Up til what year was much of Europe 'Medievalish'?

[Randomstudent]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

I was watching some 'Travel Talks' videos from places around Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, like Ireland, Hungary.etc, and the people in the village seemed to live lifestyles that would not be out of place in the 1300's. Simple buildings with no electricity, horse and cart, subsistence farming/or farming to bring to market. It also seems the appearance of much of Europe was pretty rustic, especially in the country.

Europe, along with North America, was the first to Industrialize in the 19th century, but it seems that many places in Europe had a quaint almost Medieval charm to them well into the 20th century. Rural Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Southern Europe come to mind. Even today in villages in Transylvannia in Romania they use horse and carts. Up till what year was a lot of Europe this way?

Depends which part of Europe you are talking about. In Russia much of the population were serfs well into the 19th century and Russia didn't really industrialize until the 1930s under Stalin. At the time it was a huge part of Europe. Russia though was probably the last major European country to come out of the medieval era and that was under the Soviet Union in the 20th Century.

If anything though the big thing would have to be the urban-rural divide. Particularly in Western Europe. In theory the first places to go into the early modern period were the cities of Northern Italy, however there were also parts of Italy that did not have even basic amenities until Mussolini.