Hello y'all,
This is more of a reflexion than an actual AH, but eh, still interesting!
So, in the pre-Revolution age (and yeah I know it's a while after the Middle Ages but it was easier for the title) we have a lot of countries sharing mostly the same religion (Christianity, especially before Luther), a same scholarly language (Latin), same cultural references (the Greco-Roman classics and the Bible), a network of university and para-state organisations (the Church, the Fairs, etc...) and interbred royalties.
From a European centric point of view, we are wildly different countries, France is not Italy, Spain is not England, etc... Yet there are similar movements swiping across Europe, like the Renaissance, the age of discoveries, etc... Basically my question is as thus: can we consider Europe in pre-modern times as one (semi-federated) entity in the midst of a semi-constant civil war (like WWI and WWII are sometimes called European Civil Wars) or were those actually different countries? To be clear, I'm not saying or proposing it was a proto-EU.
I ask you to consider a non-Eurocentric point of view on this one
This is more of a reflexion than an actual AH, but eh, still interesting!
So, in the pre-Revolution age (and yeah I know it's a while after the Middle Ages but it was easier for the title) we have a lot of countries sharing mostly the same religion (Christianity, especially before Luther), a same scholarly language (Latin), same cultural references (the Greco-Roman classics and the Bible), a network of university and para-state organisations (the Church, the Fairs, etc...) and interbred royalties.
From a European centric point of view, we are wildly different countries, France is not Italy, Spain is not England, etc... Yet there are similar movements swiping across Europe, like the Renaissance, the age of discoveries, etc... Basically my question is as thus: can we consider Europe in pre-modern times as one (semi-federated) entity in the midst of a semi-constant civil war (like WWI and WWII are sometimes called European Civil Wars) or were those actually different countries? To be clear, I'm not saying or proposing it was a proto-EU.
I ask you to consider a non-Eurocentric point of view on this one