Up til what year was much of Europe 'Medievalish'? (WW2, war, Roman)
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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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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?
I'm not sure what you mean - there was a huge gap between the middle ages or medieval times and when things like electricity and automobiles were introduced. A home that has no electricity is not necessarily "medievalish".
Around 1500....
The reason you see lots of mideval buildings and "charm" is beacuse Europe is very old and many areas have kept that look for different reasons.
The mideval ages ended around the reformation. Just beacuse people in some parts of Europe still live like they did in the early 1900,s still doesn't compare to how people lived 500 years ago. It's not all about technology, but it has a lot to do with politics as well.
I'm not sure what you mean - there was a huge gap between the middle ages or medieval times and when things like electricity and automobiles were introduced. A home that has no electricity is not necessarily "medievalish".
If that was the truth we would all be living in mideval times no more than 100 years ago.hahaha
If they have to put a date to the end of the medieval period some historians will say one date, others will say a date 80 years later, or 30 years earlier, etc. etc.
I noticed a difference evolving in the clothes and homes and interior furnishings of city dwellers in the early 1600's. People began to feel less insular, not feeling as defensive, seeing new products from places like the New World.
You might find the podcast Shakespeare’s Restless World interesting. I've been listening to it lately. It'll give you a good and entertaining insight into life in Elizabethan London in the late 1500's and early 1600's.
I remember reading a well illustrated article in a 1930's issue of National Geographic Magazine, about a trip through Poland and several Baltic states. The authors included a photo of their driver who took them through parts of Poland and into Lithuania. It showed him perched in their carriage.
Horses were not used as much in the US as they were in rural Europe, but they were still used for milk delivery in the US till the end of WW 2. They were slowly phased out during the 30's and 40's and replaced with trucks. Why did they keep using horses so late? It was because horse drawn wagons worked just fine. The horses knew the delivery route, and would plod along. The milkman could grab milk off the truck, deliver it to a house, walk back to the slowly moving truck, grab some more milk, and deliver it to the next house, as the horse moved the wagon right along. When they came to a section with no subscribers, the milkman would climb back into his seat and ride to the next stop.
Can you see how there might be advantages to keeping old technology when it works to fulfill your needs?
My father was a farmboy in northern central Europe. When he had to travel through the night to deliver things to town, his horse would continue down the road towards their destination while my father slept in the wagon.
Things were different in the cities of course, and middling different in towns. The further you went from the cities, the slower change was. It took longer for change to arrive, and when it did, it wasn't necessarily seen as something advantageous. Change costs money, and even if you had the money (which most rural people didn't) did you really want to spend it on something new when something old served you just fine?
Western parts of Europe changed quickly after WW2. Much of it had to be rebuilt, including the whole economy. It was rebuilt to modern standards of the day.
Eastern Europe on the other hand, came under control of the soviets, who seemed to continue feeling the need for self defense from potential enemies, and poured their money into a show of strength, with none to spare for rural peasants, which is why I was able to find a picture taken in the 1980's or 90's of an elderly Croatian woman cooking at her cottage stove which looked like this one. Stoves like this were used throughout medieval Europe, and continued in use - well, at least to the 1990's.
You hit on it in your original post - to classify Europe with one broad stroke is a mistake, because there are urban areas and rural areas, developed and undeveloped areas, different cultures and different societies. Parts of Portugal and the Balkans remain undeveloped while west Germany and parts of England, for instance, has been on the forefront of development. So it's regional. This is identical to the US where people in the deep south still used horses and lived in houses without electricity and plumbing well into the 20th century.
But, even in developed areas, the "old" remains - narrow roads designed for horse and carriage, 400 year old buildings. Maybe that's what throws you off. Also, particularly in the 20th century, Europe was not as wealthy as the US, and war took it's toll, so there has been the need to "catch up".
But to answer your question simply - Europe exited it's medieval period after the end of the medieval age, the entered the industrial period at the beginning of the industrial age, then entered the modern era at the beginning of the modern age.
I would also argue with the term 'medievalish' in favor of 'pre-industrial', which can conflate a certain technological sophistication (or lack thereof) with a decidedly post-medieval worldview.
If the U.S. is anything like much of Europe, I would say there were elements of the pre-industrial Western lifestyle up through the turn of the 20th century and even post WWI into the great depression, with the Second world war being the real death knell for a non-Industrial age lifestyle (Indoor plumbing and motors, engines being a convenient litmus for this argument) in all but the least developed areas of Europe and the U.S. and I presume Australia.
I had a supervisor who claimed to have grown up in Indiana in a log house without indoor plumbing or heat aside form a woodstove as late as the 1950s.
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?
Well, I'd say those Transylvanian villages are still pretty medieval, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Except they all have schools, which didn't exist in medieval times. And there are fewer people who wear traditional dress, now, at least on a daily basis. I think there are villages in Switzerland where some of the houses don't have electricity or running water. Whether or not they still use horse-drawn carts, I don't know.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,169,868 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
Well, I'd say those Transylvanian villages are still pretty medieval, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Except they all have schools, which didn't exist in medieval times. And there are fewer people who wear traditional dress, now, at least on a daily basis. I think there are villages in Switzerland where some of the houses don't have electricity or running water. Whether or not they still use horse-drawn carts, I don't know.
That's why I want to visit there before too long...not that they don't deserve iphones or whatever, but if they're happy like this, why change? I visited Hmong villages in Vietnam and in some ways I envy their simple lifestyle.
The irony is that in many of these old villages in Europe, even the ones that look straight out of the Middle Ages, it isn't unusual to see people with cell phones, laptops and at least a couple of houses with generators. Even in places where other infrastructure isn't available and the people have a more 'traditional' lifestyle, they don't completely spurn modern technology and conveniences.
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