What if no Normans?

knights in heavy armor
Do you think the English were fighting in their knickers or something?

Joking aside, as others have pointed out the only technological/tactical difference between Normans and English was the former's reliance on cavalry which isn't actually that big of a deal. at least not yet anyway.

And castles are less a technological innovation than it is a tactical one: everyone and their grannies knew about using fortifications to defend key locations going back to before the romans. The Norman innovation was to use small fortifications offensively to project their limited manpower over a large hostile area/population. This probably best demonstrated by the english castles in Wales
 
The Saxons weren't unfamiliar with cavalry and Norman cavalry did not provide a crucial edge in the Battle of Hastings, by all accounts it was a very close-run battle that could've gone to either side. The idea that the English were somehow notably behind the Normans in technology is unfounded and based entirely on a desire to force a deterministic view of history.

Do you think the English were fighting in their knickers or something?

Joking aside, as others have pointed out the only technological/tactical difference between Normans and English was the former's reliance on cavalry which isn't actually that big of a deal. at least not yet anyway.

And castles are less a technological innovation than it is a tactical one: everyone and their grannies knew about using fortifications to defend key locations going back to before the romans. The Norman innovation was to use small fortifications offensively to project their limited manpower over a large hostile area/population. This probably best demonstrated by the english castles in Wales
Completely agree. Hastings was massively close.
One of the reasons the Normans did so well later was because it was a centralised state and could thus focus more funds and military force under Norman control than in France
 
As others have said, heavy cavalry and castles were more a tactical advantage than a technological one.

Also, the conquest by Sven/Canute was also given as evidence of an Anglo-Continental tech gap, but the Vikings made no greater use of cavalry or castles than the Saxons themselves did.
 
As others have said, heavy cavalry and castles were more a tactical advantage than a technological one.

Also, the conquest by Sven/Canute was also given as evidence of an Anglo-Continental tech gap, but the Vikings made no greater use of cavalry or castles than the Saxons themselves did.
Add in that Cnut's war was essentially an English civil war with a foreign claimant and add-on foreign support rather than a Danish vs English thing.
 
Top