From the Notebooks
While recently trying to understand better the origins of nobility, I ran across this passage from Will Durant's The Age of Faith that got me wondering why people think the European Union is a viable concept.
Durant is writing about the rise of feudalism and how it took hold in Italy, large parts of Germany, and (especially) France. He mentions that it took different form in England (where Angle-Saxon invaders merely implanted themselves as lords after the Romans abandoned England in the early 5th century).
In large parts of Europe, however, feudalism never developed:
Large sectors of Europe's peasantry remained unfeudalized: the shepherds and ranchers of the Balkans, eastern Italy, Spain; the vine growers of western Germany and southern France; the sturdy farmers of Sweden and Norway; the Teutonic pioneers beyond the Elbe; the mountaineers of the Carpathians, the Alps, the Apennines, and the Pyrenees. It was not to be expected that a continent so physically and climatically diverse should have a uniform economy.
Emphasis added. The Age of Faith, 1950, Simon & Schuster, p. 553.
