Medieval History and the American Western

[The Minsky Moment]

I've been reading a bunch of medieval history books in honor of the upcoming CK2 release.

One of the big debates going on since the 50s is over  "mutationism" or the "transformation of the year 1000" - whether or not there was a revolutionary transformation to feudal modes sometime around the year 1000.  The principal participants in the debate have been French historians.  The pro-transformationist theory is based on George Duby's work in the early 50s, with the theory spreading and gaining partisans in the 50s, 60s, and 70s - again all with a very heavy presence within the French academy.

The theory is basically that some of the "public" structures and legal norms from Late Antiquity survived the breakdown of the Carolingian order into the late 10th century and early 11th century.  However, starting around 1000 there occured a transformation of those remnants of the old public order into what we understand as "fedual society."  The impetus for this transformation was the rise of a relatively lowly class of fighting men or "soldiers of fortune" on horseback (milites) who took advantage of violent and anarchic conditions to seize rights previously associated with public justice, grab possession of land and comital privileges associated with land, build castles and so on.  The bolder and more successful members of this class succeed in making their ill-got gains enduring, and over time and through much struggle are socialized somewhat by the Church, emerging as the classic knights and lords of the Middle Ages.  They infuse the decayed post-Carolingian nobility with new blood, and their values and mores, as modified over the years by monastic preaching and "courtliness" become the defining values of the medievial aristocracy.

The theory, like any theory focusing on the period from 950-1100, is forced to rely on a relatively small amount of rather ambiguous and limited documentary evidence.  Arguably it is a plausible reading of the evidence; but certainly it is not the only possible one.  It got me thinking how it was the Duby and others began to intepret the evidence in the form of this particular theory at that particular time.

The transformationist theory is one that tells a story about rough, violent, self-reliant and armed men on horseback carving out land holdings and collecting "tribute" in a anarchic, rural landscape.  The image that immediately came to mind was that of an old-time American Western: with the castellan lords standing in for the stock character of the single-minded, ambitious rancher who runs roughshod over the hardscrabble homesteaders, and the unruly milites taking on the role of the ambitious, gunslinging hands that carry out the big rancher's dirty work, but who demand and expect to run herds of their own.  And that got me to think - what was going in France in the 1950s when the theory arose.  It was a time when American cultural and economic power - for good or ill - was omnipresent - and of course a time when dubbed American Western and noir movies with their self-reliant, tough guy leading men were amusing postwar European movie audiences.  Is transformationist theory an unconscious echo of postwar American mythologizing filtered through a European lens?  Were Duby, Bonnassie, and others absorbing the mythic American origin story of rough, self-reliant, and often violent men carving out a place of themselves in an anarchic frontier and then importing elements of that origin story back into their own past (the year 1000 being also roughly coterminus with the origin of "France" as a distinct polity)?

Or am I just overthinking this way too much?

Discuss.

[Admiral Yi]

Is this some sort of cruel joke?

[Sheilbh]

I think Jacque Le Goff's 'Birth of Europe' suggests this theory.  I think he uses the example of Albert the Bear and Brandenburg.  But it's been years since I read that book.

[Valmy]

Well there was alot of um...reformation going on at this time.  I mean it seems clear to me that both the Church and the secular nobility were working on legitimising their authority and making it more effective in numerous ways.

Obviously the big example is William the Conquerer both bringing the concept that the entire country belongs to the King as his personal property and the concept of ecclesiastical law being a separate thing (and having separate courts) from secular law.  Obviously due to the special circumstances that was more radical than most but I think it reflects what ideologically the rulers would have wanted to do and strove to do when they had a free hand.  But I am not sure that happened as a result, necessarily, of freebooting Normans booting out the old blood.  That might just be a coincidence.  What was the ideological basis of that?  Clearly nothing in Norse of French tradition would produce these shifts in thinking.

I do think you might have a point about the romance of the Western influencing the theories.  The proud and free Germanic ancestors of old sure have gotten romanticized over the years, I wonder if it was as a result of this sort of American influence.

[Jacob]

I'm not sure I understand how these anarchic, rough, self-made men are a shift away from anything. It seems to me the that the preceding centuries were full of men like that, grabbing what they could by dint of their own strength at arms and that of immediate followers and holding on to it if they could.

I see the Norman conquest of England as a perfect continuation of the attitude of earlier conquest of Normandy, and those of England (both Viking and Anglo-Saxon) and the various raids beforehand. Was there a previous period in Europe where rough men with weapons did not obtain tribute from the less rough men around them? Get in your ship, get on your horse and take what you want if you can; if they can't hold on to it, it's yours by right.

If there was a transformation, what was it away from? The social order of the Romans?

[Razgovory]

It may just be that violent men tend to impose order in similar ways no matter what the culture is like.  I mean, Japanese and American filmmakers have long recognized that similarities between the age of gunslingers and that of Samurai.

[Oexmelin]

Or am I just overthinking this way too much?

There is nothing overthinking in trying to discern what led to a specific way of reading history - and it is trivial to say that historiography is putting the past to the new questions of the present.

That being said, I am not sure if the Western mythos of the 50s is the one that can explain the emergence of transformationist interpretation - though it probably did play a role, if only through its much-longer history since the late 1800s. Did American pop culture influence Duby and Co. ? Perhaps, as you said, it really was pervasive - but much of it targeted at kids (you can certainly see the divide between some of my older friends and their parents).

Where it might have played much better is actually in the reception of Duby's thesis. His Mâconnais was published in 1953, but got much more press when it was republished in 1973, and Duby really became a much more public figure - amongst a public which could therefore identify, and make Duby resonate, with easy analogies.

That being said, one can find the trope of brigands and patrons quite present in the Mediterranean (Duby was from Aix), which is where a lot of the research eventually focused as well; likewise, this was post-war France, after all, where violence by armed bands, the expurgation of collaborators, the transformative power of the Libération probably were much more present at the moment when he wrote his thesis. IIRC, Duby himself placed his influence in the post-war climate of celebration of the state, of centrally planned solutions, etc.

As for the mutationist debate, it is from time to time awaken from its slumber - usually by Dominique Barthélémy, who likes to flog that dead horse - but I am too far from a medievist to know if it really exist anymore. There is a chapter on that topic in Historiographies (2010) but I haven't had the chance to read it yet.

[Jacob]

likewise, this was post-war France, after all, where violence by armed bands, the expurgation of collaborators, the transformative power of the Libération probably were much more present...

I'm curious about these armed bands in post war France. What's that all about?

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm not sure I understand how these anarchic, rough, self-made men are a shift away from anything. It seems to me the that the preceding centuries were full of men like that, grabbing what they could by dint of their own strength at arms and that of immediate followers and holding on to it if they could.

That was the argument of the "old school" which postulated a more gradual feudal transformation arising out the chaos of the Viking invasions in the late 9th century and the 10th century.

Dominique Barthelemy, whose excellent book I am reading now, argues a variant of this counterargument.  He contends that *neither* the 10th or 11th centuries were quite as wild or archarchic as some historians have suggested and that there is evidence of elite continuity throughout the whole period.  He sees the emeregence of feudal society as an evolutionary working out of trends dating back to the early Carolingian era.

[The Minsky Moment]

As for the mutationist debate, it is from time to time awaken from its slumber - usually by Dominique Barthélémy, who likes to flog that dead horse - but I am too far from a medievist to know if it really exist anymore. There is a chapter on that topic in Historiographies (2010) but I haven't had the chance to read it yet.

Cornell University recently commissioned a translation of Barthelemy's 1997 book, which includes revisions to the text, new chapters and updated citiations - that is what I am reading now.  Next on the list is another book from the 90s by Susan Reynolds so I am not likely to find out what the latest views on this are.  The problem is that if you don't read the journals, you are usually going to be 10-20 years behind the times.

[crazy canuck]

I think it more likely that an American is identifying similarities in American culture and a theory of a French academic which was forumulated in the 50s then the French academic was influenced by American culture.

[Oexmelin]

Cornell University recently commissioned a translation of Barthelemy's 1997 book, which includes revisions to the text, new chapters and updated citiations - that is what I am reading now.

Interesting. I imagine there is a preface / presentation, either by Barthélémy or some anglophone scholar?

[The Brain]

Sounds like masturbation.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think it more likely that an American is identifying similarities in American culture and a theory of a French academic which was forumulated in the 50s then the French academic was influenced by American culture.

yeah that's probably true. 

[Oexmelin]

likewise, this was post-war France, after all, where violence by armed bands, the expurgation of collaborators, the transformative power of the Libération probably were much more present...

I'm curious about these armed bands in post war France. What's that all about?

It's called in French the épuration: basically, it is the hunt, by members of the various factions of the résistance, of people associated with Vichy (collaborateurs), coupled with some actual fighting by former partisans of Vichy.  Historian Henry Rousso estimates the number of summary executions at between 8000 and 9000 following the Libération.