The Normans In The Mediterranean

In both popular memory and in their own histories, the Normans remain almost synonymous with conquest. In their relatively brief history, some of these Normans left a small duchy in northern France to fight with Empires, conquer kingdoms, and form new ruling dynasties. This book examines the explosive Norman encounters with the medieval Mediterranean, c. 1000-1250. It evaluates new evidence for conquest and communities, and offer new perspectives on the Normans? many meetings and adventures in history and memory.00The contributions gathered here ask questions of politics, culture, society, and historical writing. How should we characterize the Normans? many personal, local, and interregional interactions in the Mediterranean? How were they remembered in writing in the years and centuries that followed their incursions? The book questions the idea of conquest as replacement, examining instead how human interactions created new nodes and networks that transformed the medieval Mediterranean. Through studies of the Normans and the communities who encountered them - across Iberia, the eastern Roman Empire, Lombard Italy, Islamic Sicily, and the Great Sea - the book explores macro- and micro-histories of conquest, its strategies and technologies, and how medieval people revised, rewrote, and remembered conquest.

In both popular memory and in their own histories, the Normans remain almost synonymous with conquest. In their relatively brief history, some of these Normans left a small duchy in northern France to fight with Empires, conquer kingdoms, and form new ruling dynasties. This book examines the explosive Norman encounters with the medieval Mediterranean, c. 1000-1250. It evaluates new evidence for conquest and communities, and offer new perspectives on the Normans? many meetings and adventures in history and memory.00The contributions gathered here ask questions of politics, culture, society, and historical writing. How should we characterize the Normans? many personal, local, and interregional interactions in the Mediterranean? How were they remembered in writing in the years and centuries that followed their incursions? The book questions the idea of conquest as replacement, examining instead how human interactions created new nodes and networks that transformed the medieval Mediterranean. Through studies of the Normans and the communities who encountered them - across Iberia, the eastern Roman Empire, Lombard Italy, Islamic Sicily, and the Great Sea - the book explores macro- and micro-histories of conquest, its strategies and technologies, and how medieval people revised, rewrote, and remembered conquest.

Analyses of different aspects of the history of warfare in the Mediterranean in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

The formidable force of the Normans at sea has been frequently overlooked. This volume shows their dominance over the Mediterranean, and its far-reaching effects.

This book provides a selection from the abundant source material generated by the Normans and the peoples they conquered. It takes a wide European perspective on the Normans, assessing and explaining Norman expansion, their political and social organization and their eventual decline. The Normans in Europe explores: the process of assimilation between Scandinavians and Franks and the emergence of Normandy; the internal organization of the principality with a variety of source materials from chronicles, miracle stories and chapters; the role of women and children in Norman society; and a variety of other areas.

'Powerful' The Economist 'Fascinating, panoramic . . . Roach brings an expert eye and page-turning energy' Helen Castor, bestselling author of She Wolves 'Narrated with pace, clarity, authority and style, Roach's book is a bracing tour of the world that the Normans made their own' Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain 'A fresh retelling . . . written with enthusiasm and brio' Marc Morris, bestselling author of The Anglo-Saxons How did descendants of Viking marauders come to dominate Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East? It is a tale of ambitious adventures and fierce freebooters, of fortunes made and fortunes lost. The Normans made their influence felt across all of western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land. In Empires of the Normans we discover how they combined military might and political savvy with deeply held religious beliefs and a profound sense of their own destiny. For a century and a half, they remade Europe in their own image, and yet their heritage was quickly forgotten - until now.

When a band of Norman adventurers arrived in southern Italy to fight in the Lombard insurrections against the Byzantine empire in the early 1000s, few would have predicted that within a generation these men would have seized control of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. How did they make such extraordinary gains and then consolidate their power? Paul Brown, in this thoroughly researched and absorbing study, seeks to answer these questions and throw light onto the Norman conquests across the Mediterranean. Throughout he focuses on the military side of their progress, as they advanced from mercenaries to conquerors, then crusaders. The story of the campaigns they undertook in Italy, Sicily, the Balkans and the Near East reveals their remarkable talent for war. The dominant role played by a succession of Norman leaders is a key theme of the narrative a line of ambitious and ruthless soldiers that ran from Robert Guiscard and Bohemond to Roger II and Tancred.

A powerful and evocative portrait of the Norman Conquest of Europe, revealing the permanent cultural and political legacy that resulted in their ascendency. The Norman’s conquering of the known world was a phenomenon unlike anything Europe had seen up to that point in history. They emerged early in the tenth century but had disappeared from world affairs by the mid-thirteenth century. Yet in that time they had conquered England, Ireland, much of Wales and parts of Scotland. They also founded a new Mediterranean kingdom in southern Italy and Sicily, as well as a Crusader state in the Holy Land and in North Africa. Moreover, they had an extraordinary ability to adapt as time and place dictated, taking on the role of Norse invaders to Frankish crusaders, from Byzantine overlords to feudal monarchs. Drawing on archaeological and historical evidence, Trevor Rowley offers a comprehensive picture of the Normans and argues that despite the short time span of Norman ascendancy, it is clear that they were responsible for a permanent cultural and political legacy.