Study of the Norman World's borders, frontiers, and boundaries in Europe, shedding fresh light on their nature and extent. The Normans exerted great influence across Christendom and beyond in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Figures like William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard subdued vast territories, their feats recorded for posterity by chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis and Geoffrey Malaterra. Through travel and conquest, the Normans encountered, created, and conceptualised many borders, with the areas of Europe that they ruled and most affected often being grouped together as the "Norman World".This volume examines the nature, forms, and function of borders in and around this "Norman World", looking at Normandy, the British-Irish Isles, and Southern Italy. Three sections frame the collection. The first concerns physical features, from broad frontier expanses, to rivers and walls that were both literally and metaphorically lines of division. The second shows how borders were established, contested, and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.eurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.

This comparative study analyses Cistercian strategies on the northern and north-eastern frontiers of medieval Europe. Through case studies of six houses in Pomerania and Neumark (Ko'bacz, Marienwalde, and Himmelstadt) and on the Scottish-English border (Melrose, Dundrennan, and Holm Cultram), the author traces the development of social networks around these monasteries within their own regions and across borders, and explores the importance of the international Cistercian networks for communities located in these politically sensitive areas. Very different socio-economic conditions in the regions under discussion resulted in quite different strategies of land accumulation by Cistercian monasteries in Scotland and Pomerania, which in turn had a lasting impact on their relationships with their neighbours. The author also examines the role of these abbeys in wider ecclesiastical politics and in relation to the key issues of the time: church reform and the expectations of the order's lay patrons and benefactors. In the fourteenth century, all of the abbeys experienced war, violence, and long-term instability. Their responses to these threats and difficulties are significant for our understanding of monastic strategies in hostile environments. Above all, this study shows how a Cistercian model was adapted to fit the complex political, cultural, and ethnic contexts of the southern Baltic, Northern England, and Scotland.

This book explores the relations and exchanges between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman realm following the union of England and Normandy in 1066.

This book provides a concise and comprehensive description of all of the borders of every country in the contemporary world, including physical boundaries, their historical evolution, and border-related conflicts with other countries. Nation Shapes: The Story behind the World's Borders examines the importance of country boundaries, the disconnects between these borders, related factors such as cultures, religions, and economies, and how conflicts over boundaries between neighboring countries are articulated. The book is organized geographically and by region of the world: the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, East and Southeast Asia, and Australia and Oceania. It provides comprehensive descriptions of the boundaries of each country in the world, the historical evolution of these boundaries, and current and potential future boundary disputes and conflicts. While the work contains an entry for each country, the emphasis is on countries of major importance in the modern global economy.

Aspects of the reign of King Henry re-examined, from royal biography to administrative history.

These essays examine art on the borders of the medieval world, from China to Spain. They engage three related issues: margins, frontiers, and cross-cultural encounters. Historiographic problems and pedagogical questions weave through the essays and the editors introduction.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Normans had a formative influence on the development of states and societies in the British Isles, southern Italy and the Levant. Their achievements still resonate powerfully today, and represent a vital field of historical study. But how far did colonial elites define themselves as Norman, and to what extent were they categorized as such by others? What were the defining attributes of the supremacies achieved by the Normans, and by other incomers associated with them, and how decisive and diverse was the impact of their influence on local power-structures and native societies? How readily did they reach accommodations with those societies, and how might their own identities be renegotiated within the context of cross-cultural encounters? And, in terms of the progress and practices of state-formation, what was the balance between ’old’ and ’new’? These are some of the key questions addressed in this collection of essays, which also treats the Normans as a genuinely European phenomenon. Norman activity in the British Isles and in the Mediterranean lands receives equal coverage; and the topics explored include identities and identification, marriage policies, acculturation, the pre-existing landscapes of power and how far they were transformed, castle-building strategies, the nature of frontiers, urban government, and law and legislation. This volume therefore serves both to illustrate and to open up for fresh debate many of the salient themes concerning the Norman experience of diaspora and settlement. At the same time, it seeks to underscore how the dynamics, character and consequences of Norman expansion - and the connections, continuities and contrasts - can better be appreciated by taking the wider Norman world, or worlds, as the focus for collective study.

A sweeping exploration of revolutionary ideas that traveled the Atlantic in the late eighteenth century Nation-based histories cannot do justice to the rowdy, radical interchange of ideas around the Atlantic world during the tumultuous years from 1776 to 1804. National borders were powerless to restrict the flow of enticing new visions of human rights and universal freedom. This expansive history explores how the revolutionary ideas that spurred the American and French revolutions reverberated far and wide, connecting European, North American, African, and Caribbean peoples more closely than ever before. Historian Janet Polasky focuses on the eighteenth-century travelers who spread new notions of liberty and equality. It was an age of itinerant revolutionaries, she shows, who ignored borders and found allies with whom to imagine a borderless world. As paths crossed, ideas entangled. The author investigates these ideas and how they were disseminated long before the days of instant communications and social media or even an international postal system. Polasky analyzes the paper records--books, broadsides, journals, newspapers, novels, letters, and more--to follow the far-reaching trails of revolutionary zeal. What emerges clearly from rich historic records is that the dream of liberty among America's founders was part of a much larger picture. It was a dream embraced throughout the far-flung regions of the Atlantic world.

The American West and the World provides a synthetic introduction to the transnational history of the American West. Drawing from the insights of recent scholarship, Janne Lahti recenters the history of the U.S. West in the global contexts of empires and settler colonialism, discussing exploration, expansion, migration, violence, intimacies, and ideas. Lahti examines established subfields of Western scholarship, such as borderlands studies and transnational histories of empire, as well as relatively unexplored connections between the West and geographically nonadjacent spaces. Lucid and incisive, The American West and the World firmly situates the historical West in its proper global context.

The volume discusses the world as it was known in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, focusing on projects concerned with mapping as a conceptual and artistic practice, with visual representations of space, and with destinations of real and fictive travel. Maps were often taken as straightforward, objective configurations. However, they expose deeply subjective frameworks with social, political, and economic significance. Travel narratives, whether illustrated or not, can address similar frameworks. Whereas travelled space is often adventurous, and speaking of hardship, strange encounters and danger, city portraits tell a tale of civilized life and civic pride. The book seeks to address the multiple ways in which maps and travel literature conceive of the world, communicate a 'Weltbild', depict space, and/or define knowledge. The volume challenges academic boundaries in the study of cartography by exploring the links between mapmaking and artistic practices. The contributions discuss individual mapmakers, authors of travelogues, mapmaking as an artistic practice, the relationship between travel literature and mapmaking, illustration in travel literature, and imagination in depictions of newly explored worlds.