• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Elizabeth II has died

That's Georges Dumézil's three-function hypothesis:  Trifunctional hypothesis

He proposed that ancestral Indo-European society had an ideology of three functions, and that this ideology survived in various forms in its descendants.

What bilby listed fits very well:
  • Sovereignty -- those who pray (also, those who judge)
  • Force -- those who fight
  • Production -- those who work
In India, this led to the castes of Brahmans (sovereignty), Kshatriyas (force), and Vaisyas (production). Lower-status workers became a separate caste, Shudras, and the lowest-status ones became Untouchables or Dalits.

There are several things that at least seem to fit, like the motif of  Threefold death
  • Sovereignty: hanging
  • Force: cutting or burning
  • Production: drowning or bludgeoning
J.P. Mallory's book "In Search of the Indo-Europeans" has more examples, like an early text that distinguished between magic-spell medicine (sovereignty), knife medicine (force), and herb medicine (production).
 
The Brits do love putting on a uniform and wear a chestful of medals.

Russian generals have more medals, and theirs' are bigger, shinier, and gaudier.
It's not "The Brits", it's the British aristocracy, of which the King is the pinnacle.

It's a hangover from the medieval social structure, in which society was divided into three groups: The peasants, who laboured to produce food, clothing, and shelter; The clergy, who laboured to ensure protection against the wrath of God; And the aristocracy, who laboured to ensure protection against other people.

Those who work; Those who pray; and Those who fight.

Of course it never really worked that way. The clergy got the peasants to do a lot of prayer; And the aristocracy got the peasants to do a lot of the fighting.

But the honour and kudos for praying went to the clergy, increasing by rank. And the honour and kudos for fighting went to the aristocracy, also increasing by rank.

King Charles (and for that matter his parents and his sons) all served in the military, because it is a primary duty of aristocratic families, and particularly the royal family, to do so. Even if the King no longer leads cavalry charges towards enemy armies.

Most of what we think today about how medieval class and social hierarchy worked comes from Marx. In reality peasants had a lot of say and power the whole period. Just prior to the French revolution when Luis XVI assembled the estates general he stacked the decks so that the peasants (3rd estate) got no say. Which pissed off the peasants and led directly to the revolution. This was analysed to death by Marx and later thinkers. But this was an extreme one off event. Not representative of the period as a whole.

We have a super bad habit of treating royal propaganda as if it's litteral truth. Kings very often had to ask, very nicely, the people if they would do as he wished. Kings were like CEO's. If they didn't do a good job they would be fired. It happened many times. So the propaganda would depict a situation where everybody just loves everything the king says.

The aristocrats weren't nearly as exploitative as Marx (and contemporary popular history) would lead us to believe. In European medeival world peasants were under a constant threat from bandits, step nomad raiders, vikings, Moorish raiders, Turks, etc etc. The peasants tended to be really happy about having a guy that would organise the defending. Over time, as societies got better organised, the warring class had less and less of a justification for getting so much wealth and power. And as farming methods improved the previously reasonable slice of the pie just swelled out of proportion.

The French revolution is just such an extreme event in world history. In many ways. Including how they treated the peasants.
 
Last edited:
Not representative of the period as a whole.
The medieval period was a very long time indeed, and so nothing's really representative of the period as a whole. The exact dates depend on the events you choose as defining the period, so they vary from country to country, and Medieval England ended far earlier than the Middle Ages in France.

In English history the nomenclature has changed in the last few decades, with the term "Medieval" now almost invariably including the period formerly called the "Dark Ages", which is now more commonly referred to as the "Early Medieval", which begins with the end of Roman power in England, usually placed somewhere in the fifth century (476 is one of the most popular dates), and ends with the Norman Conquest of 1066, which marks the beginning of the "Late Medieval" period, which in England ends in 1485. So the Medieval period as a whole runs for ~1,009 years, or 419 years if you discount the "Early" period.

Nevertheless, the French Revolution most certainly isn't representative of any part of the Medieval period, because it didn't happen until about three centuries after the medieval period ended in England, and about two hundred years after the end of Medieval France, which I would place no later than the end of Valois rule in 1589.

I'm personally in favour of dividing the Medieval Period into three parts from the point of view of English history: The first part begins with the withdrawal of Roman power, and is a protracted process rather than a single event, but certainly belongs somewhere in the second half of the fifth century. The second part runs from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to 1348, when the fundamentals of society were massively disrupted by the pandemic disease known to contemporaries as the Blue Fever, but today usually referred to as the Black Death. The third part runs from the plague to the end of the Wars of the Roses in 1485, which marks the beginning of the Early Modern period.

Your comments on class structure and the relationship of monarchy, church, and peasantry are likely fairly true of the Early Modern period, but the entire Medieval period was far more static and more explicitly hierarchical, particularly in the central period from 1066-1348. The plague of 1348 sowed the seeds of power for the peasantry, by making it possible for them to unilaterally depart from the lands they were tied to, and hence from the authority of the landowner. But this didn't show up as any kind of requirement for monarchs to gain the support of the peasants until the thread of monarchical succession was broken at Bosworth Field. Henry VII and his successors needed the support of the peasants, not least to underpin the support of the aristocracy.

The Norman conquest stamped out any suggestion of a return to the more democratic structures in the Anglo-Saxon and Danelaw communities of Early Medieval England, and it took the deposing of the King in 1485, and then a further two centuries of steady growth in confidence amongst the wealthier peasants (culminating in the deposing of Charles I in 1645 and his execution in 1649) to demolish the autocratic structure of the English monarchy.

Certainly no English monarch between 1066 and 1485 felt in any way beholden to public opinion; They had to consider the opinions of their extended families, and of the wider aristocracy, and even of the kings of other European countries, but those people didn't care about what peasants wanted any more than the king did.
 
England did suffer from peasant revolts from time to time. Some local, some general.
In many parts of England, nobles had to travel in armed packs to avoid being killed by their own peasants in rural areas. And peasant revolts were not just in England. In France they had their jaqueries also. England had its Ranters, Diggers, and Levellers.
 
She may be dead, put she will be resurrected in perpetuity.
 
Like this threard, she will never really die.
 
England did suffer from peasant revolts from time to time. Some local, some general.
In many parts of England, nobles had to travel in armed packs to avoid being killed by their own peasants in rural areas. And peasant revolts were not just in England. In France they had their jaqueries also. England had its Ranters, Diggers, and Levellers.
While there were certainly peasant revolts in Medieval England, the Ranters, Diggers and Levellers were all seventeenth century movements, (and so not Medieval, but Early Modern), and all a part of the power vacuum of the Civil War, when both King and Parliament were too busy fighting each other to spare military forces to put down revolutionaries. They were quickly eliminated by the Protectorate once the war was won.

The only even partially successful Peasants Revolt in Medieval England was the 1381 uprising led by Wat Tyler; Its cause was the disruption of society by the plague of three decades earlier, and its success was very limited, with a number of concessions immediately rescinded by the king as soon as the rebellion was over, and the leaders of the revolt hanged.

The revolt did have some lasting impact, in that subsequent monarchs hesitated to impose large taxes for foreign wars, but this was a very minor concession to public opinion, and came only in the latest part of the Medieval era.

Everyone who had anything worth stealing had to travel in armed packs in Medieval England; The uncleared woodlands that separated settlements were home to literal "out-laws" - people who were expelled from society for minor crimes, and who had neither the protection of the law, nor any way to rejoin society and become gainfully employed. They were explicitly outside the law, and legally not people - killing an outlaw wasn't murder, and taking anything in his possession wasn't theft.

Most lived very short lives after their banishment, but those who survived did so by being effective at robbing anyone who left the settled areas.

The forests of Medieval England were a libertarian paradise, with no government of any kind.
 
Last edited:
Cromwell lasted 4 years, his son who succeeded him 1 year. Then the Puritans got the boot. Charles II learned the lesson and went out of his way not to piss off peasants or towns people. James II went out of his way to piss everybody off and lost his throne to William of Orange. The Glorious Revolution gelded the Kings. A win for peasants, towns people and non-nobles.

When rumors started King James was raising an army in Ireland to invade England and make Catholicism the official state religion, 100,000 citizens rallied in London swearing to fight James. Many of them armed members of the city militia. These militias had proven to be formidable soldiers in the civil wars. Support for James collapsed and he fled to France and was accounted by Parlement to have officially abdicated. Nothing like a good citizen revolt now and then.
 
Cromwell lasted 4 years, his son who succeeded him 1 year. Then the Puritans got the boot. Charles II learned the lesson and went out of his way not to piss off peasants or towns people. James II went out of his way to piss everybody off and lost his throne to William of Orange. The Glorious Revolution gelded the Kings. A win for peasants, towns people and non-nobles.

When rumors started King James was raising an army in Ireland to invade England and make Catholicism the official state religion, 100,000 citizens rallied in London swearing to fight James. Many of them armed members of the city militia. These militias had proven to be formidable soldiers in the civil wars. Support for James collapsed and he fled to France and was accounted by Parlement to have officially abdicated. Nothing like a good citizen revolt now and then.
 
Cromwell lasted 4 years, his son who succeeded him 1 year. Then the Puritans got the boot. Charles II learned the lesson and went out of his way not to piss off peasants or towns people. James II went out of his way to piss everybody off and lost his throne to William of Orange. The Glorious Revolution gelded the Kings. A win for peasants, towns people and non-nobles.

When rumors started King James was raising an army in Ireland to invade England and make Catholicism the official state religion, 100,000 citizens rallied in London swearing to fight James. Many of them armed members of the city militia. These militias had proven to be formidable soldiers in the civil wars. Support for James collapsed and he fled to France and was accounted by Parlement to have officially abdicated. Nothing like a good citizen revolt now and then.
None of which happened until two centuries AFTER the end of the Medieval period.

Not everything that happened in the past happened at the same time.

Not everything that happened in the past was "medieval". The word has a meaning, albeit one with some room for interpretation. No historian includes the seventeenth century in England in the Medieval period, its a bigger error than describing WWII as part of the Victorian era would be.
 
I am not just talking about the medieval period.
This entire derail started with Dr Z making (IMO incorrect) claims about the influence of the peasantry in the medieval period.

I'm still wondering whether he was mistakenly attributing events of the Early Modern era as 'Medieval', or whether he was just mistaken about the influence medieval peasants had over their kings.

So if you're not talking about the medieval period, you're derailing the derail - and as nobody has suggests that the absolute oppression of the peasants in the medieval period extended into the early modern era, you're pushing against an open door.

All the events you correctly describe as indicative of the increasing power of public opinion in England are amongst the reasons why historians don't include the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the "Medieval" bracket; It was a very different (and ultimately revolutionary) period of history and very unlike the Middle Ages.
 
HM King Charles III's crowning moment - BBC - YouTube

The part where the Archbishop of Canterbury places a very fancy crown on King Charles III's head.


From last September: Antigua and Barbuda planning vote to become republic within three years, media report | Reuters

More recently: Belize likely to become republic, says PM as he criticises Rishi Sunak | Belize | The Guardian - "Exclusive: Johnny Briceño attacks his UK counterpart’s refusal to apologise for atrocities of slavery"
“I think he [Sunak] has a moral responsibility to be able to offer at the very least an apology,” Briceño said. “He should have a better appreciation of it because of his ancestry.
“When you read and hear about the plundering that took place in the land of his ancestors, I do believe that he should have offered an apology.”
Of the countries with the British monarch as the head of state, Belize is the only one that King Charles III has yet to visit.
Last year, the Belizean government approved a bill to create a constitutional commission, which convened in November last year. The commission, which includes representation from many civil groups as well as Belize’s two main political parties, will consider a broad range of reform issues, including whether to become a republic.

There is bipartisan support for such a move, and Belize is now the only Caribbean country in the Commonwealth realm where the crown could be removed with a parliamentary vote rather than a referendum.
 
Back
Top Bottom