The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?
Author: Rees Davies
Publication: Journal of Historical Sociology, Volume 16, Issue 2, pages 280–300, June 2003
Abstract:
Medieval historians seem to be falling in love with the word “state”, and with all that it implies. Such at least might be the conclusion to be drawn from the titles of some of the books they have published recently: such as James Given, State and Society in Medieval Europe. Gwynedd and Languedoc under Outside Rule (1990);James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (2000), a collection of essays mainly of the 1990s on early England as “an elaborately organized state”; Matthew Innes’s path-breaking State and Society in the early middle ages: the middle Rhine valley 400–1000 (2000); and, most recently, a festschrift, edited by John Maddicott andDavid Palliser, presented to James Campbell under the title The Medieval State (2000). Given that the authors who have contributed to this latter volume classify Northumbria, Wessex, Brittany, and Scotland as states, it comes as no surprise that we now hear murmurs of the Pictish state. Where will it all end?