20 minutes
Franco-cultural Northwest Europe.
The foundations of Normandy take us back to the pre-royal phase of Viking raids. One of these Vikings, a Scandinavian of uncertain origin named Rollo, had established himself and his followers in the lower Seine valley by the early tenth century, and Charles the Simple, king of West Francia, granted him the countship of Rouen in exchange for Rollo ending his raiding and converting to Christianity. Rollo’s grandson Richard became the first Duke of Normandy, indicative of the process whereby Normandy’s Scandinavian connections faded in favor of the French-dominated, Christian cultural world of the continent, putting Normandy in geopolitical conflict and connection with other polities of the fragmenting Carolingian realm, including Flanders, Anjou, Brittany, and the
Kingdom of France itself.
This was the world of Edward the Confessor’s upbringing at the decal court of Robert I, grandson of Richard I who was grandson of Rollo. Probably the key “ideological” difference between this world and the Anglo-Scandinavian world Edward came to reign over had to do with the governance of the Church, that “trans-national” (to use an anachronistic term for the eleventh century) player in geopolitics. Starting in 1054, the Gregorian Reform movement gained dominance within the Papacy. The reforms aimed for by its proponents had to do with
the role of the laity (crucially secular rulers) in the appointment of church office holders such as abbots and bishops: the reformers wished to free the Church from “corrupt” secular control whereas rulers wished to retain control over appointments that, given the vast landholdings of the Church, had considerable importance in their realms. Duke Robert’s son and illegitimate heir William managed to project the image, at least, of friendliness to the reformers and therefore garner Papal support in geopolitical terms, whereas the Anglo-Saxon kingdom,
like most of Scandinavia, resisted what appeared to be a potential threat to royal power.
England between two worlds.
Anglo-Saxon England was therefore a somewhat complicated geopolitical world unto itself, positioned between two other distinct geopolitical worlds, but more closely aligned through much of the eleventh century with the Scandinavian than with the French world. The nature of these worlds illustrates the differences between eleventh century geopolitics and the modern variety around which geopolitical theory has been built. Each, and even all three in combination, were very far from global because the communications and transport modes available to their inhabitants were so slow and limited. The Scandinavian world was geographically the largest of
these worlds (especially when it included significant parts of Britain), centered as it was around the sea lanes of the North Sea; while potentially the fastest lane for communications and transporting of troops, the Sea was also subject to the unpredictable (in the eleventh century) vagaries of wind, tide, and storm. Franco-cultural northwestern was smaller because it was dependent on slower and more expensive land transport except where river valleys created limited faster lanes. The effective size of England was similar, as land transport and rivers
again constituted the main modes of transport. The North Sea and the English Channel both connected and divided the three worlds, and each had other connections beyond this triad. The geopolitical dynamics of this triad of worlds, in other words, were neither global nor isolated to themselves.
This communications and transport environment meant that even the political leaders in these worlds had only a slow and faulty idea of what geopolitical threats or challenges they faced, often right up until they came virtually face-to-face with those threats; and even more limited means to influence or respond to those threats that loomed beyond the horizon or emerged over it. Geopolitical “planning” or large scale strategizing in such worlds was necessarily also limited and contingent. It began with simply keeping one’s own house in order.
The competing factions at the heart of eleventh century Anglo-Saxon England noted above meant that England’s house was anything but in order, and then the transitional moment came, both of the worlds the kingdom was connected to responded, albeit independently of each other, illustrating the limits of communication and planning across these geopolitical realms. Edward the Confessor died in January, 1066, without an heir of his body. The three men who
at that moment dominated the triad of geopolitical worlds at whose center the kingship of England lay now came to the fore.
Harold Godwinson, son of the Earl Godwin noted above and head of the Scandinavian-leaning faction that had dominated the English realm since Canute’s reign, despite Edward the Confessor’s Norman leanings, was crowned king shortly after Edward’s death. His succession was uncontested in England itself, but he came to the throne in the midst of a fluid and uncertain geopolitical situation created in part by his dead predecessor. Having recognized (according to Anglo-Saxon sources) Harold as his heir on his deathbed, Edward had previously
recognized William duke of Normandy as his heir as well. Harold had the support of the Anglo-Saxon thegnage — except for his own brother Tostig, who went into rebellion and sought help in Scandinavia — and the advantage of being on the spot when Edward died, but William had ambition and the resources of Normandy at his disposal.
A third contestant seriously complicated this apparently binary contest for rulership of England, however. Harald Sigurdsson, whose epithet “Hardrada” meant “hard ruler” or “stern counsel” had become king of Norway in 1046, reclaiming for his line a position that Canute the Great had disposed them of in 1030. (At that point Harald had gone into exile in Kievan Rus, whence he
joined the Byzantie Varangian Guard, rising to command that elite unit in the Empire.) Having consolidated his rule in Norway and unsuccessfully tried for the throne of Denmark, he saw Edward’s death in 1066 as an opportunity to re-establish Canute’s Great Northern Empire by seizing the throne of England, encouraged by Tostig Godwinson.
The events of 1066 have been covered in detail numerous times and need not detain us long here. In brief, Harold Godwinson was initially aware only of the threat posed by William of Normandy. By May he had gathered the Anglo-Saxon fleet in the Channel while posting troops along the southern coast in anticipation of William crossing. But contrary winds held up William’s invasion all summer and into the fall,[8] which not only forced Harold to stand his
troops down as supplies ran low, but also gave time for Harald Hardrada to gather his invasion fleet and appear off the Northumbrian coast of the kingdom in mid-September. Harald defeated the northern forces of the kingdom at Fulford on September 20 and occupied York. Harold Godwinson rushed north with his army, surprised Harald at Stamford bridge on 25 September, killing Harald and Tostig and sending the remains of the Norwegian army fleeing back across
the North Sea. But in the meantime, William finally managed to cross over to the English coast at Hastings. Force marching back south with his battle-weary army, Harold met William at Hastings on October 14 and lost his life and his kingdom. William carefully consolidated the south with a circuitous march into London (nearly succumbing to dysentery at Kent on the way) and was crowned king of England in December.
This bare narrative, however, the events of which reshaped the geopolitics of northwestern Europe so decisively that alternate outcomes are by now difficult even to imagine, disguises the uncertainties, contingencies, and unexpected outcomes of 1066. It is to these we must turn to fully appreciate the geopolitical effects of that year.
Unexpected Outcomes
The first point that needs emphasis is that in January 1066 the entire geopolitical situation was utterly uncertain. There were no predetermined outcomes, nor could any of the participants predict (or even control) the chaotic flow of events to any great extent — with chaotic here having the technical meaning it carries in the science of chaos theory.[9] The interpretation of William’s delay in crossing the Channel that sees him as “waiting on events” credits William with powers of knowing and predicting that are highly implausible. What William knew of
the large-scale geopolitical moves in the course of the 1066 campaign could not have been central to its outcome, because he could not possibly have known enough to predict with any accuracy what was going to happen. Nor do I think that he thought he could. Individuals not blessed with the benefit of hindsight cannot fall into the temptation to teleology that hindsight provides.
My reading of the implications of this view for William’s actions is that he would have wanted
to seize the initiative as soon as possible, so as to exert as much control as he could over the course of events. He would not want to wait two chaotic months before moving. The same applies to Harold Godwinson and Harald Hardrada.[10] Each entered this tournament with only their own actions known to them or under their control. The limitations of communications and information flows in the eleventh century compared to the information strategists have available to them in the early 21st century or even in Halford Mackinder’s day make this
point even more central. Put another way, eleventh century geopolitics was the result, not the frame, of political-military decision making.
The very uncertainly of the year is reflected in the unexpected decisiveness of its events, culminating in the unexpected decisiveness of the Battle of Hastings itself. Had there been betting odds in January 1066, the most likely outcome for the end of the year might well have been some sort of indecisive situation with all three contenders still alive and holding different pieces of England and continuing their rivalries. That two of the contenders would be killed in decisive routs and that William, from the most “outside” of the geopolitical realms involved in
the struggle, would emerge as the winner, was surely unforeseen by any of the contenders except William himself, and then only in his most optimistic hopes.
The level of uncertainty that framed the year underlay the unexpected outcomes that emerged from the unexpectedly decisive and significant geopolitical outcomes: Hasting was a decisive battle in ways that no geopolitical view of the world of 1066 could have anticipated. To see this we have to start playing that dangerous game, counterfactual history. But the very concept of decisiveness necessitates this game: the decision reached by a decisive battle implies other
possible decisions not reached, and then implies a comparison of the differences between the outcomes of those possible decisions in order to assess the importance of the decision actually taken.
Start with the fact that, despite his avowed and probably sincere intention to rule within the traditions of Anglo-Saxon kingship, William the Conqueror’s position as a foreign conqueror made this impossible. Although he was able, within slightly more than a year of his victory, to call out elements of the Anglo- Saxon army in support of his campaign against a recalcitrant city of Exeter, he had to rely, perforce, mainly upon the baronage of Normandy to help secure
his rule of his new kingdom. He endowed them (and himself) with massive amounts of land, estates confiscated from the defeated thegns of the Anglo-Saxon polity. A new, French-speaking and Norman-connected aristocracy now sat atop the social structure of England.
This was more than just regime change, a level of decisiveness at the geopolitical level where military and political analysis meet and which is actually not at all uncommon. Rather, this was regime change that geopolitically realigned a significant chunk of a civilization. Hastings and the Norman French aristocracy it inserted as rulers of England moved England from the Scandinavian world at the northern margins of medieval European civilization into the French heartland of that civilization. In this way, Hastings was decisive in ways that Stamford Bridge could not have been, whoever won it, because that was an intramural struggle between two pieces of the same world. Had Harold Godwinson won at Hastings, confirming the decision at Stamford Bridge, the status quo would have been defended; or had Harald Hardraada won at Stamford bridge and then seen off the Norman upstart, England would have seen regime change but no geopolitical shift. As it was, the temporarily decisive military victory that was
Stamford Bridge became a footnote to the truly decisive battle.
Furthermore, William’s victory not only imposed regime change on England, but the change of regime was accompanied not just by a change in geopolitical orientation, but in the nature of the state, society, and culture over which the new regime ruled. This is reflected most obviously in the changes to the language this culture spoke: without Hastings, the English language of today would not be the rich, messy mélange of Germanic pie crust overlaid with a gooey layer
of Latinate filling that it is; it would be a much more homogenous Germanic recipe and Anglophones would all be eating cow and pig instead of beef and pork. It took adding the great weight of Henry II’s continental empire to England in 1154 to allow French enough influence to work its long term culinary magic on the English tongue. But when we mention Henry II, the Conqueror’s great-grandson, we can really start talking long-term decisiveness, as follows.
The royal administration that Hastings brought into being was, like the language that eventually emerged around it, a hybrid. William took over the administrative and legal mechanisms of the Anglo-Saxon state, which were for the time quite sophisticated. He reinvigorated them and turned them to the purpose of supporting and institutionalizing the rule of himself and his Norman magnates, who brought with them their own, continental-French ideas about property,
landholding, and their connection to power. In the context of the vast and ad hoc tenurial revolution that gave estates to those magnates all over England, with each magnate’s holdings scattered so that they did not form compact, easily defensible regional power bases, Anglo-Saxon mechanisms of legal governance and Norman cultural ideas about land and power fused into a peculiar system of property law. The main elements of this were probably in place by the reign of the Conqueror’s youngest son, Henry I in 1135. But this nascent system was put
under stress by the civil war between Henry’s daughter Mathilda and nephew Stephen between 1137 and 1154, the latter of whom grabbed the throne on Henry’s death. Much forced dispossession of supporters of both sides in the civil war ensued, and when Mathilda’s son by Geoffrey the count of Anjou, Henry II Plantagenet, came to the throne in 1154, settling these disputes entailed some codification and systematization of this Hastings-created legal structure. Thus, it is arguable that the Common Law, especially as it applies to real property, only emerged as we know it because of Hastings. Nor is the Common Law the end point of this exercise in historical chain reactions. [11] Twelfth century English property law is very recognizably the direct and not that distant ancestor of our own modern property law. That law, privileging private property rights, and set in the context of an English aristocracy that was always more a creation of wealth (which meant land holding) than birth — and that characteristic is another result of the conditions created by Hastings — formed the underlying
context for the development of the English Parliament, for the whole vexed history of the 17th century leading to the Glorious Revolution, and thus for English constitutionalism and, ultimately, democratic government. After all, John Locke philosophized the Revolution as based on the natural rights to “life, liberty, and property”, Thomas Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness” being a feel-good substitution that has proved inaccurate as a descriptor of actual practice.
And that actual practice points out the fact that even more directly than for political history, 12th century property law formed the framework for economic developments of global significance.
The Anglo-Norman conception of private property, and of the rights and social status grounded (quite literally) in property, formed the environment in which limited liability corporations as we know them evolved from the late 16th century on. In the 18th century, those same conceptions
invaded the royal privilege of granting monopolies, metastasized, and turned that privilege into the set of rights now collectively known as Intellectual Property. In short, the Hastings-created system of property law formed the legal framework for the Industrial Revolution, which is what ended the Agrarian era and created our modern world.
Thus, my ultimate argument about the consequences of 1066 is that without Hastings, none of these developments would have happened, nor anything even very close to them, since the Industrial Revolution was an unpredictable, highly contingent event that went against the established grain of Agrarian civilizations and required some pretty weird legal, social, and political structures in England to be born at all. None of this could possibly have been foreseen by the main actors (or anybody) in 1066, nor were the event of 1066 and their consequences
embedded in the geopolitics of that fateful year.
And at a less exaggerated scale of historical consequences, the events of1066 produced a new geo-political player, Anglo-Norman England, which shortly produced the 12th century Angevin Empire as a major geopolitical player centered on the English Channel and with geopolitical connections to the Low Countries and France, all of which contributed to the marginalization of the Scandinavian world in western European geopolitics.
Conclusions
Thus, the year 1066 was momentous from a geopolitical perspective. But the details of how its events and consequences played out cast light on the political half of the geopolitical equation. That light shows that human cultural geography is not determined by physical geography: land masses that are immovable except at the level of continental drift can move around quite dramatically in the heads of the political leaders who confront each other on the playing boards that physical geography provides. Worlds can realign, and today’s heartlands can be tomorrow’s marginalia. The intensely personal politics of the eleventh century, played within severe limitations of geographic knowledge and the reliability and speed of political communication, emphasize these conclusions and call for a different (more French than Anglo-German?) conception of geopolitics for times and conditions as dramatically different from our own as 1066 was.
Nota:
8.Morillo, “Contrary Winds: Theories of History and the Limits of Sachkritik”, in Gregory I. Halfond, ed., The Medieval Way of War: Studies in Medieval Military History in Honor of Bernard S. Bachrach (Ashgate, 2015).
9.James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York, 1987) is a clear, non-technical introduction to the development and principles of Chaos Theory. See also Michael Waldrop, Complexity. The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York, 1992). History,
some philosophers of history have argued, is a chaotic system. George A. Reisch, “Chaos,History and Narrative,’ History and Theory 30 (1991), 1-20. A somewhat different approach to the same problem that reaches similar conclusions follows in the same volume: Donald N.McCloskey, “History, Differential Equations, and the Problem of Narration,” 21-36.
10.Morillo, “Contrary Winds,” p. 218.
11.A more extended defense of the following proposed chain of historical consequences is embedded in my world history textbook, Frameworks of World History (Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. v2 centered on Ch 18.
Autore: Stephen MorIllo
militartis.com 
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