No Hundred Years war

A "standard" textbook might tell you that, without a HYW, fully realized (and seperate) French and English national identities might develop along different lines.

Ironically, it might be possible that later, with the full rise of the nation-state, the French and English identities might be the same one. At times in history, an anglo-french state seemed to be a foregone conclusion.
 
England keeps Gascony, but doesn't gain Calais. It's stronger for having Gascony, but weaker for being less able to control the 'narrow sea'. England probably ends up a little richer in the long run. The Peasant's Revolt is maybe avoided. Because of England still controlling Gascony and the fact that the issues of the kings of England's fealty to the kings of France, and the kings of England's position in the succession to the French throne are not resolved it is fully likely that there will be a selection of alt-Hundred Years' Wars instead, much like the wars that had gone before between England and France. As a result, I would say that you would still see separate French and English identities developing.
 
Someone on another AH site mentioned the idea of allodial title (where land is owned free of any feudal obligations and inalienable) when this was brought up. The idea being that England and France come to a rules lawyer-esque deal so that England gains Gascony as an allodial fief owing no feudal duties or taxes whilst it technically still being a part of France. If they struck a deal where England gets to keep Gascony whilst giving up their claim to the Crown of France it could work, although how long the deal sticks over the long term is another matter.

The knock-ons from this could be interesting, but unfortuntaely I don't know enough about the period to say much about it.
 
At times they attempted that. The problem was that Gascony was just too tempting a target for successive salivating French Kings to respect any treaty handing Gascony to England, and inevitably as soon as the French tried to move in to take it back for themselves the English just revived the claim to the Kingship.
 
Yeah that's what I figured. The only way I could see it sticking would be for England to keep up the alliance with Burgundy and an independent Brittany as counters to French expansionism.

How much was the Hundred Years War a part of France moving from a feudalistic to more centralised state? If there's no Hundred Years War France might take longer to centralise although this is offset by their not being as ravaged as much. Other than Burgundy and Brittany are there any other areas of France that England could try and break off and support as independent entities or were already independent to help counter France?
 
Yeah that's what I figured. The only way I could see it sticking would be for England to keep up the alliance with Burgundy and an independent Brittany as counters to French expansionism.

How much was the Hundred Years War a part of France moving from a feudalistic to more centralised state? If there's no Hundred Years War France might take longer to centralise although this is offset by their not being as ravaged as much. Other than Burgundy and Brittany are there any other areas of France that England could try and break off and support as independent entities or were already independent to help counter France?

A big part. It was the Hundred Years War and the problems with Burgundy that made successive French Kings realise the need to rope in territories so that tax income went straight to the King, and to vastly limit the powers of nobles with as much land as the Kings themselves...

As for the independent entities thing, the problem was that that was a breach of vows to the King. The English tried to gain Gascony in their own right because their own Kingship meant they couldn't be subservient to France, and gaining Gascony, prizing it from the French, was the only way to secure it - paying homage to the Kings of France would just be a step too far, and a compromising of principles. Brittany managed quasi-independence because its own history had been one where the links to France were not entirely legal or fully feudal - by precedent Brittany could honestly say that it had a right to control its own affairs to a higher degree than anywhere else in France - hence a quasi-independence, where they saw their vassalship to France more as a respectful nod where the French wanted it to be a prostrated bow. Burgundy could claim that the way they had been treated by the Kings of France gave them license to call their vassalship "contract" terminated - and that was a very dubious measure. But nowhere else really had that, and for England to support any old noble declaring independence would fundamentally undermine the principle of the hierarchy of nobility in England too - it would mean that any English noble could legitimately declare independence...heck, it would be tantamount to declaring that they considered feudalism null and void. I'm not suggesting that it would spontaneously cause every noble in England and France to go their own direction, but rather it would be like a Princess at a court dance to come out wearing male clothing and espousing 20th century libertarian ideals, or for a knight to insult the King to his face and claim a right to free speech - it would be a breach of a social value held as unbreakable at the time, and it would be unthinkable.
 
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