Описание
around ; or that from ‘archaic society’ to the ‘Old European Order’
around . More is said of these and other interpretative schemata in the
introductory chapter.
An intellectual climate more relativistic than that which prevailed in the time
of Acton, Whitney and Tanner has had the advantage for the editor that he has
felt little pressure to harmonise interpretations and interpretative styles
between contributions, though he hopes that there are few if any remaining
discrepancies in respect of ‘facts’. Indeed, it is a positive advantage that the
reader should become more aware of the great range of approaches to early
medieval history currently being practised in this country, on the continent and
in North America. It is for this reason that the team of contributors is a fairly
international one rather than being restricted to Anglophone historians. To
have followed the latter course would have had many advantages, but would
have risked presenting the reader with a greater appearance of homogeneity in
current approaches to the subject than really exists. Intellectual stock-taking
should take account not only of what is currently thought but of how and why
it has come to be so thought, and in particular should emphasise rather than
conceal the differences between national historiographical traditions. In the
introduction I have attempted to set out some of the implications of these
traditions and explore their strengths and weaknesses.
The volume is arranged in three parts. The chapters in the opening section
cover themes not easily or sensibly divided up geographically. The following
section has nine chapters on the polities which emerged after the break-up of
the Carolingian empire, and also includes the chapter on England, which was
institutionally, culturally and politically an important part of the postCarolingian order. The final section covers non-Carolingian Europe (including
Byzantium and the Islamic polities within Europe), with the chapters arranged
from north-east to south-west. In order to avoid too many mini-chapters,
some responsibilities have been divided between this volume and its predecessor. Volume II contains accounts of the histories of the Scandinavian
peninsula and of the Celtic regions which extend into the tenth and early
eleventh centuries. The present volume has a full account of Russian history
from its earliest stages to ; the chapter planned on Jews and Jewish life in
western Europe from to fell victim to the death of a contributor and
the impossibility of finding a replacement who could undertake to deliver
within a reasonable space of time. Originally planned chapters on lordship and
on warfare suffered similar fates; a little of the ground which would have been
covered in these chapters is touched on in my introductory chapter, which is
for that reason longer than it otherwise might have been.
Each chapter has its own bibliography of secondary sources (including
works not referred to in the footnotes), but references to primary sources are
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Детали
- Год издания
- 1995
- Format