Table of Contents

Part I: States
1: Introduction
2: Geography and Politics
3: The Form of the State
Part II: Aristocratic Power-Structures
4: Aristocracies
5: Managing the Land
6: Political Breakdown and State-Building in the North
Part III: Peasantries
7: Peasants and Local Societies: Case Studies
8: Rural Settlement and Village Societies
9: Peasant Society and its Problems
Part IV: Networks
10: Cities
11: Systems of Exchange
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Chris Wickham received his DPhil from Oxford in 1975. He was Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Birmingham until his appointment as Chichele Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Oxford in 2005. He has been editor of Past and Present since 1995.

Reviews

a tremendous achievement, demonstrating mastery over half a dozen fields of scholarship. David Abulafia, THES