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IMC 2012: Sessions

Session 504: Politics of Territory, I: Perceptions and Practices of Space in Germany and France (c. 850-1100)

Tuesday 10 July 2012, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:ANR-DFG Project TERRITORIUM 'Espace et politique/Raum und Politik', Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée / Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen
Organisers:Miriam Czock, Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften, Universität Duisburg-Essen
Laurence Leleu, Laboratoire 'Analyse Comparée des Pouvoirs', Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
Moderator/Chair:Jens Schneider, Laboratoire 'Analyse Comparée des Pouvoirs', Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
Respondent:Charles West, Department of History, University of Sheffield
Paper 504-aSpace, Territory, and Border in Saxony
(Language: English)
Laurence Leleu, Laboratoire 'Analyse Comparée des Pouvoirs', Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 504-bRepresentations of Swabia: Boundaries, Spatial Organization, and Power
(Language: English)
Miriam Czock, Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften, Universität Duisburg-Essen
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 504-cSpaces of Power in Early Medieval Provence
(Language: English)
Albrecht Brendler, Seminar für Mittelalterliche Geschichte, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Politics and Diplomacy
Abstract

German and French historians have different concepts of the correlation of space and power in the early and high Middle Ages. French medievalists established a model in which power of the king, the bishops, as well as other magnates like dukes and earls was territorialized from the ninth century onward. In contrast German research stressed that the process of territorialisation which advocated new patterns of lordship and space started not until the 12th century. To examine the extent of territorialisation in early medieval Germany and France the session will look at the regions Saxony, Swabia and Provence in a comparative analysis of practices and representation of space in charters and narrative texts. It aims to reconstruct how contemporaries formed and interpreted political spaces, by looking closely on concepts such as boundaries, scales, and central places as well as the principles of appropriation of territory.