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Political culture and ducal authority in Aquitaine, c. 900–1040
Author(s) -
McNair Fraser
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/hic3.12622
Subject(s) - polity , politics , eleventh , formative assessment , ethnic group , ninth , power (physics) , ancient history , history , political science , classics , sociology , law , pedagogy , physics , quantum mechanics , acoustics
The development of ducal authority in tenth‐century Aquitaine was a major change in the region's political culture. The emergence of a regional, aristocratic polity was a shift from the Carolingian past, and historians have proffered several explanations for it. This article examines several models for the development of principalities: as the expressions, however compromised, of ethnic separatism; as the evolved forms of ninth‐century administrative structures; and as aristocratic power constellations no different from any other. It traces the history of Aquitaine from the first duke, William the Pious, in the early tenth century, to the Poitevin dukes of the mid‐eleventh century. The post‐Carolingian duchy of Aquitaine, it is argued, is best understood not as an ethnic or an institutional formative, but as the distinctive expression of a changing regional political culture.