The Earliest English Kings

The Earliest English Kings
Author: D. P. Kirby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2020-03-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000082865

The Earliest English Kings is a fascinating survey of Anglo-Saxon History from the sixth century to the eighth century and the death of King Alfred. It explains and explores the 'Heptarchy' or the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as the various peoples within them, wars, religion, King Offa and the coming of the Vikings. With maps and family trees, this book reveals the complex, distant and tumultuous events of Anglo-Saxon politics.

Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England

Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Dr Barbara Yorke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113470724X

Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England provides a unique survey of the six major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms - Kent, the East Saxons, the East Angles, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex - and their royal families, examining the most recent research in this field. Barbara Yorke moves beyond narrative accounts of the various royal houses to explain issues such as the strategies of rule, the reasons for success and failure and the dynamics of change in the office of king. Sixteen genealogical and regnal tables help to elucidate the history of the royal houses.

A Viking Market Kingdom in Ireland and Britain

A Viking Market Kingdom in Ireland and Britain
Author: Tom Horne
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2021-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 100053314X

Viking-Age trade, network theory, silver economies, kingdom formation, and the Scandinavian raiding and settlement of Ireland and Britain are all popular subjects. However, few have looked for possible connections between these phenomena, something this book suggests were closely related. By allying Blomkvist’s network-kingdoms with Sindbæk’s nodal market-networks, it is argued that the political and economic character of Viking-Age Britain and Ireland – my ‘Insular Scandinavia’ – is best understood if Dublin and Jórvík are seen as being established as nodes of a market-based network-kingdom. Based on a dataset relating to the then developing bullion economies of the central and eastern Scandinavian worlds and southern Scandinavia in particular, it is argued that war-band leaders from, or familiar with, ‘Danish’ markets like Hedeby and Kaupang transposed to Insular Scandinavia the concept of polities based on establishment of markets and the protection of routeways between them. Using this book, readers can think of interlinked Dublin and Great Army elites creating an Insular version of a Danish-style nodal market kingdom based on commerce and silver currencies. A Viking Market Kingdom in Ireland and Britain will help specialist researchers and students of Viking archaeology make connections between southern Scandinavia and the market economy of the Uí Ímair (‘descendants of Ívarr’) operating out of the twin nodes of Dublin and Jórvík via the initial establishment of Hiberno-Scandinavian longphuirt and the related winter-camps of the Viking Great Army.

Thirteenth Century England X

Thirteenth Century England X
Author: Michael Prestwich
Publisher: Boydell Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781843831228

Aspects of the political, social, cultural, economic and ecclesiastical history of medieval England re-examined. This collection presents new and original research into the long thirteenth century, from c.1180-c.1330, with a particular focus on the reign of Edward II and its aftermath. Other topics examined include crown finances, markets and fairs, royal stewards, the aftermath of the Barons' War, Wace's Roman de Brut, and authority in Yorkshire nunneries; and the volume also follows the tradition of the series by looking beyond England, with contributions onthe role of Joan, wife of Llywelyn the Great in Anglo-Welsh relations, Dublin, and English landholding in Ireland, while the continental connection is represented by a comparison of aspects of English and French kingship. Contributors: David Carpenter, Nick Barratt, Emilia Jamroziak, Michael Ray, Susan Stewart, Louise J. Wilkinson, Sean Duffy, Beth Hartland, Francoise Le Saux, Henry Summerson, Janet Burton, H.S.A. Fox, David Crook, Margo Todd, Seymour Phillips

Wales and the Britons, 350-1064

Wales and the Britons, 350-1064
Author: T. M. Charles-Edwards
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 816
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198217315

The most detailed history of the Welsh from Late-Roman Britain to the eve of the Norman Conquest. Integrates the history of religion, language, and literature with the history of events.

The Vikings

The Vikings
Author: Martin Arnold
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2006-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1461646030

This concise and balanced history traces the 300-year saga of the pirates and warlords who poured out of Scandinavia between the eighth and eleventh centuries, terrorizing, conquering, and ultimately settling vast tracts of land throughout Europe. Undaunted by the might of the Arab caliphates and the Byzantine Empire, they founded Russia, originated the bloodline that came to rule France, and created a North Sea empire that included England. They also established settlements across the North Atlantic, notably in Iceland and Greenland, and their adventurous spirit and extraordinary seafaring skills led them to explore and briefly build colonies in North America. These were the Vikings, initially ferocious pagan warriors seeking land and booty under the banners of their gods, but eventually belligerent Christian kings commanding vast armies. Martin Arnold provides a lively and accessible account of the early medieval period that became known as the Viking Age. Drawing on rich literary and archaeological source material, the first half of the book focuses especially on Viking culture, religious beliefs, and battle tactics and weaponry. The second half ranges over the four main theaters of Viking activity—the British Isles, Western Europe, the Slavic regions, and the North Atlantic settlements. Arnold vividly illustrates the two faces of the Vikings: on the one hand, savage, greedy, and implacable; on the other, adventurous, innovative, and artistic.

The Cambridge History of War: Volume 2, War and the Medieval World

The Cambridge History of War: Volume 2, War and the Medieval World
Author: David A. Graff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 854
Release: 2020-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108901190

Volume II of The Cambridge History of War covers what in Europe is commonly called 'the Middle Ages'. It includes all of the well-known themes of European warfare, from the migrations of the Germanic peoples and the Vikings through the Reconquista, the Crusades and the age of chivalry, to the development of state-controlled gunpowder-wielding armies and the urban militias of the later middle ages; yet its scope is world-wide, ranging across Eurasia and the Americas to trace the interregional connections formed by the great Arab conquests and the expansion of Islam, the migrations of horse nomads such as the Avars and the Turks, the formation of the vast Mongol Empire, and the spread of new technologies – including gunpowder and the earliest firearms – by land and sea.

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great
Author: Richard Abels
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2013-11-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317900413

This biography of Alfred the Great, king of the West Saxons (871-899), combines a sensitive reading of the primary sources with a careful evaluation of the most recent scholarly research on the history and archaeology of ninth-century England. Alfred emerges from the pages of this biography as a great warlord, an effective and inventive ruler, and a passionate scholar whose piety and intellectual curiosity led him to sponsor a cultural and spiritual renaissance. Alfred's victories on the battlefield and his sweeping administrative innovations not only preserved his native Wessex from viking conquest, but began the process of political consolidation that would culminate in the creation of the kingdom of England. Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England strips away the varnish of later interpretations to recover the historical Alfredpragmatic, generous, brutal, pious, scholarly within the context of his own age.

The Conversion of Scandinavia

The Conversion of Scandinavia
Author: Anders Winroth
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2012-01-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300178093

In this book a MacArthur Award-winning scholar argues for a radically new interpretation of the conversion of Scandinavia from paganism to Christianity in the early Middle Ages. Overturning the received narrative of Europe's military and religious conquest and colonization of the region, Anders Winroth contends that rather than acting as passive recipients, Scandinavians converted to Christianity because it was in individual chieftains' political, economic, and cultural interests to do so. Through a painstaking analysis and historical reconstruction of both archeological and literary sources, and drawing on scholarly work that has been unavailable in English, Winroth opens up new avenues for studying European ascendency and the expansion of Christianity in the medieval period.