AHC: Make a modern country culturally, socially, and economically resemble the High Middle Ages

[baltur2]

To what extent could a 21st century country realistically resemble the society, culture, economics, and aesthetics of the European High Middle Ages and what divergences would it require?

I. Religion

This is potentially the easiest, any Latin European or Latin American country (or another strongly Catholic country like Poland) could do it, especially in a TL with no Protestant Reformation or at least no Vatican II.
It is not far fetched for Catholicism to remain more conservative and traditional than in OTL. Just look at Islam and Hinduism as examples.

II. Architecture

This is also quite doable. Plenty of modern European and Latin American countries have a Medieval (or very Early Modern Period) old town, just look at Prague or Krakow. Gothic architecture and modern technology seem to work together without difficulty.

Castles and even 18th century Fortresses are obviously too primitive for modern warfare, though nothing is preventing a modern military base to also work as permanent living quarters and even places for vendors to set up business. A good OTL example is Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
In this way they could at least culturally continue to be called "Castles".

Knighthood could survive in a military where only nobles are privileged to serve as officers.


III. Monarchy and Feudalism

Potentially the second hardest. Even Saudi Arabia is pushing it with Universal Human Rights being applied in most countries. Noble privileges and their wealth could remain much higher than that of the common people, but pulling off a human rights compatible version of Serfdom would be difficult.

IV. Economy

Likely the hardest. Some old-timey version of the Gold Standard combined with a degree of progressive taxation, a banning of Usury, and the abolition of the Stock Market.
Even Muslim countries struggle with ideologically based "Islamic Banking" and have to apply modern workarounds.


What are your ideas?

 

[overoceans]

This is potentially the easiest, any Latin European or Latin American country (or another strongly Catholic country like Poland) could do it, especially in a TL with no Protestant Reformation or at least no Vatican II.

No Vatican II would give you a Catholicism that resembles the Catholicism of 1960. And I think No Protestant Reformation requires a pre-1900 POD, no?

Which gets me to the question...

Are you positing a country that, having passed at least partly through modernity, decides to revert back to the Middle Ages for some reason or other? Or are you positing a country that for all practical purposes never left the Middle Ages, but somehow managed to survive as a political entity into the current period?

 

[xsampa]

Bhutan with dzongkha fortresses, serfdom and absolute monarchy?

 

[Mina-van-Mako]

Bhutan with dzongkha fortresses, serfdom and absolute monarchy?

Right, however I think the point was about a Catholic state.

On my behalf I would suggest some Conservative Lichtenstein, or perhaps Ireland. However, High Middle Age also included courting poetry and a pretty relaxed stance towards heresies, you should keep this in mind. A micro state in the Balkans could do it too (I would've suggested Montenegro if it weren't Orthodox).

OOOOOOOOR if we want to go completely overboard have Cochinchina be a settlement colony mixed with Catholic conversions of the natives. It would be the weirdest thing but it could pull a Deseret and become the weird backward neighbour of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Or have a Pol Pot like guy anywhere, if the government that putsches him is a reactionary one the result would feel medieval.

Have an Agrarian-Phalangist faction succeed to Franco.

 

[Lalli]

I doubt that you can make with post 1900 POD any country (at least European or American one) literally Medieval without nuclear war and even then it wouldn't be totally medieval.

Perhaps best chances would be Bhutan remaining such what it was on early 20th century or surviving Taliban Afghanistan. You can't turn any 20th century country as Medieval relic.

 

[Skallagrim]

Well, as I have argued in this thread (among other places on this forum), which was co-incidentally recently revived again, you basically only have to wait until 2100 or so, and then I expect something quite like this to be more-or-less inevitable. Not literally a return to the Middle Ages, but the start of the era after "Modernity", in which typically Modern egalitarianism is reversed and discarded, social stratification returns, secularism dies out and active religiousness becomes the norm again, while typically Modern aesthetics are consciously rejected in favour of styles that deliberately emulate "traditional" forms (e.g. Rayonnant Gothic). The least likely is a return to the economic norms of old. A gold standard and certain usury laws are quite conceivable (I'd expect a ban on compound interest, but never one on interest altogether). An abolition of the stock market seems far from likely. I'm predicting a socio-cultural shift, here, not a techno-economical one! (Anyway, you may now call me a neo-Spenglerian madman and laugh at me, but that's my actual answer: about eight decades of patience is all it takes.)

If you want an ATL scenario, rather than my macro-historical ramblings (a quite reasonable desire, I'll readily admit), then I'll point out that I also wrote an entry on German National Conservatism. That was a quixotic could-have-been ideology from the 1920s that was, in OTL, out-competed and then pushed aside by Nazism. If it had succeeded in gaining power, then -- in certain iterations -- it could have resulted in something like what you are describing... albeit in a rather hollow, artificially imposed way. (Because I rather think that by 1930 or so, the Modern world wasn't ready to die a natural death yet. So imposing a distinctly a-modern system on the world at that juncture would be a matter of applying a lot of artificial force to make history do something very specific, which it wasn't going to do on its own at that stage... Oh. Shit. I'm lapsing into macro-history again!)

 

[Analytical Engine]

Bhutan with dzongkha fortresses, serfdom and absolute monarchy?

An independent Tibet wouldn't be far off this.

 

[baltur2]

*snip*

Very interesting and novel viewpoint. I also think that most countries will eventually revert to a more Traditional and Religious outlook during this century, as a kind of stabilizing force against the various both left-wing and right-wing Revolutionary ideals of the 20th and early 21st centuries, which are obsessed with controlling the minutae of everyday life and the thoughts of people. A kind of "Age of Napoleon" will come after an "Age of Robespierre".

Many Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Croats, Italians, Bavarians, and Poles already think like this in ideology. They are neither "left-wing" or "right-wing" they simply want the State and international political organizations to shut up about their daily lives and social interactions.

 

[GauchoBadger]

Very interesting and novel viewpoint. I also think that most countries will eventually revert to a more Traditional and Religious outlook during this century, as a kind of stabilizing force against the various both left-wing and right-wing Revolutionary ideals of the 20th and early 21st centuries, which are obsessed with controlling the minutae of everyday life and the thoughts of people. A kind of "Age of Napoleon" will come after an "Age of Robespierre".

Many Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Croats, Italians, Bavarians, and Poles already think like this in ideology. They are neither "left-wing" or "right-wing" they simply want the State and international political organizations to shut up about their daily lives and social interactions.

I wouldn’t say such an ideology would be centrist or anti-statist by nature. Austere farm lifestyles, religious and cultural identitarian dogma and rejection of perceived cosmopolitan ideals are positions advocated for by most, if not all, of the modern far-right.

 

[A Most Sovereign Lady]

There are a few absolute monarchies that absolutely suck here and there in the world still.

 

[baltur2]

I wouldn’t say such an ideology would be centrist or anti-statist by nature. Austere farm lifestyles, religious and cultural identitarian dogma and rejection of perceived cosmopolitan ideals are positions advocated for by most, if not all, of the modern far-right.

The key difference is that the far-right is just as "modern" as the far-left and is just as obsessed with controlling the everyday life of people, with similar Orwellian methods. It also ties in with the Puritan Protestant dogma of keeping a check on your neighbours, ideals which are 18th and 17th century, but didn't appear before in History.

I went to Catholic Sunday School in Hungary, and our priest always taught us, that ratting on the perceived behavior of our neighbor is a bigger sin than whatever we could commit in everyday life. The priest told us that whatever we do only concerns our conscience and God, and if we feel any kind of twang of conscience or an uneasiness in our soul, we should talk to a priest and confess our sins -who has an obligation to keep silence about it-, but otherwise it is not our job to act as a judge towards other free-willed person's actions.
He said that this is a valuable feature of Western people's Individualist nature in which we could communicate with God without being judged by others.

 

[Falecius]

Very interesting and novel viewpoint. I also think that most countries will eventually revert to a more Traditional and Religious outlook during this century, as a kind of stabilizing force against the various both left-wing and right-wing Revolutionary ideals of the 20th and early 21st centuries, which are obsessed with controlling the minutae of everyday life and the thoughts of people. A kind of "Age of Napoleon" will come after an "Age of Robespierre".

Many Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Croats, Italians, Bavarians, and Poles already think like this in ideology. They are neither "left-wing" or "right-wing" they simply want the State and international political organizations to shut up about their daily lives and social interactions.

I think this is a very partial reading of this way of thinking in countries cited; while I can understand, and even sympathize, to this sentiment in abstract, I practice I think when these views are translated into actual votes, they tend to support parties who emphatically do think the State can and should meddle (or condone aggressive meddling) in those daily lives and social interaction that happen not to conform to some understanding of "Religion and Tradition" (which, more often than not, is a very questionable understanding).
Getting more specific would be more apt in the Chat forum, but in more general terms, while I absolutely concur that Modernity had (and has) its own tremendous stresses, drawbacks and contradiction, first we do already live a time of extreme inequality, second a restoration of some modified neo-medieval order is not going to just leave people alone. It could use modern techniques to maintain or re-establish perceivedly per-Modern order of avowed inequality (Saudi Arabia has already been doing that in some regards, although the Saudi state should be regarded as a sui generis product of Modernity itself).

 

[Falecius]

The key difference is that the far-right is just as "modern" as the far-left and is just as obsessed with controlling the everyday life of people, with similar Orwellian methods. It also ties in with the Puritan Protestant dogma of keeping a check on your neighbours, ideals which are 18th and 17th century, but didn't appear before in History.

I went to Catholic Sunday School in Hungary, and our priest always taught us, that ratting on the perceived behavior of our neighbor is a bigger sin than whatever we could commit in everyday life. The priest told us that whatever we do only concerns our conscience and God, and if we feel any kind of twang of conscience or an uneasiness in our soul, we should talk to a priest and confess our sins -who has an obligation to keep silence about it-, but otherwise it is not our job to act as a judge towards other free-willed person's actions.
He said that this is a valuable feature of Western people's Individualist nature in which we could communicate with God without being judged by others.

I really find the attitudes of you priest commendable, but, when viewed in purely mundane terms, and without questioning its spiritual value, the sacrament of Reconciliation also gives the priests themselves (as opposed to anyone else) a inordinate amount of power over individual consciousnesses and behaviours. Indeed, its regular performance for all believer at regular, relatively short intervals was not ordinary practice of the Medieval Church, and is indeed a feature of its participation in emerging Modernity itself.

 

[Onkel Willie]

To what extent could a 21st century country realistically resemble the society, culture, economics, and aesthetics of the European High Middle Ages and what divergences would it require?

I. Religion

This is potentially the easiest, any Latin European or Latin American country (or another strongly Catholic country like Poland) could do it, especially in a TL with no Protestant Reformation or at least no Vatican II.
It is not far fetched for Catholicism to remain more conservative and traditional than in OTL. Just look at Islam and Hinduism as examples.

II. Architecture

This is also quite doable. Plenty of modern European and Latin American countries have a Medieval (or very Early Modern Period) old town, just look at Prague or Krakow. Gothic architecture and modern technology seem to work together without difficulty.

Castles and even 18th century Fortresses are obviously too primitive for modern warfare, though nothing is preventing a modern military base to also work as permanent living quarters and even places for vendors to set up business. A good OTL example is Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
In this way they could at least culturally continue to be called "Castles".

Knighthood could survive in a military where only nobles are privileged to serve as officers.


III. Monarchy and Feudalism

Potentially the second hardest. Even Saudi Arabia is pushing it with Universal Human Rights being applied in most countries. Noble privileges and their wealth could remain much higher than that of the common people, but pulling off a human rights compatible version of Serfdom would be difficult.

IV. Economy

Likely the hardest. Some old-timey version of the Gold Standard combined with a degree of progressive taxation, a banning of Usury, and the abolition of the Stock Market.
Even Muslim countries struggle with ideologically based "Islamic Banking" and have to apply modern workarounds.


What are your ideas?

Nuclear war takes place in 1983. By 2019, societies across the northern hemisphere have recovered to medieval levels of technology with some scraps of 20th century stuff surviving here and there. People live in hovels made from the ruins of pre-1983 civilization. Europe, North America and the former USSR are largely run by warlords with a feudal style of rule and who rule from makeshift fortifications resembling castles. They maintain loyalty through a fanatical interpretation of Christianity. More advanced societies only exist in the southern hemisphere.

 

[GauchoBadger]

How about...
North Korea ends up even worse of a basket case in the years spanning the transition of power from Kim Il-Sung to Kim Jong-Il, with famine and internal disputes grinding down the regime's unity until a compromise between notable party officials holding command over administrative conglomerates results in a sort of "neo-feudalism with juche characteristics"?