R. R. Davies

The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?*

Medieval historians seem to be falling in love with the word “state”, and with all that it implies. Such at least might be the conclusion to be drawn from the titles of some of the books they have published recently: such as James Given, State and Society in Medieval Europe. Gwynedd and Languedoc under Outside Rule (1990); James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (2000), a collection of essays mainly of the 1990s on early England as “an elaborately organized state”; Matthew Innes’s path-breaking State and Society in the early middle ages: the middle Rhine valley 400–1000 (2000); and, most recently, a festschrift, edited by John Maddicott and David Palliser, presented to James Campbell under the title The Medieval State (2000). Given that the authors who have contributed to this latter volume classify Northumbria, Wessex, Brittany, and Scotland as states, it comes as no surprise that we now hear murmurs of the Pictish state. Where will it all end? Or perhaps, more to the point, where and why has it all begun? To a certain extent it is no doubt a reaction against the infuriating condescension of historians of the modern period towards medieval polities and kingdoms. Such historians seem to subscribe to the view that since the word “state” did not acquire its “modern” connotations until the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, then the state itself is a post-1500 phenomenon. This is, of course, to confuse words with concepts and phenomena. It parallels the attempt of modern historians (Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson among them) to appropriate the word and concept of “nation” for their own exclusive use. As with “nation”, so with “state”, its usage is to that extent a deliberate act of defiance by medieval historians (Reynolds, 1980, chap. I; Hastings, 1997; Davies, 1994). They are tired of the oversimplified, cut-out models of medieval society often presented as a backcloth to, and precursor of, the modern world. These models focus on images of “feudal anarchy” (the two words have become twinned), the apparent weakness of effective “public” power; the

The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?*: The Medieval State

Medieval historians seem to be falling in love with the word “state”, and with all that it implies. Such at least might be the conclusion to be drawn from the titles of some of the books they have published recently: such as James Given, State and Society in Medieval Europe. Gwynedd and Languedoc under Outside Rule (1990); James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (2000), a collection of essays mainly of the 1990s on early England as “an elaborately organized state”; Matthew Innes’s path-breaking State and Society in the early middle ages: the middle Rhine valley 400–1000 (2000); and, most recently, a festschrift, edited by John Maddicott and David Palliser, presented to James Campbell under the title The Medieval State (2000). Given that the authors who have contributed to this latter volume classify Northumbria, Wessex, Brittany, and Scotland as states, it comes as no surprise that we now hear murmurs of the Pictish state. Where will it all end? Or perhaps, more to the point, where and why has it all begun? To a certain extent it is no doubt a reaction against the infuriating condescension of historians of the modern period towards medieval polities and kingdoms. Such historians seem to subscribe to the view that since the word “state” did not acquire its “modern” connotations until the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, then the state itself is a post-1500 phenomenon. This is, of course, to confuse words with concepts and phenomena. It parallels the attempt of modern historians (Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson among them) to appropriate the word and concept of “nation” for their own exclusive use. As with “nation”, so with “state”, its usage is to that extent a deliberate act of defiance by medieval historians (Reynolds, 1980, chap. I; Hastings, 1997; Davies, 1994). They are tired of the oversimplified, cut-out models of medieval society often presented as a backcloth to, and precursor of, the modern world. These models focus on images of “feudal anarchy” (the two words have become twinned), the apparent weakness of effective “public” power; the