If Henry VIII doesn't split from Rome, how does Britain develop?

Meh, I'd take the flood of capital that their liquidation provided to English arts, trade, and shipbuilding any day of the week.

What about female education?

In the long term, that might be even more beneficial than a temporary cash glut from looting the Church.

Thomas Friedman described how, due to low oil prices, petrostates like Iran had to liberalize and invest in their people and when oil prices were high, a stifling dictatorship was easier.

(Granted, investing in trade and shipbuilding is a different animal than rivers of petro-bling, as this kind of wealth compounds.)

You might have a short-term, long-term issue here.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Meh, I'd take the flood of capital that their liquidation provided to English arts, trade, and shipbuilding any day of the week.

They were mostly sold off for little gain to the king's cronies; little if any capital came out of it, except some money to pay for Henry VIII's "Hundred years' war a hundred years late" idée fixe.
 
They were mostly sold off for little gain to the king's cronies; little if any capital came out of it, except some money to pay for Henry VIII's "Hundred years' war a hundred years late" idée fixe.

But what were the gains made by his cronies? Henry largely squandered his share in Calais, but this was far from universal. It should also be noted, that his warmongering helped to establish the navel infrastructure and doctrine that would aid England so much in the coming centuries.

The dissolution of the monasteries opened up 16% of English lands to private use (aristocratic) and taxation. This move both centralized the state, while furthered the concentration of private capital. Having alot of private capital, tends to be good, when one's nation wishes to engage in mercantile ventures.

As for female education, it was certainly an unfortunate side effect. However its not as if protestantism hampered education, and the printing of English language scripture was undoubtedly a boon towards mass literacy.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
A interesting aspect are the effect on English language without a Protestant bible serving to standardlise it, you could see Scots survive as a fully independent literary language.

But honeatly there are a lot of effect this will have, I agree that rich urban centres are most likely to go Protestant (Calvinists), but other effects are the lack of Protestant refugees-migrant and that the King will likely use the Catholic aristrocracy-Calvinist burgher split to base his absolutism on. We will likely see something like the French war of religeons, with the Calvinist leaving. Netherlands are still likely to get indepence*, which mean that Netherlands, Scotland and the Calvinist states of the Rhineland will likely receive most of the French-English refugees. The British will to large extent be cut of the Baltic trade as Catholics, and the Dutch and Dutch may also take over the trade in Arkhangelsk. All in all I see a poorer less urbanised 18th century England, but also a more centralised one with less trouble with the Irish.

*Even more likely with a Austrian-British-Spanish alliance the French will support Dutch independence
 
In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, there's a section describing the study of slag heaps near a particular monastery where the slag had significantly less "wasted metal" than was typical of metallurgy at the time.

The author spun this scenario about how the monks might have been on the verge of discovering some advanced process and how this could have spread throughout the monastic information network across Europe and kicked off the Industrial Revolution centuries early, were it not for Henry's greed.

This article here contains another account, claiming that the monks were about to create a modern blast furnace:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods43.html

I think the "early industrial revolution" might be a bit optimistic, but there might be actual technological advances in TTL, in the fields of metallurgy (this particular case) or other areas where the monks were active.

Also, the monastics were the only ones providing education for girls at this time in English history, an area that suffered a whole lot due to the Dissolution.

No split with Rome and girls in Britain would be more educated overall, which could have more effects later, including the possible appearance of one or more Great (Wo)men who affect history in some way or another.

As I mentioned in the sister-thread I think the big change here is not in some early Industrial Revolution (that needs more than a blast furnace) but in the possibility of cheap cast iron cannons and firearms for Henry's conquest dreams (assuming the Blast Furnace lives up to the author's claims, which I question).

The big Q here is if Catholic Henry's lack of Monestary Spoils is sufficiently countered by the increased arms potential. Can he, through stealing lands from Protestant Nobles or lesser Church land grabs, build up enough now state of the art arms to run a profitable takeover of wealthier neighbors, or will he bankrupt the treasury trying?
 
As I mentioned in the sister-thread I think the big change here is not in some early Industrial Revolution (that needs more than a blast furnace) but in the possibility of cheap cast iron cannons and firearms for Henry's conquest dreams (assuming the Blast Furnace lives up to the author's claims, which I question).

The big Q here is if Catholic Henry's lack of Monestary Spoils is sufficiently countered by the increased arms potential. Can he, through stealing lands from Protestant Nobles or lesser Church land grabs, build up enough now state of the art arms to run a profitable takeover of wealthier neighbors, or will he bankrupt the treasury trying?

But a major problem is that of time. You will need the blast furnace technology, which was recently developed, to simultaneously live up to its full potential, spread to other parts of England, receive financing for large scale implementation which needs to be successful aw well, and to have someone incorporate it into the casting of cannons.

If Henry is going to peruse is continental ambitions with protestant property rather than church property he will experience greatly diminished returns. As I mentioned earlier, while the quick money stemmed from the confiscation of liquid assets, and the fire sale of church land, it provided long term benefits through its addition to English tax roles. Protestant land and assets are already being taxed, and wealthy protestants tended to be more urban than rural. This generally speaking means, both less short term and long term value to the state.

So in short, the time taken to adopt the blast furnace technology if it even gets adopted, would likely preclude its use in Henry VIII's continental ambitions. Henry will have much less money to squander, but his forfeiture will likely damage the economies in England's growth areas ie the cities while embittering the nation's protestants in the process. Because of this, England will probably be less successful in France than in OTL, and Henry's successors will have a shallower tax base from which to pay off his debts.
 
On the subject of Scotland, my guess is that what happens there depends on what happens to James V. He was very staunchly Catholic IIRC, so if he lives longer he would probably resemble the alt-Henry VIII who never split with Rome: Wishart probably goes to the stake a bit earlier than OTL, and Knox might well follow. Whether their removal would keep Scotland mostly Catholic, I don't know; I'm not that well-informed about how much Protestantism had penetrated Scotland before Wishart.

With Scotland, there's also the issue of royal geneologies and marriages: if Henry has only Mary as his heir for whatever reason, wouldn't James V be next in line after her until she has children? So it's possible the Stuarts could still inherit the English throne somehow: maybe even earlier than OTL, and with less controversy since both countries will still officially have the same religion. How's that for weird ATL convergence?
 
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