Kinship and Conquest

Kinship and Conquest PDF Author: Joanna H. Drell
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501723812
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Historians of Medieval Europe have long employed the family as a window through which to explore broader social, political, and economic issues. Drawing primarily on the abundant charter sources in the archive of S.S. Trinità at Cava dei Tirreni, Joanna H. Drell has reconstructed the history of family relationships in the Principality of Salerno from its conquest by the Normans in 1077 to the death of the last Norman king in 1194. In Kinship and Conquest, Drell challenges historians to modify their views on the nature of medieval family structure. Complicated ties of blood and marital kinship enabled the Norman kings to solidify their central authority in the Kingdom of Southern Italy and Sicily. The author finds that in the principality a broad range of kin participated in the management of family property, and that kinship networks remained highly flexible. Drell mines the Cava archive to illuminate not only the composition of the noble families and the nature of kinship networks, but also the extent of genealogical memory, the depth of Norman cultural influence, and the strategies the families used to transfer patrimonial holdings and, hence, political power. One of the first books to integrate the Italian South into the larger history of Medieval Europe, Kinship and Conquest is a novel contribution to the rich historiography on kinship and political power in western Europe.

Kinship and Conquest

Kinship and Conquest PDF Author: Joanna H. Drell
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501723812
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Historians of Medieval Europe have long employed the family as a window through which to explore broader social, political, and economic issues. Drawing primarily on the abundant charter sources in the archive of S.S. Trinità at Cava dei Tirreni, Joanna H. Drell has reconstructed the history of family relationships in the Principality of Salerno from its conquest by the Normans in 1077 to the death of the last Norman king in 1194. In Kinship and Conquest, Drell challenges historians to modify their views on the nature of medieval family structure. Complicated ties of blood and marital kinship enabled the Norman kings to solidify their central authority in the Kingdom of Southern Italy and Sicily. The author finds that in the principality a broad range of kin participated in the management of family property, and that kinship networks remained highly flexible. Drell mines the Cava archive to illuminate not only the composition of the noble families and the nature of kinship networks, but also the extent of genealogical memory, the depth of Norman cultural influence, and the strategies the families used to transfer patrimonial holdings and, hence, political power. One of the first books to integrate the Italian South into the larger history of Medieval Europe, Kinship and Conquest is a novel contribution to the rich historiography on kinship and political power in western Europe.

The Social Conquest of Earth

The Social Conquest of Earth PDF Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871403307
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Book of the Year (Nonfiction) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (Nonfiction) From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career. Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution. In a work that James D. Watson calls “a monumental exploration of the biological origins of the human condition,” Wilson explains how our innate drive to belong to a group is both a “great blessing and a terrible curse” (Smithsonian). Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, the renowned Harvard University biologist presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.

Kingship, Conquest, and Patria

Kingship, Conquest, and Patria PDF Author: Kristen Lee Over
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135474230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
First Published in 2005. Distinctly interdisciplinary, Kingship, Conquest, and Patria brings together French and Welsh studies with literary and historical analysis, genre study with questions of medieval colonialisms and national writing. It treats eight centuries' worth of insular and continental literature, placing the 12th- and 13th-century development of Arthurian romance in a history of fraught, ambiguous relations between Capetian France, Angevin England, and native Wales. Overall, the book aims to contextualize how French Arthurian romance and Welsh rhamant, despite being products of opposing cultures in an age of conquest, collectively revise the figure of King Arthur created by earlier insular tradition. At a time when contemporary monarchies sought to curtail the autonomy of both northern French and Welsh principalities, the literary image of kingship pointedly declines in romance and rhamant, replaced by an ideal of knightly independence. A focus on the romance portrait of King Arthur is the culmination of this study: Part I provides a survey of early British Arthurian material written in Latin and Welsh; Part II presents the historical contexts in northern France and Wales out of which the genre of Arthurian romance emerged; Part III turns to literary and sociopolitical analyses of Chrétien's five romances and the three Welsh rhamantau.

Law and Kinship in Thirteenth-Century England

Law and Kinship in Thirteenth-Century England PDF Author: Sam Worby
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 0861933389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
First comprehensive survey of how kinship rules were discussed and applied in medieval England. Two separate legal jurisdictions concerned with family relations held sway in England during the high middle ages: canon law and common law. In thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, kinship rules dominated the lives of laymenand laywomen. They determined whom they might marry (decided in the canon law courts) and they determined from whom they might inherit (decided in the common law courts). This book seeks to uncover the association between the two, exploring the ways in which the two legal systems shared ideas about family relationship, where the one jurisdiction - the common law - was concerned about ties of consanguinity and where the other - canon law - was concerned toadd to the kinship mix ties of affinity. It also demonstrates how the theories of kinship were practically applied in the courtrooms of medieval England. SAM WORBY is a civil servant and independent scholar.

The Nahuas After the Conquest

The Nahuas After the Conquest PDF Author: James Lockhart
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080476557X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
A monumental achievement of scholarship, this volume on the Nahua Indians of Central Mexico (often called Aztecs) constitutes our best understanding of any New World indigenous society in the period following European contact. Simply put, the purpose of this book is to throw light on the history of Nahua society and culture through the use of records in Nahuatl, concentrating on the time when the bulk of the extant documents were written, between about 1540-50 and the late eighteenth century. At the same time, the earliest records are full of implications for the very first years after contact, and ultimately for the preconquest epoch as well, both of which are touched on here in ways that are more than introductory or ancillary.

Colonial Kinship

Colonial Kinship PDF Author: Shawn Michael Austin
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826361978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In Colonial Kinship: Guaraní, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay, historian Shawn Michael Austin traces the history of conquest and colonization in Paraguay during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Emphasizing the social and cultural agency of Guaraní—one of the primary indigenous peoples of Paraguay—not only in Jesuit missions but also in colonial settlements and Indian pueblos scattered in and around the Spanish city of Asunción, Austin argues that interethnic relations and cultural change in Paraguay can only be properly understood through the Guaraní logic of kinship. In the colonial backwater of Paraguay, conquistadors were forced to marry into Guaraní families in order to acquire indigenous tributaries, thereby becoming “brothers-in-law” (tovajá) to Guaraní chieftains. This pattern of interethnic exchange infused colonial relations and institutions with Guaraní social meanings and expectations of reciprocity that forever changed Spaniards, African slaves, and their descendants. Austin demonstrates that Guaraní of diverse social and political positions actively shaped colonial society along indigenous lines.

Masters of the Middle Waters

Masters of the Middle Waters PDF Author: Jacob F. Lee
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674239784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
A riveting account of the conquest of the vast American heartland that offers a vital reconsideration of the relationship between Native Americans and European colonists, and the pivotal role of the mighty Mississippi. America’s waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Cutting a central line across the landscape, with tributaries connecting the South to the Great Plains and the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River meant wealth, knowledge, and power for those who could master it. In this ambitious and elegantly written account of the conquest of the West, Jacob Lee offers a new understanding of early America based on the long history of warfare and resistance in the Mississippi River valley. Lee traces the Native kinship ties that determined which nations rose and fell in the period before the Illinois became dominant. With a complex network of allies stretching from Lake Superior to Arkansas, the Illinois were at the height of their power in 1673 when the first French explorers—fur trader Louis Jolliet and Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette—made their way down the Mississippi. Over the next century, a succession of European empires claimed parts of the midcontinent, but they all faced the challenge of navigating Native alliances and social structures that had existed for centuries. When American settlers claimed the region in the early nineteenth century, they overturned 150 years of interaction between Indians and Europeans. Masters of the Middle Waters shows that the Mississippi and its tributaries were never simply a backdrop to unfolding events. We cannot understand the trajectory of early America without taking into account the vast heartland and its waterways, which advanced and thwarted the aspirations of Native nations, European imperialists, and American settlers alike.

Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest

Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest PDF Author: Chase F. Robinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139426915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
The study of early Islamic historical tradition has flourished with the emergence of an innovative scholarship no longer dependent on more traditional narratival approaches. Chase Robinson's book, first published in 2000, takes full account of the research available and interweaves history and historiography to interpret the political, social and economic transformations in the Mesopotamian region after the Islamic conquests. Using Arabic and Syriac sources to elaborate his argument, the author focuses on the Muslim and Christian élites, demonstrating that the immediate effects of the conquests were in fact modest ones. Significant social change took place only at the end of the seventh century with the imposition of Marwanid rule. Even then, the author argues, social power was diffused in the hands of local élites. This is a sophisticated study in a burgeoning field in Islamic studies.

Norman Expansion

Norman Expansion PDF Author: Keith J. Stringer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317086678
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
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.

War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible

War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Jacob L. Wright
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108574300
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The Hebrew Bible is permeated with depictions of military conflicts that have profoundly shaped the way many think about war. Why does war occupy so much space in the Bible? In this book, Jacob Wright offers a fresh and fascinating response to this question: War pervades the Bible not because ancient Israel was governed by religious factors (such as 'holy war') or because this people, along with its neighbors in the ancient Near East, was especially bellicose. The reason is rather that the Bible is fundamentally a project of constructing a new national identity for Israel, one that can both transcend deep divisions within the population and withstand military conquest by imperial armies. Drawing on the intriguing interdisciplinary research on war commemoration, Wright shows how biblical authors, like the architects of national identities from more recent times, constructed a new and influential notion of peoplehood in direct relation to memories of war, both real and imagined. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.