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The Myth (?) of the Decentralized Middle Ages

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In many sources writing about medieval times, the recurring meme is how decentralized Europe was at the time. It didn't have a boss: neither empire nor central nation-state that ran the shot. It's spoken of as basically an extremely complex system of loyalties without anything like a central power.
How accurate would you say this idea is? Was it really the case, or is it primarily because the middle ages were stuck between two rather centralized periods (Rome and the modern nation state system)?
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>>282547

Poland and Hungary were the bosses but they were written out of the history books by the J that shall not be named.
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>>282550
Why would they write out Poland when Poland has historically treated Jews far better than anywhere else?
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>>282550
Why would the Jesuits have a beef with central Europe? It's entirely christian and predominantly catholic.
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Idunno OP it says right there "Holy Roman Empire".
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Certainly both the emperor in the hre and the pope generally could be viewed as centralizing powers but ultimately nowhere near what came before and what would come later in the absolutist monarchies.
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>>282547
The Pope had a lot of authority, but not all of Europe is or was Catholic of course. Orthodoxy was plenty strong in the east and there were still Muslims in Spain and southern Italy.

And even more so, often times the Pope couldn't really exercise his power enough to greatly influence the secular kings and emperors. England especially had a long history of telling the Pope to fuck off, even before Henry the 8th.
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France and the pope called the shots in western Europe.
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>>282553

They were still butthurt over the War of 1920 were Poland prevented Lenin from conquering all of Europe and eradicating Christianity.
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>>282572
Is that why they sent the one Jew to destroy Poland and ensure Jewish Bolshevism spreads to as much of Europe as possible?
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>>282572
>medieval historiography was established in the interwar period by central European Jews

Please fuck off to /pol/ and never come back.
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>>282547
It's basically true. After the collapse of Rome you had all these small, private tyrannies pop up throughout Europe. But it was more decentralized in the early Middle Ages. Over the course of the High and Late Middle Ages, things slowly moved towards centralization.
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>>282547
Your map shows the HRE as a single state, muslim Spain as a single state "Pechenegs" as a state, Balkan Byzantium as a solid state, rather than a bunch of semi-autonomous regions that cane in and out of sovereignty all the time.
So while the early middle ages were decentralized, your particular map isnt, because of artistic license by its author.
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Certainly it was very decentralized compared to the classical or early modern periods. England after 1066 had a relatively strong central authority but even there the monarch or royal civil service didn't call the shots the way that Roman emperors or later monarchs did
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>>282678
It's strange how England is usually seen as an example of decentralization, with the gentry and all that, but in fact the English monarch was one the strongest in Europe, second only to France perhaps. Even an early modern king like George I is grossly underestimated in terms of authority on the land.
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>>282699
Don't forget the effects that the Hundred Year
s War had on the centralization of France and England.
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>>282699
Fucking this. England in 1000 was probably the most centralised nation in western Europe while France was a clusterfuck of near independent fiefs.
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>>282562
For a large part of the middle ages the king of France was so weak he had no authority outside of Paris
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>>282678
You mean before 1066.
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>>282555
Ssh, We shall not be Named.
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>>282547
Europe was definitely not decentralized, there were a few of big bosses that lorded over much of the continent
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>>283512
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>>282578
Please fuck off back to /lit/ and never come back
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>>283527
Please fuck off back to /mlp/.

(Makes sense just as much as your post did.)
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>>282584
>Over the course of the High and Late Middle Ages, things slowly moved towards centralization.

except, in the case of HRE, things moved towards decentralisation, especially post 1356
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>>282547
It was the case after 700AD, Charlemagne briefly united much of Europe but even that "Empire" was decentralized and didn't have effective rule of law or even compliant vassals. Charlemagne had to travel around the empire enforcing his will.
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>>282547
Divide the HRE in that map into 5 bilions tiny pieces and show France split in half every 50 years or so by Plantagenet England
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>>283542
His post makes sense because lit is full of Communists
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>>283598
How is >>282578 even remotely communist
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>>283600
The person who was told to go back to pol is far right, he is told to go back to pol by someone who got upset about his Jews covering up polish history theory. So the far right pole tells him to go back to lit, which is the home of political opponents like far leftists.

The pole automatically associated his dialogue enemy with his diametrically opposed ideological enemy, showing radicalism.
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>>283613
t. Carl Schmitt
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>>283613
>analytics instead of shitposting

GO BACK TO REDDIT!!
Thread posts: 32
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