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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF FRENCH HISTORY
Aimed firmly at the student reader, this handbook offers an overview of the full range of the
history of France, from the origins of the concept of post-Roman “Francia,” through the
emergence of a consolidated French monarchy and the development of both nation-state and
global empire into the modern era, forward to the current complexities of a modern republic
integrated into the European Union and struggling with the global legacies of its past.
Short, incisive contributions by a wide range of expert scholars offer both a spine of
chronological overviews and a diverse spectrum of up-to-date insights into areas of key
interest to historians today. From the ravages of the Vikings to the role of gastronomy
in the definition of French culture, from Caribbean slavery to the place of Algerians in
present-day France, from the role of French queens in medieval diplomacy to the youth-
culture explosion of the 1960s and the explosions of France’s nuclear weapons program,
this handbook provides accessible summaries and selected further reading to explore any
and all these issues further, in the classroom and beyond.
David Andress is Professor of Modern History at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His
published research on the era of the French Revolution includes The Terror (2004), Beating
Napoleon (2012), and The French Revolution: A Peasants’ Revolt (2019).
THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF FRENCH
HISTORY
Edited by David Andress

Designed cover image: Alamy
First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, David Andress; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of David Andress to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Andress, David, 1969– editor, writer of introduction.
Title: The Routledge handbook of French history / edited by David
Andress.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023035373 (print) | LCCN 2023035374 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367406820 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032656441 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780367808471 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: France—Civilization. | France—History.
Classification: LCC DC33 .R66 2024 (print) | LCC DC33 (ebook) |
DDC 944—dc23/eng/20230812
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035373
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035374
ISBN: 978-0-367-40682-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-65644-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-80847-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780367808471
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of Contributors xi
List of Maps xv
Introduction 1
David Andress
1 Overview: From Regnum Francorum to Regnum Franciae:

Early Medieval France from the Fifth to the Twelfth Centuries 6
Clément de Vasselot de Régné
2 Gaul, Francia, and the Wider Early Medieval World 21

James T. Palmer
3 The Vikings and Francia, 799–936 31

Matthew Firth
4 Regional Magnates and the Last Carolingians 42

Fraser McNair
5 The World of the Early Capetian Court: 987–1180 53

Talia Zajac
6 The Queens’ Reflection: French Consorts as a Mirror of French History 64

Derek R. Whaley
7 History and the Shaping of French Identity in the Later Middle Ages 74
Chris Jones
v
Contents
8 Nationhood and Nationalism in French History Writing:

Franks, Gallo-Romans, and the Shaping of the Roman National85
Camille Creyghton and Matthew D’Auria
9 Overview: Valois France, 1328–1498 96

Tracy Adams
10 France and the Crusades in the Later Middle Ages 107

Tania M. Colwell
11 Prince and Principality in the Breton War of Succession 119

Erika Graham-Goering
12 Performing Discontent: Politics and Society in the French Satirical

Theater of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 130
Francesca Canadé Sautman
13 Overview: France in the Sixteenth Century: Monarchy,

Renaissance, and Reformation, 1494–1610 140
Elizabeth C. Tingle
14 Conduit of the Divine: Theocratic Themes in Political Theory

in Renaissance and Reformation France 151
Aglaia Maretta Venters
15 Royal Women and the Habsburg–Valois Wars (1494–1559) 162

Susan Broomhall
16 Festival Cultures in Early Modern France: Elite and Popular

Celebrations, c. 1560–c. 1640 172
Bram van Leuveren
17 Overview: Absolutist France to 1715 181

Darryl Dee
18 Bureaucracy and Royal Administration in the Seventeenth

Century – French Absolutism and the State 191
Robert J. Fulton Jr.
19 A Century of Saints? The Catholic Reformation in

Seventeenth-Century France 202
Alison Forrestal
vi
Contents
20 The Royal Manufactories of Absolutist France: Luxury Production

and the Politics and Culture of Mercantilism 213
Florian Knothe
21 Making History in Old Regime France 224

Robert Wellington
22 Overview: France, 1715 to 1815: A Century of Dubious Greatness 235

David Andress
23 The French Caribbean in the Era of Slavery 246

Erica Johnson Edwards
24 The Development of the French Dimension of the Atlantic Slavery System 257
Sylvie Kandé
25 French India in the Eighteenth Century 272

Gregory Mole
26 Exploration and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France 283

Eric F. Johnson
27 Enlightenment and the Supernatural: Popular Religious Practice in

the Eighteenth Century 293
Angela C. Haas
28 The “Masterpiece of the National Assembly”: Criminal Justice and

the Revolution 304
Julie P. Johnson
29 Performance in Paris, 1789–1815: Setting the Stage for Regime

Change and Cultural Revision 315
Dane Stalcup
30 Fugitives from France: Huguenot Refugees, Revolutionary Émigrés,

and the Origins of Modern Exile 325
Kelly Summers
31 The French Campaign in Egypt (1798–1801) 338

Evgeniya Prusskaya
32 Monarchy, Memory, and the Chapelle Expiatoire 348

Gemma Betros
vii
Contents
33 Overview: 1815–1905: An Era of Tumult and Change 360

Venita Datta
34 Memory of Lost Empire 373

Annette Chapman-Adisho
35 France and Algeria, 1830–1870 385

Gavin Murray-Miller
36 Environment and Technology in Global France, 1763–1914 394

Andrew Denning
37 The French Periodical Press, 1815–1905 404

Ross F. Collins
38 From Dictator to Democrat? The “Black Legend” of

Louis-Napoleon and Subsequent Historical Revisionism 415
W. Jack Rhoden
39 Socialism Up to the First World War 427

Eric Brandom
40 French Empire in the Asia-Pacific Region, c. 1800–1914 438

Véronique Dorbe-Larcade
41 Imperial Variation: Administration and Citizenship in France’s Colonies 449

Megan Brown
42 Overview: Two Frances at War and Peace: The Stories of a Nation

and its People, 1905–1958 459
Jessica Wardhaugh
43 Overview: Between Gaullism and Globalization: Opening Up the

Fifth Republic, 1958–2020 471
Andrew WM Smith
44 History and Historiography of French Imperialism from 1914 483

Sibylle Duhautois
45 French Feminisms: Patriarchy, Populationism, and Progress,

1870–1950492
Nimisha Barton
viii
Contents
46 Queering France Since the Belle Époque: Between Emancipation

and Repression 503
Tamara Chaplin
47 Reconstructing French Relations in the South Pacific after World War I 514
Kirsty Carpenter and Alistair Watts
48 The Popular Front and France’s Twentieth Century 523

Mattie Fitch
49 The Brazzaville Conference and the Future of French Colonialism

in Africa 533
Danielle Porter Sanchez
50 The Atomic Republic: Nuclear France Since 1958 545

Roxanne Panchasi
51 Young People and Youth Culture, 1958–1968 555

Susan B. Whitney
52 Sustaining the Nation: A Gastronomic Reading of Contemporary

France565
Jennifer L. Holm
53 The Year of the Events: 1968 574

Ben Mercer
54 The Algerian Diaspora in France 585

Álvaro Luna-Dubois
55 French Museums in the Fifth Republic 596

Déborah Dubald
56 Erasing Race in France: Social Consequences of Political Idealism 606

Daniel N. Maroun
57 The Memory Politics of the First World War at Its Centenary 616
Elizabeth Benjamin
58 French Historical Writing in the Wake of Decolonization 628

Timothy Scott Johnson
Index 638
ix
CONTRIBUTORS
Tracy Adams Susan Broomhall

School of Cultures, Languages, and Gender and Women’s History Research
Linguistics Centre
University of Auckland, New Zealand Institute for Humanities and Social
Sciences
David Andress Australian Catholic University
School of Area Studies, Sociology,
History, Politics and Literature Megan Brown
University of Portsmouth, UK Department of History
Swarthmore College, USA
Nimisha Barton
Kirsty Carpenter
Department of History
School of Humanities, Media and Creative
University of California, Irvine
Communication
Massey University, NZ
Elizabeth Benjamin
Centre for Arts, Memory and Tamara Chaplin
Communities Department of History
Coventry University, UK University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, USA
Gemma Betros
School of History, Research School Annette Chapman-Adisho
of Social Sciences Department of History
Australian National University, AU Salem State University, USA
Eric Brandom Ross F. Collins

Department of History Department of Communication
Kansas State University, USA North Dakota State University, USA
xi
Contributors
Tania M. Colwell Mattie Fitch

School of History, Research School College of Sciences and Humanities
of Social Sciences Marymount University, USA
Australian National University, AU
Alison Forrestal
Camille Creyghton Department of History, School of History
Department of History and Art History and Philosophy
Utrecht University, The Netherlands University of Galway, Galway,
Ireland
Venita Datta
Department of French, Francophone and Robert Fulton
Italian Studies Department of Humanities, History
Wellesley College, USA Emmanuel University, Franklin
Springs, GA
Matthew D’Auria
School of History Erika Graham-Goering
University of East Anglia, UK Department of Archaeology, Conservation
and History
Darryl Dee University of Oslo, Norway
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada Angela C. Haas
Department of Social Sciences and
Andrew Denning Humanities
Department of History Missouri Western State
University of Kansas, USA University, USA
Véronique Dorbe-Larcade Jennifer L. Holm

Département Lettres Langues Sciences Independent Scholar
humaines
Laboratoire EASTCO (Sociétés Tradition- Eric F. Johnson
nelles et Contemporaines d’Océanie) Department of History
Université de la Polynésie française, PF Kutztown University of
Pennsylvania
Déborah Dubald
Laboratoire Sociétés, Acteurs, Julie P. Johnson
Gouvernements en Europe - UMR 7363 Independent Scholar
University of Strasbourg, France National Museum of Australia, ACT,
Australia
Sibylle Duhautois
Chercheuse associée au Centre d’histoire Timothy Scott Johnson
de Sciences Po Department of Humanities
Sciences Po, France Texas A&M University-Corpus
Christi, USA
Matthew Firth
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Erica Johnson Edwards
Sciences Department of History
Flinders University, Australia Francis Marion University, USA
xii
Contributors
Chris Jones James T. Palmer

School of Humanities School of History
University of Canterbury, Aotearoa University of St Andrews, UK
New Zealand
Roxanne Panchasi
Sylvie Kandé Department of History
Department of History & Philosophy Simon Fraser University, Canada
SUNY Old Westbury, USA
Danielle Porter Sanchez
Florian Knothe Department of History
Faculty of Arts and University Museum Colorado College, USA
and Art Gallery
The University of Hong Kong Evgeniya Prusskaya
Giorgi Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies
Bram van Leuveren Ilia State University, Georgia
Leiden University Centre for the Arts
in Society W. Jack Rhoden
Leiden University, The Netherlands Department of History
Bishop Grosseteste University, UK
Álvaro Luna-Dubois
Department of Arts and Humanities Francesca Canadé Sautman
New York University Abu Dhabi, United Professor emerita, French and History
Arab Emirates The Graduate Center of the City University
of New York, USA
Daniel Nabil Maroun
Department of French and Italian Andrew W.M. Smith
University of Illinois at Urbana- School of History
Champaign, USA Queen Mary University of London, UK
Fraser McNair Dane Stalcup

Center for Advanced Studies Department of Modern Languages,
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Literatures, and Cultures
Germany Wagner College, USA
Ben Mercer Kelly Summers

School of History Department of Humanities
Australian National University, Australia MacEwan University, Canada
Gregory Mole Elizabeth Tingle

Department of History Department of History
Longwood University, USA De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Gavin Murray-Miller Clément de Vasselot de Régné

School of History, Archaeology, and Institut de recherches historiques du
Religion septentrion - UMR 8529
Cardiff University, UK Université de Lille, France
xiii
Contributors
Aglaia Maretta Venters Derek R. Whaley

Department of History College of Arts, Humanities and Social
Montclair State University, USA Sciences
Xavier University, USA University of Canterbury,
New Zealand
Alistair Watts
Independent Scholar, NZ Susan B. Whitney
Jessica Wardhaugh Carleton University, Canada
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
University of Warwick, UK Talia Zajac
Department of Religious
Robert Wellington Studies
Centre for Art History and Art Theory Niagara University, USA
Australian National University
xiv
Map 1 Expansion of the Frankish realms between the fifth and eighth centuries CE.
xv
Map 2 Growth of French royal domain between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries and the
maximum extent of Angevin territories.
xvi
Map 3 Consolidation and expansion of France’s territorial “Hexagon” in the early modern era.
xvii
Map 4 France’s historic provinces, largely consolidated by the eighteenth century (Savoy and Nice
added in the nineteenth).
xviii
Map 5 Maximum extent of French territorial claims in North America, c. 1750, mapped against
modern state and provincial boundaries.
xix
Map 6 Territories controlled by France in the Caribbean region at various points in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
xx
Map 7 Maximum extent of French imperial territory in Africa, c. 1920, mapped against modern
international borders.
xxi
Map 8 Chronology of the extension of French control over Algeria, 1830–1956.
xxii
Map 9 Chronology of the extension of French control over Indochina, 1862–1907.
xxiii
INTRODUCTION
David Andress
French history is not what it once was. Writing the history of France was, for a long time,
largely the mission of those who sought to tell stories of unification and aggrandizement,
of the formation of a strong state, of its underpinning by modernizing values, and of the
extension of those into a civilizational destiny. History, in such schemes, was about how the
French nation became increasingly more like itself, more focused on the core of its asserted
identity and what parts of that identity made it unique (and thus, as with all national histo-
ries, what allowed its citizens to think of themselves as superior).
Many people today would cling to that kind of identity: not for nothing did the French
invent the word chauvinism, although they were always far from unique in practicing it.
But a properly professional study of history has moved on. Historians (to make a sweeping
generalization) now recognize that nation-states, while a self-evident reality, are not for
that reason a natural or inevitable product of history, still less one to be accorded particular
or eternal virtues. The modern nation-state form, of which France was an undoubted pio-
neer, has proven immensely powerful, an incubator of social and technological moderniza-
tion, and a pillar of the recent global order. But of course, in that time, it has also proven
to be an aggressive agent of imperialist ambition, a justification for brutal conquest, and a
generator of grinding poverty and exploitation: both in colonial territories held down by
force and often within the national homeland itself, where national unity has never meant
real equality between citizens.
History is about the past, but it is always written in the present, for the present, and with
at least one eye on the future. The evolution of history as stories about the past tells us key
things about how different “presents” appeared to those who inhabited them, and what
they wanted to think about how they got there, and where they were going. And the same
is true of all historical writing, including the words in front of you now (and any you may
write yourself). As I write, much of the world seems to be trying to forget the COVID-19
pandemic, three years after its first eruption, although it remains an ongoing event which
has taught us some extraordinary and disturbing lessons about the fragility of the idea of
borders and self-contained political entities, as well as about the very strange things many
people can easily be brought to believe. Simultaneously, a war is raging in Ukraine, started
by Russia on the basis of a transparently false national-imperial narrative of greatness,
1 DOI: 10.4324/9780367808471-1
David Andress
loss, and reconquest. One which, as further evidence emerges, seems to contain genocidal
elements of motivation and behavior, which are a truly grim echo of the preceding century.
We don’t yet know, in the further context of accelerating climate change, what the long-
term outcomes of this present will be (or if it will have a long term), but it would certainly
be an odd context in which to write an unproblematic history of French national-imperial
consolidation and greatness.
This book, therefore, is not that. Its many contributors use the handbook format to illus-
trate the diversity of histories involved in making up the history of what we call “France,”
and the expanding number of ways in which continuing study shows how it can be dis-
cussed, understood, and learned from. Through the book, there is a spine of chronological
overviews, stitching together the general outlines of centuries and epochs, but these are
only starting points, because in a few thousand words, it is only possible to give a glimpse
of some of the key features of a whole era of life for millions of people. Around these, the
majority of chapters are much more highly focused, each one an examination of a particular
kind of historical situation or interaction, within or across the time frames of the overview
chapters. They illuminate the vast range of different histories it is possible to write about
France and the French, and the huge range of choices it is possible, and necessary, to make,
in settling on a field of study or a topic of further interest. We hope that, in them, student
readers will find stimulation to follow their own paths into the extraordinary, rewarding,
often disturbing, but frequently enlightening history of France.
Before plunging in, however, readers may appreciate an even broader overview, so that
some of the twists and turns of detail may make more sense as pieces of the larger puzzle. To
begin at the nearest thing we have to a beginning, the geographical region we call “France”
developed a coherent identity only over many centuries. Parts of it align with what the
Romans over 2,000 years ago called Gaul – a link that the modern French treasure in many
ways – but for the Romans, parts of Gaul were also “cisalpine,” on the Italian side of the
Alps, stretching as far south as modern Pisa, and as far east as Venice. The name “France”
began to emerge as the Roman Empire declined, and the much-debated Germanic people,
the Franks, moved westward, around the fifth and sixth centuries CE. Over several hundred
years, and over several dynasties, Frankish dominance of northwestern Europe expanded
until in 800 CE, Charles the Great, “Charlemagne,” was crowned Emperor in Aachen (in
modern northwestern Germany), reclaiming the old Roman title previously monopolized
by the Byzantines. The “Carolingian” Empire was not centered on modern France, any
more than the older Franklish lands had been, but when it was partitioned in 843 CE after a
succession war between Charlemagne’s grandsons, a slice of territory called “West Francia”
emerged. Excluding Brittany and much of modern southeast France, it was nonetheless, for
the first time, established as a distinct, more or less coherent political entity.
Long centuries of feudal and dynastic conflicts ensued – the normal pattern of mediaeval
monarchical life – and what slowly became France grew and shrank alternately with rulers’
political fortunes. In the early 900s CE, Normandy was ceded to vikings, who took on local
coloration to become the Normans, dukes on the continent, then kings in England, as well
as further afield in southern Italy and Sicily. When the Plantagenet dynasty rose to the Eng-
lish Crown in the mid-1100s, their widespread lands in southwestern France became part of
an “Angevin Empire,” and eventually the seat of the Hundred Years’ War from the 1330s,
only gradually falling back under the control of the French monarchy. In the same centu-
ries, French-speaking feudal elites took part eagerly in crusading across the Mediterranean
lands and were integral to the brief era of Outremer, the Christian kingdoms of the Holy
2
Introduction
Land. At the end of the 1400s, six decades of war began in Italy, ostensibly about French
dynastic claims to the whole south of the peninsula. It was not until the later seventeenth
century that the Kingdom of France filled out securely most of the places on the modem
map of European France, and the process continued, for example, with the acquisition of
Lorraine (by marriage treaty) in the 1760s.
France as a territory had thus more or less consolidated by the later 1700s. French as an
identity remained much more of a work in progress. The French language, slowly evolving
as all European tongues were doing, had acquired enough cachet among the kingdom’s
leadership by 1539 for King François I to order its use in all official documents, displac-
ing the Latin of the Catholic Church. But for the population at large, this official tongue
remained essentially foreign. As late as the French Revolution of 1789, when inquiries were
made about the linguistic competence of the newly liberated citizenry, it was clear that most
of them, especially in the countryside, spoke dialects that the educated scorned as patois, if
not other languages entirely: Basque, Breton, Provençal, German in Alsace, and so on. As
with many projects of nationalism over the coming century, turning the people of France
into the French people they were supposed naturally to be would involve a great deal of
deliberate political effort.
As a dominant, elite-led definition of Frenchness carried out various forms of internal
colonization of the population, so had France, as a powerful state within the European
system, already been asserting itself for centuries in the global colonial competition that
followed the “discovery” by Europeans of the New World of the Americas. That assertion
was not wholly successful, and in the emerging division of territory, France was unable to
secure huge landholdings to rival those of Spain, or even the consolidated fertile territories
that the British Crown came to monopolize on the seaboard of North America. Although
France by the 1700s laid claim to extensive areas of modern Canada and the American
Midwest, its rulers were unable to encourage significant migration from Europe or coerce
the Native American population into the semi-feudal relations created by the Spanish con-
querors further south. They did, contrary to a self-serving mythology about “friendship”
with the natives, take slaves from those northern populations to work in their colonial
towns and traded some of those slaves southwards, into the Caribbean, where France was
a major player in the complex of human misery we call Atlantic slavery.
From the seventeenth century onward, peaking in the later eighteenth, but not stopping
until the mid-nineteenth, French merchants, French ships, and French landowners abused
and exploited millions of African men, women, and children through the horrors of forced
plantation labor and the wider degradations involved in treating people as racialized, dis-
posable property. This was the foundation of the prosperity of France’s string of great
Atlantic ports and, in turn, the motor of France’s economic modernization and nascent
industrialization. As France lost its North American imperial territories to Britain in the
1760s and saw its ambitions across the globe in India similarly curtailed, the money pour-
ing out of the enslaved labor of the Caribbean became even more central to the kingdom’s
economic health. The revolutionary freedom seized by the former slaves of the colony of
Saint-Domingue, who fought for a decade to become the independent state of Haiti in
1804, shaking the foundations of the European worldview as they did so, could not liber-
ate the peoples of France’s other slave colonies, held in bondage for another half-century.
At the opening of the nineteenth century, building on the epochal revolution in 1789
that brought the rhetoric of universal rights into European politics, but owing more to the
brutally militarist upheaval of the following Napoleonic era, French power performed the
3
David Andress
extraordinary feat of erasing much of the traditional order of Europe, including the Holy
Roman Empire that descended from Charlemagne himself. Driven back by the concerted
efforts of the other European powers, French expansion took another turn in 1830 with
the conquest of Algeria. Following on from Napoleon’s short-lived invasion of Egypt in
1798, this consolidated a new French role as an aggressive imperialist in the Mediterranean,
where they had been, since the 1500s, an intermittent ally of the Ottoman Turks, notably
against the Spanish. Extension and consolidation of settler control in Algeria would remain
a near constant through the otherwise-turbulent upheavals of the nineteenth century, as
France switched between royal, republican, and imperial regimes before settling on a Third
Republic from 1870.
Like its great rival Britain, France’s accelerating technological development and eco-
nomic growth were the foundation through the 1800s for further global aggrandizement.
The French Empire, justified through a complex and ever-evolving language of political
competition, national mission, self-enrichment, and moral duty, found a foothold on every
continent by 1900, from its vast holdings in northwest Africa and across the South Pacific to
vigorously exploited territories in Southeast Asia, to the tiny historic remnant of New France
off the coast of Newfoundland, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. Like the other great European
empires, the advancement of democratic civilization for France’s European population –
now, the male half at least, equal republican citizens – was held up as a goal for its non-
white subjects, albeit one carefully calibrated to be unattainable for the foreseeable future.
The profoundly traumatic experience of two world wars, and two further Republics, would
eventually see decolonization become an imperative from the 1950s, though undertaken
with deep unwillingness among much of the elite, and often after brutal armed struggle.
Alongside that process of global shrinkage, France’s domestic population benefited from
a multi-decade economic boom that, particularly in hindsight, gave them “thirty glorious
years” of prosperity – something they have been lamenting the loss of ever since.
France remains one of the most populous nations of Europe, a pillar of the European
Union that has slowly evolved from early agreements in the 1950s, wrestling to replace the
aggressive competition of imperial nation-states with neighborly cooperation. The herit-
age of revolution, and, most recently, the memory of mass protest in 1968, periodically
brings crowds onto the streets. But sometimes what they are defending is the prosperity of
groups that benefited from France’s decades of grandeur, while other groups, like France’s
many non-white immigrants and their descendants, remain marginalized. And increasingly
in recent years, a resentful politics of generally hard-right inclination – reaching more than
40% of the vote in the 2022 presidential election – has accompanied the anxieties of a
nation that has faced more deadly Islamist terrorism than its neighbors. French power is
still projected across the world: airstrikes on Libya in 2011, a multi-year anti-terror cam-
paign in Mali from 2013. But its role in the world is far from settled, especially as the world
itself, and the whole of Europe’s place in it, becomes more unsettled by the year. Whatever
the French people, and their sharply divided leaders, decide to do (or are forced to undergo)
in the years ahead, nothing about it will be self-explanatory, and all will depend for its
outcomes on their shared and contentious histories.
In closing this introduction, I offer my thanks for the work put into this volume by
all the contributors appearing in it. I’m particularly grateful to Erika Graham-Goering
for arranging for the excellent cartographic work of Hans Blomme to feature here. Many
contributors, like so many others, have faced considerable stresses and additional burdens
through the COVID years, and I am profoundly grateful for their perseverance. In the
4
Introduction
same spirit, I should like to acknowledge the several contributors whose evolving burdens
eventually made completing a chapter impossible, and to thank them for their interest and
efforts. Further thanks also go to Sara Barker, Will Pooley, and Andrew MW Smith, who
worked with me on the early stages of developing the structure of the volume and, again,
had COVID not intervened, might have had a more active role throughout. It has been a
very strange few years to be a historian. I hope that you, the reader, as a potential future
historian, enjoy some better times.
5
1
OVERVIEW: FROM REGNUM
FRANCORUM TO REGNUM
FRANCIAE
Early Medieval France from the Fifth to the
Twelfth Centuries
Part I: The Merovingian Dynasty
Barbarian Gaul
At the beginning of the fifth century, Gaul was one of the main regions of the Western
Roman Empire. Christian influence had been growing since the second century and was
now firmly established. Cathedral churches, baptisteries, and bishop’s residences could be
found in the capitals of the various Gallic peoples. With Christianity recognized as the
empire’s official religion, bishops played a crucial part in administration, and especially in
justice. While the great families of the Roman senatorial aristocracy kept civil power, their
members could also be found among the episcopacy (Heinzelmann 1976).
Since the beginning of the fourth century, the integration of Germanic groups into the
empire had played an important part in the restoration of imperial authority, the reor-
ganization of the army, and the defenses of the Rhine and Danube frontiers. The Roman
administration, wanting to distinguish different peoples (gentes) among the “Barbarians”
and to identify representative leaders, gave some of them the title of rex, “king,” thus
contributing to the ethnogenesis and the shaping of Barbarian groups. In 342, Emperor
Constans I established one such group of Franks, the Salians, in Toxandria, in the Rhine’s
lower valley. Some of their leaders quickly acceded to important offices, like the consul and
magister militum Arbogast (c. 340–394).
In the last quarter of the fourth century, the Hunnic eruption in Central Europe trig-
gered many migrations of Barbarian peoples. Violent episodes, most symbolically the
sack of Rome itself in 410, were interspersed with a broader desire to merge with the
Roman world. Their installation led to a series of foedus, treaties between the Roman
administration and Germanic tribes to supervise their settlement in the empire. At the
end of the fifth century, Gaul had thus come to be divided into a Visigothic kingdom
south of the Loire, a Burgundian kingdom that reached from the Rhône and Saône
DOI: 10.4324/9780367808471-2 6
From Regnum Francorum to Regnum Franciae
valleys to the Autunois and the Langres plateau, and two Frankish kingdoms to the
north of the Somme. Some groups from Great Britain had also settled in Armorica
(modern Brittany).
The Birth of the Regnum Francorum, “Kingdom of the Franks”

On his signet ring, the Frankish king Childeric I appears with the insignia of a Roman gen-
eral, illustrating the merging of the Roman world and Germanic tribes. When his son Clo-
vis I acceded to power, in 482, he was only one among several Frankish kings in northern
Gaul but rapidly defeated a series of other claimants to Roman legitimacy. Clovis defeated
Sygarius in 486 and conquered Soissons and the land between the Somme and Loire. He
beat the Thuringians in 491–492, and the Alemanni, first in 496 at the battle of Tolbiac,
and again in 505. He confronted the Visigoths in 498, crushed them in 507 at the battle
of Vouillé, and with the help of the Burgundians, conquered the larger part of Aquitaine.
According to Gregory of Tours, this succession of victories caused the emperor Anastasius I
to send Clovis the consular insignia, raising him to the same level of dignity within the
empire as his rival, the king of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric the Great.
While the Franks were pagans, other Barbarian peoples established in Gaul were fol-
lowers of Arian Christianity, condemned as a heresy in the Council of Nicaea in 325.
Compared to Visigothic or Burgundian promotion of Arianism, Clovis’s paganism was
seen as a lesser evil by Rome. Franks were romanized, and Clovis, like his father, had
good relations with the Gallic clergy. This relationship developed until Clovis was baptized
into Nicaean Christianity, at an unknown date between 496 and 507. This event attained
increasing significance as it echoed down the following ages (Dumézil 2019). Almost four
centuries later, in 869, the archbishop of Reims, Hincmar, declared for the first time that,
during his baptism, Clovis was consecrated with an oil, or chrism, miraculously descended
from heaven. Kept in a reliquary called the Holy Ampulla, this chrism was attested in use
to consecrate Louis VII at his coronation in 1131. It contributed to creating a succession of
Christian kings whose founder was Clovis. Renaissance popes, considering that Clovis was
the first Barbarian king to choose the Nicaean faith, attributed to the king of France the title
of “eldest son of the Church.”
Not only did Clovis succeed in conquering the greater part of Gaul, but he also uni-
fied the Franks, getting rid of their other kings. According to Gregory of Tours, he placed
the kingdom’s capital at Paris, taking advantage of the posthumous renown of the city’s
Saint Genevieve, who was close to him and his father during her life. In 511, he gathered
a council of the Gallic episcopacy at Orleans. At his death, the same year, his territories
were shared between his four sons. Although holding separate territories, they maintained
the unity of the Regnum Francorum and continued their father’s work by conquering the
kingdom of the Burgundians and Ostrogothic Provence. After the death of Chlodomer in
524; of Theodobald, grandson of Theuderic I, in 555; and of Childebert I in 558, the united
Regnum was recreated by the youngest son of Clovis, Chlothar I.
A Split Kingdom
The Regnum Francorum was divided once again by Chlothar I’s children: Charibert I,
who died quickly; Guntram; Sigebert; and Chilperic I. In 566, Sigebert had married the
7
Visigothic princess Brunhilda. Envious of his brother, Chilperic married Brunhilda’s eldest
sister, Galswintha. But he soon killed her in order to marry his older mistress, Fredegund.
This crime triggered a continuous cycle of violence, called the Royal Faide. Urged by his
wife, Sigebert set out to avenge his sister-in-law but was murdered in 575 by order of Frede-
gund. In 584, Chilperic I was also struck down by order of Brunhilda. Guntram succeeded
in bringing together the Regnum by adopting his two nephews, Childebert II, Brunhilda’s
son, and Chlothar II, Fredegund’s son. After his death in 592, Childebert’s in 596, and Fre-
degund’s in 597, Chlothar II, helped by the Austrasian aristocracy, succeeded in eliminating
Brunhilda and Childebert II’s descendants and reunifying the kingdom in 613. This story,
with its emphasis on the influence of evil monarchs, comes to us mainly via two sources:
Gregory of Tours, a political actor in its early years, and Fredegar, who wrote in the 660s.
Both men shaped their narratives to deliver a moral lesson about the need for kings to take
outside counsel: from the bishops, according to Gregory, and from the magnates, according
to Fredegar.
The Royal Faide stimulated a process of development of political identities. Although
an overarching sense of a single Frankish realm persisted, some regions emerged: Austra-
sia, the Ripuarian Franks’ country; Neustria, with the Franks settled between Scheldt and
Loire, Burgundy and Aquitaine, heirs of the Burgundian and Visigothic kingdoms. The
governing roles of the Frankish aristocracy and Gallic senatorial nobility became more and
more enmeshed. With this in mind, Chlothar II chose to maintain the distinct identity of
these sub-kingdoms upon his reunification. His reign and his son Dagobert I’s were con-
sidered as the Merovingian dynasty’s zenith. In 614, Chlothar gathered the secular elite
at Paris to promulgate a peace edict, and the episcopacy to specify their rules of election,
and to associate them with his government. Dagobert returned to territorial expansion by
subduing the Breton prince Judicael and spreading his authority to the Thuringians, the
Alemanni, and the Bavarians.
After Dagobert’s death in 639, a succession of young kings allowed the aristocracy to
extend its dominance over the Crown and intensified differentiated political identities. From
657, Queen Bathild promoted, in her children’s name, a policy of Neustrian hegemony.
Around 665, Ebroin, the mayor of the palace (a role which had once been merely the office
of royal estate manager but which had become a key power, second only to the monarch),
removed her from power but continued her policy. Around 680, the Austrasian mayor of
the palace was Pepin II of Herstal, descendant of two main houses, the Austrasian Arnulf-
ings and the Pippinids from Mercia. He united the Austrasians by reviving war against
Neustrians, and reunified the Regnum in 687, taking for himself the mayoral role over
all its territories. In the following centuries, Carolingian historiography, to legitimate the
Pippinids’ accession to the throne, created a black legend about the last Merovingians as
Rois fainéants, “do-nothing kings.” However, despite their weakening power, they still had
authority and could arbitrate aristocratic conflicts.
Merovingian kings ruled over a very hierarchal society, born from the merger of Roman
and Barbarian worlds. People were judged depending on their social origins, following
Roman law (Codex Theodosianus) or Germanic law (Lex Salica, Lex Ripuaria, Lex Bur-
gundionum). The greatest social difference opposed the free, who could go to the assemblies
(placita) and who owed military service, to the unfree (servi), dependent on a master to
whom they owed economic services in exchange for his protection. This labor sustained
the great rural estates that survived from Roman Antiquity (villae), which remained the
main setting of a rural economy based on cereals and vines. Outside the villae, smaller
8
landholders gathered in hamlets. During the sixth century, many of these coloni found it in
their best interests to subject themselves to more powerful figures in exchange for protec-
tion and economic guarantees, handing over titles to their lands, which were granted back
in usufruct (so the peasants owned the products of the land). Thus, the differences between
free and unfree peasants were gradually diminished, ending in common forms of subordi-
nation. Although the towns remained centers of power, as residences of kings, counts, and
bishops, or sites of the worship of great saints, they experienced a real decline relative to
rural habitation. Roman urban fittings were abandoned or dismantled for their building
materials, and much urban land was returned to cultivation. This urban descent was accel-
erated by the Plague of Justinian, which spread in the West from 541. It was said to have
halved the Gallic population, estimated at six million people at the beginning of the fifth
century (Russel 1958). However, archaeological evidence suggests that the dramatic effects
indicated in written sources may be an exaggeration.
Part II: The Carolingian Dynasty
Strengthening the Regnum

After the death of Pepin II, several years of succession crisis, from 714 to 718, and a revival
of Austrasian–Neustrian rivalry eventually brought to power his illegitimate son, Charles,
who was nicknamed Martel, “he who strikes his enemies like a hammer,” because of his
energy and his military qualities. He reunified Neustria and Austrasia militarily and was
made mayor of the palace for both realms by the Merovingian king Chilperic II. To create
a powerful army and to win loyalties, Martel distributed lands to his followers, both from
his own domain and from royal and ecclesiastical estates. From 718 to 728, he defeated the
dukes of Thuringia and Alsace, conquered Alemannia, subdued the duke of Bavaria, and
repulsed the Saxons on the further bank of the Weser.
In 720, Charles Martel consolidated his power by agreeing to recognize Aquitaine’s
autonomy. But its duke, Odo, had to face numerous incursions from Islamic Iberia, where
the Visigothic kingdom had finally been defeated in 711. Despite a great victory in 721,
his alliance in 729 with a rebel Berber chief triggered a violent reaction from the wali of
Al-Andalus, ʿAbd al-Rahmān. After suffering two defeats, Odo requested Charles’s assis-
tance. His army intercepted the wali’s on the way to plunder Marmoutier Abbey, between
Poitiers and Tours, in October 732. After a week of skirmishing, Charles won the decisive
battle, in which ʿAbd al-Rahmān was killed, but settled for protecting Marmoutier rather
than immediate pursuit. In later years of campaigning, Martel gained the submission of the
Burgundian and Rhodanian episcopal principality, reconquered the towns of Languedoc
taken by the Islamic forces, and won a new victory on the river Berre in 737. Through
his victories, he acquired huge prestige. Pope Gregory III sent him relics from Saint Peter’s
tomb and sought his protection. After the death of Theuderic IV in 737, Charles continued
to hold power while the Merovingian throne sat vacant.
Charles died in 741, leaving custody of the kingdom to his sons, Carloman and
Pepin III “the Short.” Because of a renewal of Aquitanian and Bavarian protests, they
appointed a new Merovingian king, Childeric III, in 743. Over the following three years,
they once again subdued the Bavarians; beat the duke of Aquitaine, Hunald I, Odo’s son;
and crushed the Alemanni. In 747, Carloman chose to become a monk, leaving Pepin
alone in power. In 751, Pepin consulted Pope Zachary and, using his prestige, gathered
9
an assembly at Soissons. This elected him king, while Childeric III and his son had their
symbolic Merovingian long hair shaved and were confined in a monastery. This coup was
confirmed in 754, when Pope Stephen II, calling on Pepin’s assistance against the Lom-
bards, consecrated the new king and his sons. Pepin laid the foundations of a sanctified
royalty based upon the biblical model of King David, in which the Frankish king would
have two missions: spreading Christ’s kingdom on earth by supporting evangelization, and
bringing Christian people to salvation.
Recreating the Empire

Pepin’s two sons, Charles and Carloman, inherited power on his death in 768. Three years
of subsequent rivalry ended with Carloman’s death by illness. Charles attacked the Lom-
bards, who threatened the Roman Church, and, in 774, after having taken Verona and
Pavia, began to call himself “King of the Franks and the Lombards” and “patrician of the
Romans.” He had also launched a war to conquer Saxony in 772, a brutal struggle which
lasted, with various phases of attack and revolt, until 804. After a successful raid across the
Pyrenees against Zaragoza in 778, his rear guard was destroyed by the Basques when pass-
ing through the Pass of Roncesvalles. This defeat would inspire, at the end of the eleventh
century, the famous chanson de geste, The Song of Roland. Other campaigns fared better:
from 787 to 794, Bavaria was definitively subjugated, and in 796, the Frankish army raided
the fortress known as the “Great Ring of the Avars” (in modern-day Hungary), subjecting
their leadership and taking huge amounts of booty.
Thanks to these campaigns, Charles acquired an unquestionable prestige and a universal
authority within Latin Christianity. In 800, he came to Rome to restore the pope Leo III,
who had been accused of immorality and assaulted by the Romans. To the east, in Con-
stantinople, the empress Irene had deposed her son in 797 and called herself basileia. In the
Franks’ eyes, the throne of the Roman Empire was vacant, and Charles considered having
himself hailed by the people as its successor, following the ancient custom. However, on
December 25, 800, this plan was superseded by Leo III, who, in crowning Charles, cre-
ated the tradition of imperial papal coronation (Folz 1964). Nonetheless, Charles’s impe-
rial ambitions were already clearly on display in the construction underway at his capital,
Aachen, well before the coronation. Its architecture was inspired by Roman imperial build-
ings. The chapel showed the sovereign as his people’s spiritual leader. This reflected the
emergent Carolingian ideology, presenting the Franks as a new Israel, guided by a new
David, who had to extend Christ’s kingdom to the ends of the earth (Große and Sot 2018).
Charles died in 814, and by the 840s, his grandson, the historian Nithard, had labelled
him “the Great” (Carolus Magnus), leaving him to future generations as Charlemagne. On
his death, he had a single surviving heir, Louis I “the Pious.” This succession was inter-
preted as proof that imperial unity was God’s will, commanding all to work to preserve
its integrity. Louis took the title Imperator Augustus, removing references to different and
distinct realms from his self-presentation (Godman and Collins 1990). In 817, he attempted
to cement permanent unity with his Ordinatio imperii. This allotted outer territories as
kingdoms for his younger sons, who were constrained to obey their elder brother, Lothair,
as emperor. But this decree was quickly contested by an unstable aristocracy who, because
imperial expansion had ceased, could not be bought off with newly conquered lands. In
829, Louis tried to modify the Ordinatio imperii to take account of his fourth son, Charles,
born six years earlier. But this triggered an aristocratic uprising and a civil war between
10
him and his sons which continued until his death in 840 and beyond. Lothair claimed
the succession to the whole empire, provoking his two surviving brothers, Charles and
Louis the German, to rise against him. Together, they defeated Lothair in 841 at Fontenoy-
en-Puisaye and, the following year, confirmed their alliance by the Oaths of Strasbourg.
The conflict was resolved in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, granting Lothair the imperial title
and possession of the two imperial capitals, Rome and Aachen, and Italy. Charles received
Aquitaine, and Louis Bavaria, while the empire’s heart, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundia,
was shared between them.
The Birth of Francia Occidentalis, “Western Francia”

In 843, Charles II “the Bald” became king of a part of the empire, now called Francia
Occidentalis. He was supported by most of the ecclesiastics, especially the one he chose
to be archbishop of Reims, Hincmar. But he had to face his nephew Pepin’s Aquitanian
supporters and the rebellion of a Breton noble, Nomenoë. A secular and ecclesiastical elite
gathering at Coulaines led to an agreement between the king and the aristocracy based
on mutual respect of everyone’s estates and honores (public offices granted by the king).
Thanks to this, Charles could finally be consecrated in 848. Although he was forced to rec-
ognize Erispoë, Nomenoë’s son, as king of Brittany in 851, he was able to pacify Aquitaine
during the 860s and peacefully succeeded his nephew Lothair II as ruler of Lotharingia in
869. In 875, after the death of his other nephew, Emperor Louis II, he also acquired the
Imperial Crown.
By this point, Gallic territories had been experiencing significant Scandinavian pirate
raids for almost half a century, as rising internal difficulties from around 830 weakened
resistance to a phenomenon that had begun a generation earlier. Likewise, the Islamic
groups who raided Sicily and Italy had begun from 838 to raid Gaul’s coasts. Around 840,
Norse raids multiplied and reached a climax between 856 and 862. Contemporary accounts
should be read with prudence: the reported plundering and destruction were an avenue for
criticism of the king, seen as unable to protect his kingdom, while, on the contrary, peace
agreements were a chance for praise of royal success (Bauduin 2009). If the confrontation
was very violent, we cannot underestimate the trade and the numerous agreements between
Franks and Norse which led, around 880, to permanent settlements by the former raiders
in the Cotentin peninsula, at the mouth of the Seine and in Brittany, where the Norse, now
become Normans, destroyed the Breton kingdom. The final outcome of this process was
the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte in 911, when the warlord Rollo accepted baptism and
pledged loyalty to the Frankish king Charles III “the Simple” in return for a territory cen-
tered on Rouen, with the title of Count of Normandy.
To prevent Norse raids, Charles the Bald had authorized some noblemen to hold several
counties, creating great military regions under the same command. For example, Robert the
Strong (d. 866) controlled the country between Loire and Seine; Bernard of Gothia (d. 878)
managed Catalonia and Septimania; Bernard Plantapilosa (841–886) Auvergne and South
Aquitaine; and Ranulf of Poitiers (820–866) North Aquitaine. The power acquired by these
new magnates was confirmed in 877 by King Louis II “the Stammerer.” After the succes-
sive deaths of his sons, Louis III and Carloman, it was the magnates who, in 885, offered
the Crown to Louis the German’s last son, Emperor Charles the Fat, who thus reunited
the empire. This lasted barely three years until Charles’s death without descendants in 888
(McLean 2003). The Count Odo, Robert the Strong’s son and hero of the siege of Paris
11
by the Normans in 886–887, was chosen as king by the magnates. Francia subsequently
underwent an extended period of dynastic instability. The Robertian Odo (r. 888–898) and
Robert I (r. 922–923) alternated with the Carolingian Charles III the Simple (r. 893–929)
and the Bosonid Rudolph (r. 923–936). In 936, the Robertian duke of the Franks, Hugh
the Great (c. 898–956), installed the Carolingian Louis IV (r. 936–954) on the throne. But
Louis and his successors, Lothair (r. 954–986) and Louis V (r. 986–987), tried desperately
to escape from the wardship that Hugh the Great, and then his son, Hugh Capet, imposed
over their royal functions. The death of the final two Carolingian kings in rapid succes-
sion triggered a dynastic crisis, resolved by the accession of the Robertian Hugh Capet on
May 25, 987, followed by his consecration on July 3 in the cathedral of Noyon.
Part III: From Francia Occidentalis to Regnum Franciae
The Coming of a New Order

Through the period of monarchical crisis, royal control of the rules of succession for coun-
ties shrank to nothing. Inheritance, which had already become normal, although subject
to the king’s approval, became now automatic. Dynasties of counts arose and took control
of royal estates and prerogatives. Some of them, managing several counties, called them-
selves marquis or dukes, such as, from 898, William the Pious in Aquitaine. Their power
relied on local elites, with whom they shared out, over time, powers over justice, taxation,
fortresses, and military levies. The legitimacy of the more local aristocrats was reinforced
by the magnates’ authority, which they purported to represent. These men were united by
oaths of loyalty, in which the vassal promised help (auxilium) and advice (consilium) to his
suzerain in exchange for his protection and a confirmation of his fiefdom. Varying levels of
dependency were signified by variations in the gestures of the homage and the place chosen
for the ceremony (Débax 2003). From the end of the ninth century, the first principalities
were created by Carolingian aristocrats: the Wilhelmids and the Ranulfids in Aquitaine, the
Rorgonids and the Robertians between Loire and Seine, the Herbertians in the northeast,
and the Bosonids in Burgundia. During the tenth century, these families declined, bring-
ing about the formation of new principalities by countal or viscountal families, like the
Theobaldians of Blois, the counts of Angers, or the viscounts Trencavel.
In French historiography of the second half of the twentieth century, these political and
social transformations were read as the sign of a sudden change, called the “feudal muta-
tion”. According to this theory, between 980 and 1030, because of Carolingian institutions’
decline, great landlords and fortress wardens violently monopolized sovereign rights (ban-
num), turned free peasants into serfs, and implemented the “feudal” system. This paradigm
was challenged in the 1990s (Barthélemy 1993). Its adversaries have shown that denuncia-
tions of violence from clerical authors aimed to discredit the imposition of secular taxation
upon ecclesiastical goods. They underline the continuities between Carolingian and feudal
power structures, which underwent very gradual modifications. The local lordship or sei-
gnory is now understood as the pursuance of local aristocrats’ participation in power with
the help of the Church. Even though most of the peasants were dependent on the seignory,
serfdom and freedom were the extremes of a range of conditions marked out by diverse
levels of judicial dependency, possibilities of mobility, and levels of financial imposition.
Meanwhile, rapid growth in the number of fortified castles had more to do with efforts to
strengthen power spatially rather than socially (Mazel 2010).
12
At the beginning of the eleventh century, the ecclesiastical and secular worlds were inter-
mingled. Episcopal seats were occupied by aristocratic dynasties, and monastic estates were
managed by secular elites. The awareness of sin and the dream of purifying the Church
and society generated a general and multicentered process of reform based on a radical
distinction between clerics and laymen, which accelerated in the second half of the eleventh
century. Nostalgia for idealized Carolingian unity caused reformers to turn to a newly
active and increasingly prestigious papacy. The struggle against Simony (the sale of Church
offices) or Nicolaism (clerical marriage) purified the clergy but weakened the king, who had
once appointed bishops. In 1108, Pope Paschal II and King Louis VI reached an agreement
by which the candidate to a see was first consecrated by the ecclesiastical province’s other
bishops and then received investiture from the king with the episcopal estates. In moral-
izing society, the reformers also hardened matrimonial standards. Thus, King Philip I, who,
while separated from his first wife, abducted and married the wife of the count of Anjou,
Bertrade de Montfort, in 1092, was excommunicated three times for incest and bigamy.
A World in Expansion
From the beginning of the eleventh century, the French aristocracy demonstrated a new
dynamism and great mobility. Normans enrolled as mercenaries in Southern Italy’s Lom-
bard principalities in the 1010s and 1020s. Their success set an example for warriors
from Brittany, Anjou, Maine, and Champagne who, in the 1060s, also conquered Sicily.
In 1130, Roger II of Hauteville united that island to Southern Italy in a newly founded
kingdom of Sicily. Warriors from France also travelled to help Iberian kingdoms strug-
gling against Muslim taifas and the Almoravid emirate. This led to Burgundians settling in
Castile, Gascons and Normans in Aragon, Provençals and Languedocians in Catalonia. In
1093, the Capetian Henry of Burgundy, Robert II’s great-grandson, married the daughter
of King Alfonso VI of León and received the county of Portugal. His son, Afonso I, was
proclaimed, in 1139, the first king of Portugal. In 1066, William of Normandy’s claims to
the English throne had offered similar opportunities and mobilized warriors from Flan-
ders, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Brittany, and Poitou. In 1095, at the Council of Clermont,
Pope Urban II synthesized two ideas: the penitential pilgrimage of personal redemption
and just war against pagans, to create the First Crusade. His appeal had a great success
and was taken up by the Duke of Normandy and the Counts of Toulouse, Boulogne, Flan-
ders, Blois, Brittany, and Perche. These armies took Antioch in 1098 and Jerusalem the
next year. The Duke of Aquitaine and the Count of Blois led a new expedition in 1101.
The new Duke of Aquitaine did likewise in 1109. The Count of Anjou came to Jerusalem
in 1129. The Count of Flanders travelled to these new lands of “Outremer” four times
from 1139 to 1164. In 1147, a crusade was led personally by the king of France, Louis VII.
Adventure and loot were part of the appeal for these expeditions, but religious motiva-
tions were primary. Most of the crusaders came back home after having accomplished
their pilgrimage. But some settled, built political structures, and acquired lordships in the
Holy Land.
This expansionism led to familial dispersal but also resulted in individuals holding power
across widely different spaces, creating a very transregional aristocracy (Bartlett 1993).
Despite their distance, the scattered members of these families, owners of several princi-
palities or lordships, shared the same identity, were united by intense cooperation, and
constituted a network that helped them strengthen their power, domination, and political
13
influence. Each one of these familial transregional groups could be a political and territorial
power in itself, now called a “parentat” (Vasselot de Régné 2018).
Adoption of inheritance by primogeniture assisted in stabilizing possession of most
principalities, but aristocratic expansionism and complexities of succession still produced
short-lived dynastic unions, fusion of otherwise-autonomous principalities, or the rise of
parentats uniting several principalities in the same family. Odo II, Count of Blois, Char-
tres, Châteaudun, Troyes, and Meaux, tried between 1032 and 1037 to become king of
Burgundy. His great-grandson Theobald IV (1102–1152) united several counties to create
the county of Champagne. His younger brother, Stephen, became king of England. And his
sons, Henry I the Liberal, Count of Champagne; Theobald V, Count of Blois; Stephen I,
Count of Sancerre; and William White Hands, archbishop of Reims, had a powerful politi-
cal influence upon Capetian royalty during the second half of the twelfth century. The
Plantagenet Empire emerged similarly. In 1128, the Count of Anjou and Maine, Geoffrey V,
married Matilda, daughter of the king of England and Duke of Normandy, Henry I Beau-
clerc. Despite Stephen of Blois’s elevation as king of England in 1135, Geoffrey conquered
Normandy in 1144. One year after his death, in 1152, his son Henry II married Eleanor,
heiress of Aquitaine. Two years later, Henry succeeded Stephen as king of England. And in
1167, he persuaded the Duke of Brittany, Conan IV, to promise his daughter and heiress
Constance to Henry’s third son, Geoffrey, and to withdraw from the duchy’s administration.
Structuring Royal Power

When he became king in 987, Hugh Capet had merged his estates with those of the last Car-
olingian kings. Dynastic change thus enriched the monarchy, which further strengthened its
power over the next two centuries. Robert II the Pious (a. 972–1031) acquired the counties
of Dreux and Melun and the duchy of Burgundy. If Henry I (1008–1060) had to abandon
the latter to his younger brother, he kept the county of Sens. His son Philip I (a. 1052–1108)
acquired the Gâtinais in 1068, Corbie in 1071, French Vexin in 1077, and Bourges in 1101.
Louis VI the Fat (a. 1081–1137) subjugated all the minor lords of the Île-de-France and also
intervened in Auvergne in 1122 and 1127. In 1124, he united all the kingdom’s magnates
to face the army of Emperor Henry V. In 1127, he was able to punish the Count of Flan-
ders’s murderers and arbitrate his succession. The marriage of Louis VII (1120–1180) with
Eleanor of Aquitaine, in 1137, allowed the king to extend his influence in Southern France.
In 1138, he received the homage of the count of Toulouse, with whom he remained linked
despite the annulment of his marriage to Eleanor in 1152. In the 1160s, Louis VII intervened
several times in Auvergne and Burgundy. The assertion of the royal role at the level of the
kingdom manifested itself more generally in growing numbers of chancellery staff and the
broadening geographical range over which the writ of royal authority successfully ran.
The power of the first Capetians was very dependent on Carolingian points of reference.
The king should be the guarantor of justice and peace and protect the Church. The reform
of the eleventh century, by distinguishing the secular world and ecclesiastical world, had
desacralized the monarchy, which was further weakened by the crisis of Philip I’s bigamy
and his excommunications. However, some clerics sought to restore the religious basis of
royal authority. They reiterated that the king held his power from God with a mission
of peace and justice distinct and complementary to that of the priest. With this in mind,
Capetian kings developed a favored link with the papacy in its intermittent struggle with
the emperor. Their close relationship with the abbey of Saint-Denis was begun by the abbot
14
Suger (a. 1081–1151), Louis VI and Louis VII’s counsellor, which allowed these kings to
create a continuity with Merovingian kings, and especially Dagobert I. The abbey became
the warden of royal vestments, the royal necropolis, and historiographical center. Accord-
ing to Suger, the king was superior to the other feudal lords, could not owe homage to any-
body, except Saint Denis, and had to receive homage from the magnates of the kingdom.
During the twelfth century, his ideas progressively imposed themselves, along with the rise
of the notion of “the Crown” to refer to the monarchy or the kingdom existing and acting
separately from the king’s person.
The Capetians imitated Lothair, the second to last Carolingian king, who, in 979, had
had his son Louis consecrated in his lifetime. In this way, they strengthened dynastic rule
and, by restricting the claims of younger heirs, removed the risk of splitting the kingdom.
This progressively strengthened the unitary identity of the Regnum as a political entity. The
consecration became the main royal symbolic event and assumed greater significance as the
starting point from which to date the king’s deeds. In the ceremony, the king first received
anointing from the archbishop of Reims, granting him the necessary grace to accomplish his
ministry. Then the magnates gave their approval, and next, the king was acclaimed by the
assembled people. The king also took an oath, first attested in 1059, to preserve the rights
of the Church and the bishops, but also those of the “secular people.” During the first half
of the eleventh century, royal representation was inspired by Carolingian and Ottonian
imperial iconography. Around the middle of the century, Henry I stabilized the model of
the royal seal, called “of majesty.” But the main part of royal symbolism was developed by
Louis VII to resacralize the monarchy, consciously creating a continuity with the Meroving-
ian and Carolingian dynasties. The Holy Ampulla was attested in use for the first time in
his royal consecration in 1131. For that of his son, Philip II, in 1179, the sword Joyeuse,
attributed to Charlemagne, first appeared. Louis VII may have chosen the royal coat of
arms, “azure semé-de-lis or,” golden lilies on a field of blue, to put his kingdom under the
Virgin Mary’s protection (Pastoureau 2015). These symbolic constructions strengthened
Capetian monarchy and elevated its legitimacy.
Part IV: The Capetian Golden Age (Cassard 2011)
Asserting Royal Power

Louis VII’s son and heir Philip II Augustus (1165–1223), so called because, in 1185, he had
extended (augere) the royal demesne with the lands of Artois, Valois, and Vermandois, took
the decision in 1204 to abandon his old title of king of the Franks (rex Francorum) for a
new one: king of France (rex Franciae). His authority was now stated not to rest on indi-
vidual feudal links but to extend over a territory, France. Taking advantage of the Planta-
genet succession crisis resulting from Richard the Lionheart’s death in 1199 and his brother
John Lackland’s subsequent mistakes, Philip confiscated the Plantagenets’ French estates. In
1204, he conquered Normandy, Maine, and Anjou. From 1206 to 1213, Brittany fell under
his sway. Philip also reaffirmed his authority in Auvergne between 1190 and 1213. His suc-
cesses were crowned by his victory at Bouvines, in 1214, against Emperor Otto IV, Ferrand
of Flanders, and Renaud of Dammartin. His son Louis VIII (1187–1226) extended royal
influence into Languedoc by purchasing in 1218 the rights of Amaury de Montfort, which
had been acquired by his father, Simon V de Montfort, during the Albigensian crusade, and
also conquered the Poitou in 1224.
15
The next reign began with a difficult regency, with the monarchy constrained until 1242
by the power of the magnates. Nevertheless, the reign of Louis IX (1214–1270) is notable
for the way in which he sanctified the royal figure. His devotion, his foundations, his chari-
table acts contributed to idealizing his image in his subjects’ eyes. The ceremonies of the
“royal mystery” became more complicated. The consecration gave the king a new position,
reliant upon his ability to heal scrofula by touching, and this rite is attested with regularity
from Louis IX’s reign onward (Bloch 1924). The purchase, in 1238, of the Crown of Thorns
and the building, to preserve it, of the Sainte-Chapelle, at the very heart of the royal palace,
confirmed the concept of sanctification and religious charisma peculiar to royalty (Mer-
curi 2004). The king of France became the “Most Christian King” (rex christianissimus).
From 1262, Louis IX reorganized the royal tombs in Saint-Denis to underline the continu-
ity between the three royal dynasties. From 1247–1248 and until 1270, he instigated great
investigations into the country’s administration, to root out abuses and to return ill-gotten
goods while affirming royal authority over the whole kingdom (Dejoux 2014). Imitating his
grandfather, Philip Augustus, who took the cross in 1190, Louis IX took the lead in two
crusades. From 1248 to 1254, he was first defeated and subsequently imprisoned in Egypt.
After his release, he worked to strengthen the defense of Outremer before, in 1270, he died at
Tunis. His example associated crusading durably with the royal role, and although none of
his successors undertook an actual expedition, the concept remained central to their identity.
Royal power continued to strengthen under Louis IX’s successors, Philip III “the Bold”
(1245–1285) and Philip IV “the Fair” (1268–1314). The royal demesne grew by incorpo-
rating the apanages of Capetian princes who died without heirs, notably the counties of
Poitiers and Toulouse, and the royal land of Auvergne in 1272. The same year, Philip III
subjugated the counts of Armagnac and Foix. In 1275, he organized his son Philip’s mar-
riage with Joan, heiress of the county of Champagne and of the kingdom of Navarre,
which finally took place in 1284. Philip IV extended his influence over the empire’s edges
by conquering, in 1301, the count of Bar and annexing, in 1312, the city of Lyon. In 1308,
he used the treason of the last French Lusignan to incorporate the counties of La Marche
and Angouleme and his Poitevin lordships into the royal demesne. To an increasing extent,
the royal court was influenced by legal scholars, who attributed imperial rights to the mon-
arch as defined by Roman law, establishing the doctrine that the king is “emperor in his
kingdom.” His jurisdiction was now seen as identical for all the kingdom’s inhabitants,
regardless of status, and he was understood to act for the common good and public utility.
Unlike the peaceful Louis IX, Philip III led several campaigns and died, in 1285, during
a disastrous war against Aragon. Philip IV led two long wars, in Gascony against the king
of England from 1293 to 1303, and in Flanders from 1297 to 1305. The lengthy periods
of campaigning required the king to pay his warriors, justifying exceptional taxation and
highlighting the value of royal service. Philip IV further enhanced his authority through a
series of significant political trials against Bernard Saisset (1301), the pope Boniface VIII
(1302–1303), and the Knights Templars (1307–1314). In these, inspired by the model of
Louis IX, canonized in 1297 as Saint Louis, Philip presented himself as the first champion
of the faith and his subjects’ salvation.
An Economic Upswing
From the twelfth century, agriculture benefited from a long period of temperate conditions
known as the “medieval climatic optimum.” Clearing of new farmland, the propagation of
16
new farming techniques, and better tools also contributed to improve yields and diminish
risks of starvation. A prosperous peasantry gradually secured further liberties, and serf-
dom declined while agricultural production diversified. Hand-crafted techniques developed
along with water-powered mills and smithies. The introduction of the horizontal weaving
loom from the mid-eleventh century permitted the manufacture of large woolen cloths and
led to increasing demand for luxurious fabrics. Across society, a wider range of manufac-
tured items for household use and luxury consumption were increasingly to be found.
In the towns, populations rose and became more densely concentrated, leading to the
agglomeration of some towns and the breaking away of other settlements. This urban
growth was also marked by a political movement, from the 1070s through to the second
half of the twelfth century, for towns to become self-governing communes, seeking and
obtaining charters of liberties from the monarchy. Although the king or a local lord still
kept distant control over such places, an urban patriciate appeared, basing its status on the
management of their town’s affairs. Urban dynamism produced waves of rebuilding, the
repairing of walls, paving of streets, and construction of new bridges and cathedrals.
Urban rise was also caused by a growing demand for the processing of raw materials
gathered from wide areas, most notably in the textile trade. English wool was brought to
Flanders, where cloth production saw exponential growth, assuring the county’s prosperity.
Longer-range trading connections between the Mediterranean countries and the northern
ones were maintained during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through a cycle of six
great fairs in Champagne, benefitting from many privileges granted by the local counts.
Undeveloped roads meant that land transport remained difficult and rivers were a more
significant component of wider networks. Seaborne shipping also grew, helped by techni-
cal developments, such as the pintle-and-gudgeon rudder, invented around the North Sea
at the end of the twelfth century. The risks inherent to traveling joined to the high need
for cash led to the development of banking activities, which were also rapidly adopted for
royal finances.
An Intellectual Revival
Economic improvement also gave birth to the so-called “12th century Renaissance” (Verger
1996), leading to the thirteenth century being called the “medieval century of reason” (Cas-
sard 2011). Urban schools linked to cathedrals, chapters of clerical canons, or a specific
teacher multiplied. The idea of universities took shape from the teachers’ and students’
progressive awareness of forming a particular community, which had to defend its inter-
ests against other urban communities and secular or ecclesiastical powers. Philip Augustus
granted students their first liberties in 1200. The new University of Paris was recognized
by the papacy in 1208 and received statutes in 1215. Inspired by this model, other institu-
tions resulted from local schools’ reorganization or the initiatives of the powerful, notably
in Montpellier (1220), Toulouse (1229), and Orleans (1306). With the universities arose
a system of social promotion through knowledge, and studies became a requirement to be
part of the administrative elite. Graduates in theology filled the ranks of the episcopacy, and
legal scholars multiplied in royal service.
The main intellectual development lay in the rediscovery of Aristotle’s work through
twelfth-century translations. This produced the triumph of the scholastic method based
on dialectics. Teachers and students discussed a subject or an issue, working through the
confrontation of contradictory opinions and claims. This discussion (disputatio) had to be
17
a logical progression based upon a rational demonstration. This methodology was systema-
tized and extended for use in every field of knowledge. Despite the fact that some elements
of Aristotelian philosophy clearly conflicted with core Christian beliefs, the theological
value of his intellectual method allowed great authors like Thomas Aquinas (a. 1224–
1274) or Albertus Magnus (a. 1200–1280) to produce huge works to clarify and explain
Christian doctrine.
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20
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Fig. 25. Charcoal sketch of native spearing kangaroo, Pigeon Hole, Victoria River
(× 2/5). Tracing.
Another method is to apply the paint in the form of a water mixture,

similar to that described when discussing the ochre drawings. For
this purpose, especially when an important event is pending, a
number of men are chosen to attend to the “make up” of the
performers. The assistants kneel beside those who are to act, and
apply the paste with their fingers. The most delicate parts to handle
are the eyelids. The actor is required to close his eyes whilst the
artist carefully applies the paste to the lids; but it occasionally
happens that some of the material slips on to the eyeball and is
rubbed against it before the sufferer can give the alarm. Vide Plate
XLV, 2.
We have already referred to the coloured down decorations which
are attached with human blood to the bodies of the performers taking
part in sacred and other ceremonies, and we have also mentioned a
ground drawing known as “Etominja” (Plate XXXVII), which is
constructed in a similar way. Some of the latter (e.g. the “walk-about”
of the “Tjilba Purra Altjerra Knaninja”) are very large; others, as for
instance that connected with the “Erriakutta” or yelka ceremony, are
constructed over the entire surface of mounds which cover many
square feet of ground.
Having briefly reviewed the different methods of art production in
vogue in Australia, we shall proceed to consider a number of the
designs in greater detail, deduce their origin, trace their evolution,
and, where possible, give their interpretation. It will be realized at the
outset that some of the designs are crude in the extreme, whilst
others are undeniably shapely and quite up to the standard of an
average European’s artistic proficiency. The latter remarks apply
best to actual representations of natural forms. It must be
remembered that the artistic reproductions an aboriginal makes are
invariably from memory; the primitive artist never draws with a model
in front of him. If we were to ask a number of Europeans to draw, say
a horse from memory, there is no doubt we should receive a great
variety of results in response to our request. So, among the
aboriginal artists, there is a great diversity of talent which is more
individual than tribal.
If, for instance, we study the different attempts at representing the
form of one of the most familiar subjects we could ask an aboriginal
to experiment upon—the ubiquitous kangaroo —we should find by
comparison of the productions placed before us, a very marked
difference in quality. Compare, for instance, the two pictures of
kangaroo on Plate XLVII. They are the works of men of the same
tribe, are all similarly drawn, and come from the same locality. Yet, in
the upper picture, the outline and proportions of the two animals are
so incorrect that it is very doubtful whether many people not
acquainted with the locality would guess what animal the pictures
are intended to represent. In the lower picture, however, anybody
acquainted with the shape of a kangaroo would have no hesitation in
pronouncing his diagnosis. The characteristic attitude, the large tail,
the disproportion between the front and hind limbs, and the shape of
the head are quite true enough to nature to permit of correct
identification.
Fig. 26. Carving depicting a quarrel between a man and his gin. Arunndta tribe (×
1/2). Tracing.
The three designs are all drawn in charcoal, the figures in the first
two cases being outlined with a white pipe-clay line, and in the
second case with one of yellow ochre. If we wish to go one better
still, we need only study the pipe-clay drawing on bark by a native of
the Katherine River district shown on Plate XLIX, 1—a very
creditable picture of a dead kangaroo.
Some of the designs one meets with are so accurately drawn that
a scientific determination of the species becomes possible. Look for
a moment at the fish, portrayed in pipe-clay, shown in Plate XLVIII.
The piscine nature of the form, here depicted on rocks, is not only
apparent, but it is possible to say with some certainty that the two
shown swimming belong to the Toxotes, which are commonly called
Archer Fish. The form shown in Plate XLIX, 4, is unquestionably
meant to be one of the Therapon species. Both kinds of fish are
known to be living in the Katherine River, not far from the site at
which these pictures were drawn.
But if, on the other hand, some of the designs are so poor as to be
barely recognizable or even quite unrecognizable by us, how does
the aboriginal manage? When the artist is present, he can explain.
But he is not always available!
If, by way of illustration, we were asked to say definitely what the
meaning of the central figure on Plate L, 1, was we should in all
probability want to know more about it before committing ourselves.
But an aboriginal can give us a correct reply immediately. The
locality at which the photograph was obtained is north of the
Musgrave Ranges in central Australia. But that does not give us any
clue. After studying the picture more closely, we might be able to
distinguish the outline of a quadruped, the four legs being shown,
one behind the other, in a row, and a big head on the right-hand side,
in a position suggesting that the animal is feeding. But these are
characteristics common to many animals!
So far, therefore, we have seen nothing to suggest the class of
animal we are dealing with. When we look again, we might note that
there is a crude image of a human being shown on the back of the
animal; and behind this is a structure which might stand for a saddle.
We guess the answer and claim that the group is a very poor
drawing of a man on horseback.
But there are other animals a man could ride! And when we look
again, we observe that the second leg of the animal, counting from
the right, has a peculiar enlargement attached to its lower end. That
structure is the key to the riddle; it represents the track of the animal!
Those familiar with the great beast of burden, now used extensively
in central Australia, will recognize the two-toed spoor of a camel.
This method of pictorial elucidation is by no means exceptional.
We have already noticed something similar in the ancient carvings at
Port Hedland, where the human foot-print is added to disperse any
doubt which may be entertained in so far as the correct interpretation
of the figure is concerned. A similar device is well exemplified in the
accompanying sketch of an ochre drawing of a human form from the
Glenelg River district in the northern Kimberleys of Western Australia
(Fig. 15). In the carving of an emu from the King Sound district,
which is reproduced in Plate XLII, 2, we noticed the same sort of
thing.
Fig. 27. Ochre-drawing of spear-boomerang duel, Arunndta tribe (× 1/2). Tracing.
The cases before us are not accidental, but we have acquainted

ourselves with the recognized determinative system of Australian
pictographs which is quite analogous to that known to have been
practised by the ancient Egyptians. Consider, for instance, the
character signifying “to love”—a human figure in profile with one
hand lifted to the level of the mouth. The same figure, with a few
parallel wavy lines, signifying water, drawn against it, means no
longer “to love,” but “to drink.” The wavy lines in this instance are the
determinative. In the Australian illustrations given above, we have
selected samples which are easily followed, but there are many
cases where the reading would be quite impossible if it were not for
the presence of the little, subsidiary, determinative sketch.
In his endeavour to make the meaning of some of his designs
clear, a native often embodies as many features as possible, quite
regardless as to whether in reality they would all be visible in the one
plane he is drawing. In the picture of a crocodile appearing on a
boabab-nut from the Derby district in Western Australia, shown in
Fig. 16, it will be observed that the reptile, in spite of having its dorsal
surface represented, has its vent indicated. The long, slender muzzle
of this figure, by the way, makes it clear that the smaller species of
the two northern Australian crocodiles (C. Johnstoni) is intended.
The human figure, too, very often appears half in full and half in
profile.
The aboriginal is a keen observer, and takes careful note of many
things besides a kangaroo, a snake track, or other similar natural
objects which may lead him to his daily bread. When travelling in the
Buccaneer Archipelago in the far north-west I remember one of the
natives drawing my attention to a peculiar formation in the clouds,
and saying, in the Sunday Island dialect: “Arrar ninmiddi,” which
means, literally: “Cloud knee.” My instructor proceeded to draw the
extraordinary shape he could see with his finger upon the hatchway
of the pearling lugger we were sailing in, after which he completed
the figure of a man. I was struck with this man’s faculty of
observation, because the cloud effect he referred to was rather out
of the common and projected from a cirro-cumulus like the bent limb
of a swastica.
It is in this way that many inspirations come to the cave artist.
Repeatedly one has occasion to notice how a pre-existing feature or
defect in the rock face—a crevice, a floor, a concretion—becomes
the centre piece of a design drawn to suit it. The feature one finds
most commonly embodied in a cave drawing is a small hole. This
often figures in the place of an animal’s eye, or a hole into which a
snake is disappearing. A local bulge in the rock may also be taken in
as part of a design and represent portion of a head or body.
Not only does the artist embody suitable natural features in his
designs, but, conversely, he also applies his knowledge of form to
explain already existing phenomena in the world about him. The
embodiment of his artistic ideas in his poetical explanations of
Nature’s wonders plays, as might be expected, an important role in
his mythology. These remarks apply especially to any striking
characteristics in the sky. When among the tribes of the Musgrave
Ranges, I ascertained that the black-looking gap in the Milky Way,
close to the Southern Cross, which is commonly known as the Coal
Sack, was referred to as “Kaleya Pubanye,” that is, the “Resting
Emu.”
Fig. 28. Charcoal sketch of ceremonial dance, Pigeon Hole, Victoria River (× 1/6).
Tracing.
In the north of Australia, the Larrekiya, Wogait, and other tribes

have adopted a similar designation for a series of dark spaces along
the Milky Way. But they have extended the idea considerably in that
the Coal Sack represents only the head of a gigantic emu, the beak
of which is pointed towards the Musca constellation (i.e. towards the
south). A small star of the Southern Cross group very appropriately
stands for the eye of the bird; the nebulous effect usually
surrounding this star gives it an extra life-like appearance. The neck
is but faintly discernible near the head, but becomes clearly visible in
the neighbourhood of the nearer Pointer; it passes between the two
Pointers and curves slightly towards the constellation of Lupus.
Within the constellation of Norma, the dark space widens
considerably and represents the body of the emu. The blunt tail turns
sharply towards, and into, the constellation of Scorpio. A nebulous
patch lying practically on the point of junction between the imaginary
areas of Ara, Scorpio, and Norma affords a good division between
the legs of the bird, whilst another lying between μ and ζ of the
Scorpion group separates the tail. The lower portions of the legs are
not very clear, but some of the more imaginative natives maintain
that they can distinguish three toes on each extremity. There is no
doubt the primitive eye has herein discovered a striking similarity
between an optical phenomenon in the southern sky and a living
creature, which is of great importance in the hunting field, and at the
same time plays a prominent role in tribal folk-lore. They refer to this
emu by the name of “Dangorra.” Vide Fig. 17.
PLATE XLII
1. Rock carvings, Flinders Ranges.
2. Emu design carved into the butt of a boabab tree, King Sound.
Fig. 29. Remarkable cave drawing, Glenelg River, N.W. Australia
As affording a means of comparison, a hunting scene is

reproduced carved upon the surface of a club by aborigines of
Victoria. The little group is composed of an aboriginal hunter who in
one hand is poising a spear and in the other is carrying a
boomerang; behind him are two emus standing in much the same
position as that assumed to be the case in the heavenly image just
described.
The Minning at Eucla recognize only the long neck of the emu in
the sky, and refer to it as “Yirrerri”; on the Nullarbor Plains the same
portion is looked upon as the heavenly tjuringa of the emu.
Fig. 30. Pictograph of lizard, natural and conventional form.
Speaking generally, there is perhaps no other creature living which

figures so frequently in aboriginal art, both on the cave wall and in
the dance, as the great struthious bird of Australia. This is no doubt
due in the first place to the admirable way in which it lends itself for
the purposes mentioned; its antics in the field suggest many tricks
for mimicry at a corrobboree, and its distinctive form supplies the
artist with a model which never fails to attract the attention of the
artistically inclined among his people. In Plate XLIX, 2, we have a
pipeclay drawing of an emu from the Katherine River which is rather
exceptional in that it shows the bird more en face than is usual; the
proportions are, on the whole, good, except that the head is screwed
upwards in a rather strange way. On a boomerang from Broome
(Fig. 18), we have a series of engraved emu pictures, all in profile,
and in different attitudes.
On the whole, an aboriginal’s pictures are flat and without
perspective. He takes the inspiration direct from nature and
reproduces the subject singly, and as a separate entity; a number of
such designs are drawn side by side with or without pictographic
sequence. But there are countless occasions upon which artists,
especially the more gifted, prefer to draw a real scene from life,
combining subject with action. Environment or surroundings rarely, if
ever, receive attention.
Take as a very simple illustration the lizard shown in the pipeclay
rock drawing from the Katherine River (Plate XLIX, 3). The general
shape of the body, together with the large and well-differentiated
head, strongly suggests a species of the large monitor which is
common throughout the district. The interesting feature about the
picture is, however, the life which is indicated by the fact that the
reptile is drawn in the act of shooting out a long, split tongue.
Fig. 31. Normal, conventional, and emblematic representations of turtle.

Fig. 32. Normal, conventional, and emblematic representations of frog.
Again, in the charcoal sketch of two crows from the Pigeon Hole
district (Fig. 19), one bird is represented in an attentive attitude, as
though on the point of flying away, while the other is very
characteristically shown in the act of cawing.
One could produce an almost endless variety of decorated figures,
representing men and women performing at ceremonial dances and
corrobborees to illustrate the life and action which is embodied in
aboriginal art. In Fig. 20 a selected number of pipe-clay drawings
from the Humbert River, Northern Territory, have been grouped
together to serve this purpose.
Fig. 33. Normal, conventional, and emblematic representations of echidna.
The most interesting effects, however, are those brought about by

a combination of two or more figures. How different, for instance, the
two kangaroo shown together in Fig. 21 seem to those previously
discussed (Plate XLVII). These are charcoal drawings from Pigeon
Hole on the Victoria River, and in them the hopping movement of the
animals is indicated very clearly. The animal in the rear is in full
flight, as the erect position of the tail and the general holding of the
body betray; but the one in the lead is on the point of drawing up and
is turning its head back towards its mate.
How realistic, too, the little bark drawing is from east of Port
Darwin (Fig. 22), in which a bird of prey is shown mounted upon a
wallaby or kangaroo, with its claws and beak embedded in the flesh
of its victim.
PLATE XLIII
1. Carved boabab nut, King Sound.
2. “Wanningi” from north-western Australia.
3. Slate scrapers used by the extinct Adelaide tribe for trimming skins.
A neat pipe-clay drawing from the remote Humbert River district is
presented in Fig. 23. The group, which is three feet in length, is
composed of a central figure of a man who is holding one arm on
each side towards a dog, as if offering them something to eat or for
the purpose of patting them. The dogs seem to be giving their
attention to the man.
Fig. 34. Conventionalized “Ladjia” or yam Tjuringa pattern.
Two more charcoal drawings from Pigeon Hole, though roughly

sketched by the artist, depict very graphically scenes from the hunt.
In one (Fig. 24), the hunter is in the act of stalking a buffalo or
bullock with his spear held in readiness to throw, while in the other
the attitude of the hunter indicates that the spear has just been
thrown and is entering the body of the prey, a kangaroo (Fig. 25).
The carving of an Arunndta man, reproduced in Fig. 26, is most
effective. An angry husband has been caught by the artist in the act
of punishing his wife with a waddy. The placement of the legs of the
two persons indicates stability on the part of the man engaged in the
flagellation, and a swinging movement on the part of the woman who
is being held back by her hand.
Fig. 35. A dog-track.
We have already seen the carved representations of two stages in

a stone-knife duel by an Arunndta tribesman (Fig. 4), and here, in
Fig. 27, an ochre drawing is reproduced which is, if anything, more
animated than any previously discussed. A spear-boomerang duel is
being fought, during which each of the combatants is protecting
himself with a shield. The artist has evinced considerable talent in
portraying the men just at the moment when both are bounding
through the air towards each other, the one on the left parrying his
opponent’s spear, while the other, on the right, is preparing to
receive the blow from the boomerang.
Fig. 36. A kangaroo-track.
One might now go a step further in analyzing aboriginal art. The

productions we have studied so far embody the ideas of form, life,
and action; and, it might be added, occasionally one finds a very fair
sense of composition as well. Such, indeed, might already be said to
be true of several of the pictures discussed above, but a finer
specimen lies before us in the charcoal drawing from Pigeon Hole
(Fig. 28). This faithfully portrays a scene from a gala ceremony, in
which the body of performers, fully “dressed” for the occasion, are
acting before the leader, who, in his turn, is being supported by two
others in the foreground. It must be admitted that the composition of
this group of figures is remarkably good, and, what is quite
exceptional, a very successful attempt has been made at
perspective. All figures are shown in different attitudes of dancing.
The impression this charcoal drawing gives one, at first glance, is
that of a rough sketch in crayon resembling the outline a European
artist might make on his canvas prior to starting upon the actual
painting.
Fig. 37. A rabbit track.
Leaving that section of aboriginal art which deals essentially with

designs copied directly from Nature in a sense more or less purely
artistic and æsthetic, we shall turn our attention to a few types which
are more specialized.
Fig. 38. Emu tracks.
From a study of his religious ideas, we have learned that the

aboriginal identifies himself with some mystic, natural creature or
object, which he adopts as his “totem.” It would only be reasonable
to expect, therefore, that some of the drawings represent these
objects; and that they are recognized by the natives as having
particular personal or family significance. Looked at from a modern
standpoint, these designs are really the equivalent of a family crest,
and are claimed only by those rightfully entitled to them. This
explanation must be given for many of the naturalistic designs
appearing on rocks, trees, grave posts, and personal belongings.
These “totemic” crests or symbols being hereditary, we have before
us a primitive form of heraldry, a conception we have already learned
to be covered by the word “Kobong,” originally introduced by Sir
George Grey from the north-west of Australia.
Fig. 39. Pictographic
representation of nesting emu.
Fig. 40. A lizard track.
We have also ascertained that some of the central as well as

north-western tribes of Australia believe that the earliest tribal
ancestors originally were more animal than human in appearance,
and adopted the shape of a man only at a later period; that they can,
however, return to the animal form whenever they desire; and that
others remain semi-human. It is not surprising, therefore, to find
amongst their drawings and carvings representations which are
partly human and partly animal in outline; these are honest attempts
at perpetuating the traditional appearance of the ancestral beings of
the tribe. In the photograph attached hereto (Plate LI, 1), taken at
Forrest River, two pictures of such creatures are to be found which
are drawn in ochre. There were many others, from three to five feet
in length, reptilian in shape, some with human hands and feet, others
with hair shown upon the head, and in most of them the sex unduly
prominent. These remarkable designs are, therefore, not naturalistic,
but have been evolved on purely fictional or mythological lines,
based upon the tradition of the tribe and upon the imagination of the
artist.
Fig. 41. A snake or snake-track.

From the consideration of these artistic effigies of their Demigods,
it is not a big step forwards which brings us face to face with the
sacred tribal drawings. During initiation ceremonies, especially of the
now practically extinct south-eastern tribes of Australia, gigantic
figures resembling a human being were moulded into the surface of
the ground and subsequently tinted with ochre, which were
supposed to conceal the Great Spirit or Deity, which, like the “Altjerra
Knaninja” of central Australia, watched over the proceedings as the
young men passed from a condition of adolescence to that of
permanent manhood; numerous carvings and ochre drawings were
also made upon the trunks of any trees nearby.
Not only during the initiation ceremonies are these practices
resorted to, but when a sacred observance is contemplated,
especially those having to do with the “totem,” elaborate designs are
painted in ochre upon the surrounding surfaces of rocks and trees
which depict an act connected with the traditional origin of the sacred
object.
A classical illustration is to be found in the MacDonnell Ranges, at
Emily Gap. According to Arunndta belief, it was at this spot that the
early semi-human ancestors of the witchedy grub or “Utnguringita”
alighted from Altjerringa. They brought with them large numbers of
the grub, which they cooked and ate. The territory dominated by
these ancient beings extended from Heavitree Gap to Emily Gap,
and across to Jessie Gap. On the western wall of the first-named
gap, known by the natives as “Ndariba,” an inclined slab of rock, not
high above the level of the sandy bed of the Todd River, contains a
series of peculiar concentric iron stains which are regarded as the
impressions of the stern of an Utnguringita Altjerra who sat there,
and, as he collected grubs, moved forwards. The Utnguringita came
into frequent conflict with the Dingo or “Knullia” people whose
country lay immediately west of Heavitree Gap, but, nevertheless,
they blessed the land with many eggs, which developed into larvæ
and supplied the tribe with food.
Fig. 42. Human foot-prints and trail.
Eventually the Utnguringita ancestors returned to Altjerringa, but

they left a number of stone tjuringas in Emily Gap, which are
supposed to be occupied by the spirits whenever a sacred ceremony
is performed on the spot. On the eastern stony wall of this gap some
rather imposing designs are to be seen, which originally must have
occupied most of the area available. The drawings are very old; their
origin dating back long before the recollections of the present
generation. It is wonderful how well the work has withstood the
denuding action of the weather for so long. The natives tell you that
the old Altjerringa men applied the pigment to the rock and that they
mixed it with the “knudda” (fat) of the grubs. It is more likely that the
ochres were mixed with emu fat; in places the pigment seems as
though it were chemically combined with the rock, and it could only
be removed by chipping the surface. The designs in their present
condition (Plate LI, 2) consist of a series of parallel, vertical lines,
alternately coloured red and white, and capped by horizontal bands
of the same colours, the white of which containing three or four red
dots. What the original designs may have been like, it is now difficult
to say, but the natives maintain that they included the images of
some women they call “Aluggurra,” who were waiting at the foot of
the cliff while the men were concealing their tjuringas in the rocks
and nooks above. To the present day, the old men of the local
Arunndta group store their ceremonial objects in the same sanctuary,
thinking that the sacred figures on the wall will protect them from the
hands of inquisitive intruders.
There remains yet another class of ochre drawing which deserves
mention. I allude to the famous discovery of Sir George Grey in
1837. There is perhaps no other Australian drawing, old or modern,
which has been so freely discussed and criticized. During an
expedition in the northern Kimberleys of Western Australia, it was my
good fortune to re-discover several drawings of this type in
practically the same locality as that recorded by Sir George Grey,
near the Glenelg River. One figure was perfect, others were partly
obliterated or incomplete. The best design was in a cave near the
top of a prominent bluff the local Worora people call Berrial; it was
drawn in ochre upon a steep face of rock immediately under an
overhanging ledge of quartzite. The figure was unquestionably that
of a human being, although it measured fully nine feet in length. It lay
fully extended, upon its left side, with its arms placed straight against
its sides. It reminded one forcibly of a Buddha in a Ceylonese
temple. What made the figure seem un-Australian was that it was
clothed in a long, striped garment, resembling a priestly gown, from
which only the head, hands, and feet were excluded. A loosely-fitting
belt is also shown. As seems common to all these drawings, the
facial features are only indicated by the eyes and nose, the mouth
being omitted. Another characteristic, which is shared by all other
drawings, is that the head is surrounded by a number of peculiar,
concentric bands, through which, and from which, many lines
radiate, giving the structure the effect of a halo surrounding the head
of a saint. The picture bore an unmistakable likeness to the type
illustrated by Sir George Grey, and was drawn in red, brown, black,
and white. Vide Fig. 29 and Plate L, 2.
Fig. 43. “A man is tracking a rabbit.” Simple example of pictography.
There is no doubt about these curious drawings, now more or less

adopted by the local tribe, having originated under some exotic
influence. It is historically known that for centuries past excursions
have been made to the north of Australia by Macassans and other
eastern people, who may have been responsible for the first drawing
of a figure of so sacerdotal an appearance, which the aborigines
have since learned to copy so perfectly. It has also been speculated
that shipwrecked sailors might be responsible for the representation

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Edited by David Andress

1 Overview: From Regnum Francorum to Regnum Franciae:

2 Gaul, Francia, and the Wider Early Medieval World 21

3 The Vikings and Francia, 799–936 31

4 Regional Magnates and the Last Carolingians 42

5 The World of the Early Capetian Court: 987–1180 53

6 The Queens’ Reflection: French Consorts as a Mirror of French History 64

8 Nationhood and Nationalism in French History Writing:

9 Overview: Valois France, 1328–1498 96

10 France and the Crusades in the Later Middle Ages 107

11 Prince and Principality in the Breton War of Succession 119

12 Performing Discontent: Politics and Society in the French Satirical

13 Overview: France in the Sixteenth Century: Monarchy,

14 Conduit of the Divine: Theocratic Themes in Political Theory

15 Royal Women and the Habsburg–Valois Wars (1494–1559) 162

16 Festival Cultures in Early Modern France: Elite and Popular

17 Overview: Absolutist France to 1715 181

18 Bureaucracy and Royal Administration in the Seventeenth

19 A Century of Saints? The Catholic Reformation in

20 The Royal Manufactories of Absolutist France: Luxury Production

21 Making History in Old Regime France 224

22 Overview: France, 1715 to 1815: A Century of Dubious Greatness 235

23 The French Caribbean in the Era of Slavery 246

25 French India in the Eighteenth Century 272

26 Exploration and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France 283

27 Enlightenment and the Supernatural: Popular Religious Practice in

28 The “Masterpiece of the National Assembly”: Criminal Justice and

29 Performance in Paris, 1789–1815: Setting the Stage for Regime

30 Fugitives from France: Huguenot Refugees, Revolutionary Émigrés,

31 The French Campaign in Egypt (1798–1801) 338

32 Monarchy, Memory, and the Chapelle Expiatoire 348

33 Overview: 1815–1905: An Era of Tumult and Change 360

34 Memory of Lost Empire 373

35 France and Algeria, 1830–1870 385

36 Environment and Technology in Global France, 1763–1914 394

37 The French Periodical Press, 1815–1905 404

38 From Dictator to Democrat? The “Black Legend” of

39 Socialism Up to the First World War 427

40 French Empire in the Asia-Pacific Region, c. 1800–1914 438

41 Imperial Variation: Administration and Citizenship in France’s Colonies 449

42 Overview: Two Frances at War and Peace: The Stories of a Nation

43 Overview: Between Gaullism and Globalization: Opening Up the

44 History and Historiography of French Imperialism from 1914 483

45 French Feminisms: Patriarchy, Populationism, and Progress,

46 Queering France Since the Belle Époque: Between Emancipation

48 The Popular Front and France’s Twentieth Century 523

49 The Brazzaville Conference and the Future of French Colonialism

50 The Atomic Republic: Nuclear France Since 1958 545

51 Young People and Youth Culture, 1958–1968 555

52 Sustaining the Nation: A Gastronomic Reading of Contemporary

53 The Year of the Events: 1968 574

54 The Algerian Diaspora in France 585

55 French Museums in the Fifth Republic 596

2 Gaul, Francia, and the Wider Early Medieval World 21

3 The Vikings and Francia, 799–936 31

4 Regional Magnates and the Last Carolingians 42

5 The World of the Early Capetian Court: 987–1180 53

6 The Queens’ Reflection: French Consorts as a Mirror of French History 64

9 Overview: Valois France, 1328–1498 96

10 France and the Crusades in the Later Middle Ages 107

11 Prince and Principality in the Breton War of Succession 119

15 Royal Women and the Habsburg–Valois Wars (1494–1559) 162

17 Overview: Absolutist France to 1715 181

21 Making History in Old Regime France 224

22 Overview: France, 1715 to 1815: A Century of Dubious Greatness 235

23 The French Caribbean in the Era of Slavery 246

25 French India in the Eighteenth Century 272

26 Exploration and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France 283

31 The French Campaign in Egypt (1798–1801) 338

32 Monarchy, Memory, and the Chapelle Expiatoire 348

33 Overview: 1815–1905: An Era of Tumult and Change 360

34 Memory of Lost Empire 373

35 France and Algeria, 1830–1870 385

36 Environment and Technology in Global France, 1763–1914 394

37 The French Periodical Press, 1815–1905 404

39 Socialism Up to the First World War 427

40 French Empire in the Asia-Pacific Region, c. 1800–1914 438

41 Imperial Variation: Administration and Citizenship in France’s Colonies 449

44 History and Historiography of French Imperialism from 1914 483

48 The Popular Front and France’s Twentieth Century 523

50 The Atomic Republic: Nuclear France Since 1958 545

51 Young People and Youth Culture, 1958–1968 555

53 The Year of the Events: 1968 574

54 The Algerian Diaspora in France 585

55 French Museums in the Fifth Republic 596

56 Erasing Race in France: Social Consequences of Political Idealism 606

58 French Historical Writing in the Wake of Decolonization 628