Do you consider the Tudors medieval?

[bryceQ]

I've never thought of them in this period, I always consider them the early modern period (well Henry VII perhaps the last medieval monarch) but I hear people describe them as medieval?

It doesn't really matter, I'm just curious to other opinions.

We are failing to communicate. The way historians today name different periods of history include their bias and knowledge of all the history between now and then, which includes the existence of Great Britain and the British Empire. This then biases their retrospective view of past time periods. 1400 isn’t seen as it was, but through a modern lens.

Significant events do not by themselves indicate modernity.
All the peasant revolts came to a sticky end. None were successful.
Climate change is a constant, usually it causes civilisations to collapse and regress, not become more modern.
What is modern about the Black Death? Which, btw was the exact same thing as the Justinian Plague during the Roman Empire. Are the Romans now going to be included as early modern because they got the Black Death too?

I think we're communicating fine? I did understand what you were saying. I'm just not particularly convinced people making these arguments are doing so for the reasons you suggest.

It's not that it's impossible someone who was a raving nationalist for GB could decide to claim that the Tudors were medieval and that's what made Great Britain so wonderful later on - but I don't think anyone really does make that argument, largely because raving GB nationalists tend to have fairly retrogressive views of 'the medieval' and associate it with Them Catholic Forriners. So they tend to view the Tudors as explicitly not medieval.

I didn't suggest any of these things indicated 'modernity' (whatever that might be). I pointed out that they were concrete, obvious causes of significant differences between the experiences of a peasant in 1100, and one in 1400.

(You can probably tell I'm not a big fan of 'all history is progress'.)

It's not that it's impossible someone who was a raving nationalist for GB coulddecide to claim that the Tudors were medieval and that's what made Great Britain so wonderful later on

I am saying that what I was taught was late or high medieval period being taught in England by English historians as early modern period could have been more flatteringly named due to bias created by Great Britain and British Empire echoes of national pride.

Who's teaching that the high/late medieval period is the early modern period, though?

I'm not doubting you, but I am surprised, because (as I say), attempts to shift the period boundary are usually the other way around. I've never heard anyone claim that the high medieval period is really part of the early modern.

And I don't follow how renaming it in that way would feed into some sense of national pride? You mean, by claiming it as a 'Renaissance,' like the twelfth-century Renaissance?

Yes different big shit happened and killed a lot of people off, but comparing 1100 to 1400, the daily grind to survive, the types of housing, the food they ate, the religion and superstition, the customs, the lack of medicine, hygiene, sanitation, transport, currency, feudal relations were all pretty much identical.

Who's teaching that the high/late medieval period is the early modern period, though?

Apparently most of the people on this thread were taught that. Which has surprised me.

I don't agree with that at all.

The daily grind would have been quite different, because agriculture changed quite a lot - people were growing different things, with different success rates. And the climate changed, which meant that housing (and what houses felt like) changed. Food changed, because people were growing different crops. The subsistence grains change quite a bit over that 300 years.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'religion and superstition' - that sounds quite pejorative? - but actually, religion also changes a lot in this period. The cults of the Virgin and St Anne are on the rise, and there's a shift towards affective devotion, both of which change the material experience of religious practice, and the imaginative horizons of practitioners. Broadly, I would say by 1400 it has become much more possible for a lay peasant to participate in church ritual (whether this is a good thing or not is moot; the point is that there is that shift, so there is a difference).

Medicine also changes over this period; though honestly, here I'm not sure how much it would affect peasants, and I'm not sure anyone else would know much.

Sanitation, transport and currency of course all change. One of the big shifts is towards urban populations, which actually have worse sanitation than rural, so I suspect the average health of a very poor person in 1400 may have been worse than in 1100; certainly there's a lot of urban pollution.

I think when you mention 'feudal relations' you may be thinking of mainland Europe. England never had true 'feudalism,' and after the Black Death it certainly seems that relations between landlords and their tenants did shift.

I have not seen one person say that. It's all been about the opposite shift.

(Note to self: you are addicted to the word 'shift'!)

I never heard the phrase “early modern period” in school (late 40s), I did history to gcse only.

England never had true 'feudalism,'

But, but I was taught that William the Conqueror brought feudalism with him and imposed it on England, then his descendants imposed it on Wales, Ireland and Scotland by 1300?! And while feudalism declined starting with the aftermath of the Black Death, it did not end until 1660 with the Statute of Tenures ending the obligation of crown tenants (which was the aristocracy as their lands were granted to them by the Crown as part of the inheritance of titles) to provide military service to the Crown.

It existed as a term and historians were using it - but I'm late 30s, and my lovely, slightly old-fashioned GCSE history teacher would certainly not have used it. My memory of history with her went 'medieval ... Tudors ... mumble, mumble ... Victorians, World War I'.

Well, if you were taught it, doubtless there is a case to be made. Still, I think you'll not find many historians who'd make it now.

So what do the historians now call the type of society England had? If it wasn’t feudalism what was it?

Just 'society,' usually.

I suppose that is one way to erase the glaring differences between 1400 and 2023 so they and everything in between can be called part of a very long modern period.

No, they’re known for ‘this is the only costume I could find in the shop’ and ‘we don’t have any malmsey, will Bristol Cream do?’

I've name changed as it's v outing - I am an art historian specialising in imagery in England in the late 15th century. Does anyone really think that the change between periods as massive as the medieval and early modern happened in a single year, eg 1485? That is quite a "1066 and All That" version of history! I'd suggest that if one has to pinpoint the moment of shift between the two in England (which is what I know about, but it is probably the same for Scotland and Wales), it would be the Reformation.
Someone up thread pointed out that the Dissolution of the Monasteries was a seismic moment, and that is true, but the Reformation in general was even more seismic, for absolutely everyone. So that would mean that Henry VII and Henry VIII were essentially medieval, with Edward VI on the pivot and Elizabeth beginning to ease into the early modern. Mary is a bit of an anomaly
People always say, "But Henry VIII patronised Italian sculptors/humanists" which is true, but in his thinking/religion/governing style/art patronage he was continuing to act in a "medieval" way, with a bit of Renaissance ornament attached.
But I think it's interesting what @SarahAndQuack was saying about different segments of society experiencing things in different ways, and that is also true for different countries. So the Renaissance begins in Italy in the late 13th/early 14th century (Giotto anyone?), while in England/Spain etc, the Middle Ages continue for a couple of centuries longer.

I remember the R J Unstead Looking At History books which started with ‘From Cavemen to Vikings’, then covered the Middle Ages, the Tudors and Stuarts, Queen Anne to Queen Victoria and the 20th century. I loved them.

I don’t think anyone has said early modern starts around 1400 - most have been saying closer to 1485 ish.
And “modern” is going to be very much a relative term compared to the masses of human history before it - eg compared to “classical” or Bronze Age etc.

Pp is right, feudalism in England was different to feudalism on the Continent, although its been a long time since I studied it and the facts aren't as fresh in my head.

Yes, it existed here but ... less strictly, if you like, than in mainland Europe.

Put it this way, the English have always been a defiant bunch.

Also, I've never encountered an historian who claimed that England was a "leading light" in the Early Modern period!

(Although by the time Bess died, we were doing pretty well)

Was the life of a peasant in 1600 any different either?