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The Late Middle Ages: Social and...
Conclusion
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In the late Middle Ages, significant forces – war and plague most dramatically – disrupted the social organization, religious institutions, and economic structures of western Europe. Urbanization increased, and in general the clergy and the nobility lost power relative to the commoners and the monarchy. National identities started to coalesce. Distinctive social and political structures, as well as the influences of Greek Orthodoxy and of the Mongol occupation, helped set Russia on a path that diverged from the general trajectory of western history over the following centuries.
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