1066 Norman invasion and occupation of England brutal even for the times?

Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793 - 1241, John Haywood, St. Martin's Press, 2015.

page 268:

https://books.google.com/books?id=O...ing whose first language was English"&f=false

' . . . It would be the end of the fourteenth century before England again had a king whose first language was English. The native English aristocracy who survived the battles of 1066 were within a few years either executed or exiled, and almost every English landowner was dispossessed. The English peasantry were forced into serfdom. The conquers expropriated the wealth of the English on such a vast scale that even today, 950 years later, people in England with surnames of Norman-French origin are, on average, 20 per cent richer than the national average. . . '
And we haven't even gotten to the really bad stuff yet!
 
Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793 - 1241

page 268:

'The Battle of Stamford Bridge is widely seen as marking the end of England's Viking Age, but the Vikings were not quite finished with England. William was quite the most brutal man ever to rule England and the atrocities he meted out to the defeated English were such that, even in an age inured to violence, they shocked Europe [emphasis added]. Two years after William's accession fierce but unco-ordinated English rebellions erupted across the country and these brought the Danes back to England. After his death at Stamford Bridge, Harald Hardrada's claim to the English throne had passed to the Danish king Svein Estrithsson (r. 1046-74/6), and it was to him that the English rebels turned for support, offering to accept him as king. In 1069, Svein sent his son Cnut to England with a fleet of 240 ships. Cnut landed at Dover in September and then sailed north, meeting with little success until he reached the Humber in October where he joined up with a large English rebel force. The Danes and the English marched on York and wiped out the Norman garrison there. William acted quickly and recaptured York in December. A campaign of savage retaliation, know as the 'Harrying of North,' followed. William's forces spread out across the countryside, burning and killing people and livestock, reducing the survivors to beggary. The Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, lists hundreds of villages across the north as still being waste and uninhabited, and worth only a fraction of their value twenty years earlier. William's brutality served the double purpose of punishing the rebels and depriving the Danes of supplies. William literally made a desert of the north and called it peace.'
I guess schools tend to buff and water-down uncomfortable facts (unless there is political pressure to wave the banner against some official enemy).

These facts would make a heck of an interesting history, and could be told from a number of different starting points. But please notice, that if you used this in fiction, people would view it as unrealistic because it's not what they're familiar with.
 
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It seems to be a recurring pattern.
For the Uk just look at the perceived notion of the glorious revolution, and what it really was, an invasion.
modifying/ watering down history is also known elsewhere.
For example it was long thought that julius caesar bragged about the numbers of casualties & massacred that his legions caused.
Few years ago in the netherlands remnants were found that indicated that caesars legions massacred 2 entire tribes, totalling 150K people (remember this is at a time that the netherlands maybe counted 250k inhabitants).
not only were men, women, children all butchered, but some were even ritually murdered by the romans. it all confirmed that the grim lists in caesars writing were actually true.
 
Then comes the thought of "could Wiliam have destroyed so much of England that the local culture was essentially replaced with French culture to the point where England is considered French?"
 
Then comes the thought of "could Wiliam have destroyed so much of England that the local culture was essentially replaced with French culture to the point where England is considered French?"
That's basically my understanding of what happened.Except in language,the culture of England was probably more similar to France during the Middle Ages than the Saxon period.
 
Few years ago in the netherlands remnants were found that indicated that caesars legions massacred 2 entire tribes, totalling 150K people (remember this is at a time that the netherlands maybe counted 250k inhabitants).
not only were men, women, children all butchered, but some were even ritually murdered by the romans. it all confirmed that the grim lists in caesars writing were actually true.
As a closet idealist, I guess I'd just say, work the hell out of the exceptions. Find the cases in which this shit wasn't done to at least prove it's not inevitable. And build outward from these positive cases.

It is a real challenge knowing how to talk about this stuff in school in age-appropriate ways.
 
That's basically my understanding of what happened.Except in language,the culture of England was probably more similar to France during the Middle Ages than the Saxon period.

Even in the culture; I remember in grammar school, the good sisters taught us about the differences in the English language. the Saxons dealt with the living animals, cow, pig, etc. while the Normans dealt with them as prepared food, beef, pork, etc. There were other examples, but I'm trying to recall something that I learned almost sixty years ago.

Regards,
John Braungart
 

Deleted member 97083

Then comes the thought of "could Wiliam have destroyed so much of England that the local culture was essentially replaced with French culture to the point where England is considered French?"
William didn't have enough Norman settlers. And he'd have to bring in French farmers and soldiers, rather than just nobles, to make England French.
 
It seems to be a recurring pattern.
For the Uk just look at the perceived notion of the glorious revolution, and what it really was, an invasion.
modifying/ watering down history is also known elsewhere.
For example it was long thought that julius caesar bragged about the numbers of casualties & massacred that his legions caused.
Few years ago in the netherlands remnants were found that indicated that caesars legions massacred 2 entire tribes, totalling 150K people (remember this is at a time that the netherlands maybe counted 250k inhabitants).
not only were men, women, children all butchered, but some were even ritually murdered by the romans. it all confirmed that the grim lists in caesars writing were actually true.

The constant glossing over of any period of political division in China seems to be another example of this.

The point about people with Norman-French names having more income is interesting in light of the EU referendum. The Remain campaign's arguments about leaving the EU just entrenching the establishment rang pretty hollow because to England's poorer population, the establishment has always been European.

teg
 
I think as a rule of thumb military occupation is often worse than invasion.

For example, in the Star Trek Next Generation movie Insurrection (1998), at first this admiral and his allies are going to be decent in relocating the Baku. But they resist, and then admiral and allies decide, fuck it, do whatever you need to do. And I think this pattern has been repeated many times in human history.
 
The point about people with Norman-French names having more income is interesting in light of the EU referendum. The Remain campaign's arguments about leaving the EU just entrenching the establishment rang pretty hollow because to England's poorer population, the establishment has always been European.
And there might have been possible points where this could have played out in modern British history. For example, as part of the union movement in the 1870s and '80s, and let's say the union movement took the high road, and advocated that the point is to create more economic opportunity for everyone. And perhaps someone would say, reminds us that not too much weight should be given to the accident of birth . .

Could play out in interesting ways. Could be one thread which leads to a higher trajectory for British labor unions, which could affect things all the way through to today.
 
I'd strongly dispute the idea that English culture in the Middle Ages was much influenced by French culture. It seems to me that what often happened was:

1. Normans introduce new methods
2. New methods fail badly
3. Normans return to Anglo-Saxon ideas and methods
4. Normans give Anglo-Saxon ideas and methods French titles

For example, what was Parliament but the Witanagemot with a Frenchified name? I'd even argue that the tactics used in the Hundred Years War were simply a return to English tactics. The key piece of evidence for this is the Battle of Northallerton, in 1138, which took place during the Civil War between Stephen and Matilda when the Normans were otherwise occupied, and this meant that the battle was fought by English rules - dismounted men-at-arms combined with archers. The chronicles make it clear that the English saw the battle as 'business as usual' fought by time-honoured methods with no obvious Norman input.

Also, although it's often said that the English aristocracy spoke French, but in the Middle Ages there was no such thing as 'the' French language since there were a large number of dialects of French, of which the 'Franglais' spoken by the English was one.
 

This is my understanding of it - essentially the biggest legacies of the Normans being the language and the aristocracy, and otherwise culture remained very much English. Not even "Anglo-Saxon", just English, as it had been and would become - always evolving like all cultures.
 
The Economist, in their article on "Brentry" (found here), makes the argument that the Norman Conquest probably improved the economy in southern England, increasing wealth at all strata of society (even if the rich did get relatively richer), and also freed slaves, with the practice dying out within about a century of the Conquest. The urban population also rose. Now, none of those things mean that things didn't get politically and socially worse (for example, it could be that e.g. new technology and commerce enriched the peasants, even as they were being oppressed harder under newer, more demanding Norman overlords).

Plus, the Harrying of the North did enormous and long-lasting damage, killing a significant percent of the population, burning fields, destroying towns, breaking mills, etc.
 
The Remain campaign's arguments about leaving the EU just entrenching the establishment rang pretty hollow because to England's poorer population, the establishment has always been European.

I'd dispute this, actually. By the fifteenth century the English ruling class was clearly English, even if most of them had Norman or French ancestors, and Britain's ruling class didn't really become pro-European internationalism until the later 20th century. So that's basically five-hundred-plus years in which the English establishment was firmly English.
 
Even in the culture; I remember in grammar school, the good sisters taught us about the differences in the English language. the Saxons dealt with the living animals, cow, pig, etc. while the Normans dealt with them as prepared food, beef, pork, etc. There were other examples, but I'm trying to recall something that I learned almost sixty years ago.

Regards,
John Braungart

I guess it's like today, where restaurants give their food French names to make it sound more high-class. Maybe an eleventh-century Englishmen thought that saying "I'm have pork for tea" made him sound posher than "I'm having pig for tea" would, in much the same way that "I'll have crème brûlée for dessert" sounds posher than "I'll have burnt cream for afters".
 
1. Normans introduce new methods
2. New methods fail badly
3. Normans return to Anglo-Saxon ideas and methods
4. Normans give Anglo-Saxon ideas and methods French titles
All the same, the above book is saying almost all English land-holders were dispossessed, presumably to be replaced by French land-holders.

And I don't think this was an age in which bosses and managers liked to brag that they listened to their people (whether they do or not).
 
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