Women in the 15th century were very oppressed they had no real standing and were considered far inferior to men, they had no or little education. They were valued for their domestic and childbearing skills and were expected to stay out of important roles; even female monarchs were partially frowned upon. Now women have equal rights, they are entitled to the same type of education that men receive although it is only recently that this has taken full effect, women were still seen to be the ones who stayed at home whilst men got higher education’s in the 1970’s/80’s. Also women are allowed to have jobs and have the same standing as men, they can now be part of the government, and it is said that women are becoming more and more domineering in society and tend to have better jobs than males now. Also society sees nothing wrong with a female monarch now, they don’t expect her to be weak or not up to the job, as they would’ve in the 15th century. Although there are still some places and people who feel women will always be inferior to men and that it should stay that way.
If you look at a map of 15th century Europe and a map of Europe now you can see major changes. There was a large country called “The Empire” this consisted of what we now call the Netherlands, Milan, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Slovenia, Austria, the Czech republic, part of Poland and part of Croatia. Poland was much larger in the 15th century it was also known as Poland-Lithuania, this is now known as Poland, part of Lithuania, Relarus, part of the Ukraine, part of Croatia, part of Romania, and Moldova. Hungary then is now known as Hungary, part of Croatia, Slovak republic, and part of Romania. A large country called the ottoman empire, which was under Muslim rule, consisted of what we now call part of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzagova, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, part of Romania, part of Turkey. There was also the Crimean Tatars, which are now part of the Ukraine and a part of Russia. Spain was split into four countries known as Castile, Aragon, Navarre and the Muslim ruled Granada. France was also smaller than it is now. France no has a part of the Empire known as the Franche-Comte. Latvia and Estonia were known as the knights of the sword. Kalliningard and a small part of Poland were known as the Teutonic Knights. Norway, Sweden and Denmark were all known as the Kingdom of Denmark. And part of Russian was known as Muscovy
Because of the wide range of countries there were many different kings. In some of the larger Empire’s there were different regions and each of these regions had their own king, there weren’t really any republics in the 15th Century because people found them odd and difficult to understand. Nowadays though most countries are republics and monarchies are trending to die out, and in most cases even if there is a monarch they don’t have a say in how the country is run, the governments do that.
Unlike today many people lived in the countryside and depended on agriculture for survival, people now prefer to live in large bustling towns or large villages, although there are still very many people who do prefer to live in the countryside the countryside itself is also very built up with main roads etc running through it. Agriculture has also become less and less depended upon as the Europe became more and more technologically advanced in some places, now people rely on more academic jobs, also because trade has become bigger and bigger we can now import things from all around the world so we don’t have to depend upon our own agriculture to survive.
Next we come to social standing, in 15th century Europe you were judged upon how high you were to God, wealth never entered into it, it was clearly all about rank. There were usually 3 categories
- Clergy
- Nobility
- Everyone else
You could be the poorest priest in the world but you would still be ranked higher than say a rich noble man. But social standing in the 21st century is all about how wealthy you are, if you don’t have money you can not be part of the social elite.
I believe that even though we have advanced in so many different ways and the outline of Europe has also changed since the 15th century, in some ways we haven’t technically changed. I mean even though we don’t depend upon our agriculture to survive, we do depend on other countries to have a good harvest and to keep up their agriculture to get the foods that we need. So technically we do still depend on agriculture to survive. Even though religion isn’t part of our lives as much as it used to be, in some parts of Europe religion is still an important part of life i.e. in Italy religion is tremendously important, in Ireland religion to is very important. Even though we don’t catagorise people on how close they are to God, we do still rank people so in some retrospect that hasn’t changed.
Depending on how you look at it depends on how you view if we’ve changed. If you class change as major things like turning our backs on the church or treating everyone as equals no matter how close to god or how wealthy they are then no we haven’t changed really. But if you class change as not being as religiously involved, or being treated equal no matter what sex you are, or education received then yes we have changed.
