The High Middle Ages in England 1154-1377
The High Middle Ages in England 1154-1377

Author: Bertie Wilkinson

Publisher: CUP Archive

Published: 1978-06-22

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 9780521217323

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"All aspects of England in the High Middle Ages are covered, including sections on social, economic, religious, military, intellectual and art history, as well as on political and constitutional history."--Publisher description.

The Politics of Aristocratic Empires
The Politics of Aristocratic Empires

Author: John H. Kautsky

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-29

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 1351303260

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Politics of Aristocratic Empires is a study of a political order that prevailed throughout much of the world for many centuries without any major social conflict or change and with hardly any government in the modern sense. Although previously ignored by political science, powerful remnants of this old order still persist in modern politics. The historical literature on aristocratic empires typically is descriptive and treats each empire as unique. By contrast, this work adopts an analytical, explanatory, and comparative approach and clearly distinguishes aristocratic empires from both primitive and more modern, commercialized societies. It develops generalizations that are supported and richly illustrated by data from many empires and demonstrates that a pattern of politics prevailed across time, space, and cultures from ancient Egypt five millennia ago to Saudi Arabia five decades ago, from China and Japan to Europe, from the Incas and the Aztecs to the Tutsi. Kautsky argues that aristocrats, because they live off the labor of peasants, must perform the primary governmental functions of taxation and warfare. Their performance is linked to particular values and beliefs, and both functions and ideologies in turn condition the stakes, the forms, and the arenas of intra-aristocratic conflict?the politics of the aristocracy. The author also analyzes the roles of the peasantry and the townspeople in aristocratic politics and shows that peasant revolts on any large scale occur only after commercial modernization. He concludes with chapters on the modernization of aristocratic empires and on the importance in modern politics of institutional and ideological remnants of the old aristocratic order.

Administration and Organization of War in Thirteenth-Century England
Administration and Organization of War in Thirteenth-Century England

Author: David S. Bachrach

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-11

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1000051218

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The essays brought together in this volume examine the conduct of war by the Angevin kings of England during the long thirteenth century (1189-1307). Drawing upon a wide range of unpublished administrative records that have been largely ignored by previous scholarship, David S. Bachrach offers new insights into the military technology of the period, including the types of artillery and missile weapons produced by the royal government. The studies in this volume also highlight the administrative sophistication of the Angevin kings in military affairs, showing how they produced and maintained huge arsenals, mobilized vast quantities of supplies for their armies in the field, and provided for the pastoral care of their men. Bachrach also challenges the knight-centric focus of much of the scholarship on this period, demonstrating that the militarization of the English population penetrated to men in the lower social and economic strata, who volunteered in large numbers for military service, and even made careers as professional soldiers. (CS1088).

Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church
Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church

Author: William Chester Jordan

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2019-11-20

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1487535155

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the thirteenth century, radical reformers – churchmen, devout laywomen and laymen, and secular rulers – undertook Herculean efforts aimed at the moral reform of society. No principality was more affected by these impulses than France under its king, Louis IX or "Saint Louis." The monarch surrounded himself with gifted, energetic moralists to carry out his efforts. Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church explores the career of one of the most influential of King Louis’s reformers, Philippe of Cahors. Born into a bourgeois family dwelling on the periphery of the medieval kingdom of France, Philippe rose through the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the office of judge. There he came to the attention of royal administrators, who recommended him for the king’s service. He ascended rapidly, and was eventually entrusted with the royal seal, effectively making constituting him the chancellor of the kingdom, the highest member of the royal administration. Louis IX secured his election as bishop of Évreux in 1269. Using the records of Philippe’s work in Reims, Paris, and Évreux, William Chester Jordan reconstructs Philippe’s career, providing a fascinating portrait of the successes and failures of reform in the thirteenth century.

Henry III
Henry III

Author: David Carpenter

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 803

ISBN-13: 0300238355

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first in a ground-breaking two-volume history of Henry III's rule "Professor Carpenter is one of Britain's foremost medievalists...No one knows more about Henry, and a lifetime of scholarship is here poured out, elegantly and often humorously. This is a fine, judicious, illuminating work that should be the standard study of the reign for generations to come."--Dan Jones, The Sunday Times Nine years of age when he came to the throne in 1216, Henry III had to rule within the limits set by the establishment of Magna Carta and the emergence of parliament. Pacific, conciliatory, and deeply religious, Henry brought many years of peace to England and rebuilt Westminster Abbey in honor of his patron saint, Edward the Confessor. He poured money into embellishing his palaces and creating a magnificent court. Yet this investment in "soft power" did not prevent a great revolution in 1258, led by Simon de Montfort, ending Henry's personal rule. Eminent historian David Carpenter brings to life Henry's character and reign as never before. Using source material of unparalleled richness--material that makes it possible to get closer to Henry than any other medieval monarch--Carpenter stresses the king's achievements as well as his failures while offering an entirely new perspective on the intimate connections between medieval politics and religion.