Happy new year, all! Now that I'm back at work I'm hyped to realize that our edited volume on Lordship and the Decentralized State will be coming out in less than 3 weeks! This gives me just enough time to share the things I'm most excited about with this project... global.oup.com/academic/pro... - ThreadSky

jeanneologist.bsky.social • 52 days ago

Happy new year, all! Now that I'm back at work I'm hyped to realize that our edited volume on Lordship and the Decentralized State will be coming out in less than 3 weeks! This gives me just enough time to share the things I'm most excited about with this project...
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780197267844

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jeanneologist.bsky.social•52 days ago

First, obviously, is our cover, which I will never not love ;) But what about what's inside? I'll give a sneak peak of each contribution in turn over the run-up to our release date on 23 January, because why not!

jeanneologist.bsky.social•52 days ago

This book came out of an ERC project, so we'll start with what the research team has to say. The Foreword by @medievalrevolt.bsky.social reflects on how lordship ties in to wider questions about periodization and why the power systems considered characteristic of the Middle Ages matter when thinking

jeanneologist.bsky.social•52 days ago

about the rise of 'modern' states, with which this inquiry began (and which is an ever more pressing issue in light of the clear instabilities of this political structure today). The editors' Introduction then lays out our conceptual framework, focusing especially on some of the key characteristics

jeanneologist.bsky.social•52 days ago

of interactions between lords and states, the need for (and challenges with) thinking about lordship more theoretically, the historiographical evolution of the concept of the 'state' and why lords have largely been left out of that picture. While it's not new to recognize that aristocratic elites

jeanneologist.bsky.social•52 days ago

regularly bought in to royal efforts to centralize power, we explore the limits of that centralization instead. How and why did lords' power on the ground, away from the center, continue to matter? This approach refocuses late medieval politics away from great magnates and towards local authorities.

jeanneologist.bsky.social•51 days ago

Chapter 1, by John Watts, picks up a different theoretical angle to ask how far we should take the idea of the state—were lords fully part it, or something separate? He argues that despite considerable overlap, 'these two forms of power were not the same'—which then demands a better understanding

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