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Zusatztext This is a book to which one can return again and again for new ideas and inspiration. Informationen zum Autor Currently Chairman of the Modern History Faculty, University of Oxford, and a former President of the Royal Historical Society, R. R. Davies is Chichele Professor of Medieval History at All Souls College, Oxford. The book is based on his Ford Lectures. Klappentext The future of the United Kingdom is an increasingly open question. This book traces the issue's roots to the Middle Ages, when English power and control came to extend to the whole of the British Isles. By 1300 it looked as if Edward I was in control of virtually the whole of the BritishIsles. Ireland, Scotland, and Wales had, in different degrees, been subjugated to his authority; contemporaries were even comparing him to King Arthur. This was the culmination of a remarkable English advance into the outer zones of the British Isles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Theadvance was not only a matter of military power, political control, and governmental and legal institutions; it also involved extensive colonization and the absorption of these outer zones into the economic and cultural orbit of an England-dominated world. What remained to be seen was how stable(especially in Scotland and Ireland) this English 'empire' would be; how far the northern and western parts of the British Isles could be absorbed in an English-centered polity and society; and to what extent the early and self-confident development of English identity would determine therelationships between England and the rest of the British Isles. The answers to those questions would be shaped by the past of the country that was England; the answers would also cast their shadow over the future of the British Isles for centuries to come. Zusammenfassung Long before the British Empire came into existence, was there an English Empire? In this compelling study, R. R. Davies examines England's medieval conquest and colonization of the outer zones of the British Isles. He shows how the increasingly vexed question of the future of the United Kingdom has its roots in the Middle Ages, when Edward I set out to subjugate his Celtic neighbours. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface Introduction 1: The High Kingship of the British Isles 2: Island Mythologies 3: Orbits of Power 4: Political Heartlands and Political Outbacks 5: 'Sweet Civility' and 'Barbarous Rudeness' 6: The Anglicization of the British Isles 7: The Ebb Tide of the English Empire 13041343 Epilogue: The British Isles and the Identity of England Index ...
