History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850

Book cover of History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850

Book description

This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. Focusing on the turbulent and varied history of Frankish identity in Merovingian and Carolingian historiography, it offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity…

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Topics

The Middle Ages

Genres

European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Patrick J. Geary

Author

For two centuries, Europeans have tried to find in the peoples of the early Middle Ages the ethnic origins of their own nations.

The Franks were the most successful of these peoples, appearing first as a minor group along the lower Rhine but ultimately, under Charlemagne, creating a vast empire that encompassed much of what had been the Roman Empire in the West.

However, in this extraordinary book Reimitz shows how protean Frankish ethnic identity was across this period.

Relying on close readings of historical texts and their manuscript transmission, constantly amended, re-edited, and transformed, he shows how Frankish identity…

From Patrick's list on the end of Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.