, but not more so than other vicious battles which were more frequent on the European continent. It's not even certain that the numbers of the nobility were decimated that much or more than in other European wars of the time.
What it did do however was undermine the more decentralized power of late bastard feudalism in which there was concentration of power in the hands of certain very powerful houses and barons. This centralization of power had already been going on under Richard III, and was taken up by Henry Tudor. The Tudor did not kill all of their opponents, let alone dissolve the feudal aristocracy, as though Henry Tudor was of the House of Lancaster, he married into the House of York to create the Tudor dynasty in order to unite the houses descended from the Plantagenets, and it remained a society ruled by a land-owning military aristocracy, though with important developments in the English state.
yeah I don't think that the wars of the roses were very bloody but they did result in the barons having less power. The extent to which Henry the 8th was a very cunning political mind who pulled off a massive centralisation of power with very little actual explicit violence is underestimated given his rightful reputation as a frivolous murderer
Yeah I think we often forget just how brutal and ruthless you had to have been during Feudalism, especially earlier feudalism or the period prior to Feudalism proper i.e. during the early formation of the socio-economic and political structures that we would then call Feudalism, in order to succeed or survive politically. The violent competition between the aristocracy was very real. It's funny in the case of Henry VII and Richard III because obviously while the view of the latter as a deformed sociopathic tyrant and pervert has been influenced up to the current day by Tudor propaganda (of which the most famous example is the Shakespeare play Richard III), it's nevertheless hilarious that there has been moves to try and legitimize Richard III by claiming that everything bad claimed about him are Tudor lies, whereas you can literally just read contemporary or fairly accurate accounts of his reign to realize that mans was also a ruthless murdering bastard. So was Henry VII obviously. They all were frankly. If you weren't then you ended up like Henry VI.
I was reading Southern's Making of the Middle-Ages recently, and although it's definitely dated in a bunch of respects, it does emphasize how during the period of feudalism's formation in Northern France, there was real, extremely brutal and violent struggle, showing great political acumen and tact, by the brutal aristocratic warlords who were rising during the 11th century to form the Knightly class. It leaves little to doubt as to whether these people knew what they were doing. He also emphasizes their fascinating relationship with the university men, who during the High Medieval Renaissance were becoming more and learned, numerous, and essential to the construction and administration of feudalism's political and bureaucratic structures, and how they also played the role of providing moral justification and psychological care to the many deeply guilt-ridden, violent men of the nobility and warrior class.
I maintain the only real difference between William the conqueror and the Krays is scale
yh deffo makes me think of the fanciful story from St. Augustine of the pirate taken prisoner by Alexander the Great. Alexander asks him how he dares molest the seas, and the pirate asks him the same questiom: "I molest a small part with a few ships, and am called a pirate; you molest the whole world, and they call you emperor".