As for Anglo-Saxons in England having institutional contraints in their system of government on the exercise of monarchical power see web references to the "witenagemot" as at: http://www.slider.com/enc/57000/witenagemot.htm

While we are into Anglo-Saxon history, do have a look at what are rated as Britain's Top Ten national treasures on the British Museum website at:

http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/ixbin/hixclient.exe?_IXDB_=compass&search-form=graphical/main.html&submit-button=search

The craftsmanship of the artefacts from the Sutton Hoo ship burial site from c. 620AD are worth a special look to see just how primitive the Anglo-Saxons really were. The intricacy of the handiwork on the jewellery of someone of high nobility is amazing by any standard. The jewels at least - mainly garnets - were almost certainly imported, it is thought probably from India. Remember we are talking about the 7th century AD.

It's a mixed picture, really.

Some indices of human welfare, at least for the affluent countries, show improvements: The scope for personal choice has increased; health and life expectancy are improving; more people are getting a better education; more can afford to travel further and more often; computer communications are a boon and costs are falling - something perhaps better appreciated by folks like me who can recall times when the only computers around were inaccessible mainframes and phone calls were really costly. :-)

OTOH I've long lost count of just how many civil wars are going on in places around the world. The gap between the living standards of affluent and developing countries appears to be widening. Whatever the tensions, the bipolar world of the Cold War era was a more more stable situation than the one we are moving towards. When I was a pre-teen in the early 1950s, a medical physicist once went out of his way to explain the technical feasibility of making a basic nuke via the plutonium route using equipment in most universities or large hospitals - it would take time but it could be done, was his assessment getting on for 50 years back. Within the next 30 years China will become the world's largest economy. At the very least that will increase the world demand for oil unless we adapt to using more fuel efficient road vehicles. Whatever the cause, global warming seems to be steadily increasing and climate change will bring changes in agriculture in world3 countries where many live by subsistence farming. In places - like the Sino-Soviet border - there are substantial differences now in population densities either side of the border.

I take heart from this: Britain's resident population increased three fold during the 19th century. Suppose someone had made the correct population projection c. 1800 and then asked: But where are all the extra jobs coming from? Who could have said when there were no railways or bulk steel production, no steam ships, no electricity or gas supply, no telecommunications etc? The Doomsday forecasts of the Club of Rome back in the early 1970s based on computer modelling haven't materialised - by the end of the century we were due to be running out of most raw materials, as I recall. Not so.