Kings and Princes in Medieval France : Comparative Analysis of Administrative Systems

1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 09610381
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: History of Europe and America
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: TAKAYAMA Hiroshi The University of Tokyo Faculty of Letters, ass.professor, 大学院・人文社会系研究科, 助教授 (90226936)
• Project Period (FY): 1997 – 1999
• Keywords: principalities / administrative system / French History / Medieval History / World system / history / states / Kingship

Research Abstract

Not a few scholars of French history have regarded the Middle Ages as the period in which public poker disintegrated and reestablished gradually. According to their understanding the tenth and eleventh centuries are the age of disintegration of public (i.e.royal) power of the Carolingian Empire and the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are that of its re-establishment.
In fact, however, there are great regional variations in the degree of disintegration and integration of public power. It is true that strong territorial power was almost completely lost in some areas, but it remained strong in other areas. In some areas political disintegration and integration took turns. France did not have a simple linear history in the degree of public power. It had more complicated movements in this period.
I have examined how various political frameworks appeared and disappeared between the Roman period and the fourteenth century. I am now convinced that in the 10th, 11th and 12th century France, there co-existed various geopolitical frameworks of different levels, which could become a state, that is, the kingdom, duchies, counties, and castellanies. One of them functioned as a state. This period was the age of high fluidity, in which counties, castellanies, etc. could easily become a state-like polity.