James Fraser
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748612314
- eISBN:
- 9780748672158
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748612314.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
This book examines the transformation of Iron Age northern Britain into a land of Christian kingdoms, long before ‘Scotland’ came into existence. Perched at the edge of the western Roman Empire, ...
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This book examines the transformation of Iron Age northern Britain into a land of Christian kingdoms, long before ‘Scotland’ came into existence. Perched at the edge of the western Roman Empire, northern Britain was not unaffected by the experience, and became swept up in the great tide of processes which gave rise to the early medieval West. Like other places, the country experienced social and ethnic metamorphoses, Christianisation, and colonization by dislocated outsiders, but northern Britain also has its own unique story to tell in the first eight centuries ad. This detailed political history treats these centuries as a single period, with due regard for Scotland's position in the bigger story of late Antique transition. It charts the complex and shadowy processes that saw the familiar Picts, Northumbrians, North Britons and Gaels of early Scottish history become established in the country; the achievements of their foremost political figures; and their ongoing links with the world around them. It is a story which has become much revised through changing trends in scholarly approaches to the challenging evidence, and that transformation too is explained for the benefit of students and general readers.Less
This book examines the transformation of Iron Age northern Britain into a land of Christian kingdoms, long before ‘Scotland’ came into existence. Perched at the edge of the western Roman Empire, northern Britain was not unaffected by the experience, and became swept up in the great tide of processes which gave rise to the early medieval West. Like other places, the country experienced social and ethnic metamorphoses, Christianisation, and colonization by dislocated outsiders, but northern Britain also has its own unique story to tell in the first eight centuries ad. This detailed political history treats these centuries as a single period, with due regard for Scotland's position in the bigger story of late Antique transition. It charts the complex and shadowy processes that saw the familiar Picts, Northumbrians, North Britons and Gaels of early Scottish history become established in the country; the achievements of their foremost political figures; and their ongoing links with the world around them. It is a story which has become much revised through changing trends in scholarly approaches to the challenging evidence, and that transformation too is explained for the benefit of students and general readers.
Andrew Marsham
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199236428
- eISBN:
- 9780191863349
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199236428.003.0022
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter examines how the part of the world ruled mainly by Christian or Muslim monotheists comprised three main overlapping zones of political, religious, and linguistic culture. First, the ...
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This chapter examines how the part of the world ruled mainly by Christian or Muslim monotheists comprised three main overlapping zones of political, religious, and linguistic culture. First, the various western Christian kingdoms and their northern and eastern borders with the Scandinavian, Germanic, Turkic, and Slavic worlds; second, the Christian Byzantine Empire, centered on Constantinople, and its wider penumbra of satellites and commercial and diplomatic contacts, predominantly in Slavic and Turkic Eurasia; and third, the vast Islamic Empire of the Caliphate and, after its accelerating fragmentation in the ninth and tenth centuries, the ‘commonwealth’ of Islamic successor states. The literate elite in each of these regions used a lingua franca: Latin in the Christian West, Greek in Byzantium, and Arabic in the Islamic world.Less
This chapter examines how the part of the world ruled mainly by Christian or Muslim monotheists comprised three main overlapping zones of political, religious, and linguistic culture. First, the various western Christian kingdoms and their northern and eastern borders with the Scandinavian, Germanic, Turkic, and Slavic worlds; second, the Christian Byzantine Empire, centered on Constantinople, and its wider penumbra of satellites and commercial and diplomatic contacts, predominantly in Slavic and Turkic Eurasia; and third, the vast Islamic Empire of the Caliphate and, after its accelerating fragmentation in the ninth and tenth centuries, the ‘commonwealth’ of Islamic successor states. The literate elite in each of these regions used a lingua franca: Latin in the Christian West, Greek in Byzantium, and Arabic in the Islamic world.
