Project 3. State Formation and Political Culture

State formation is among the most widely discussed topics in national historiography, but this discussion has mainly been confined to how a particular country was 'made' or 'unified'. Far less attention has been paid to the question we want to address, i.e. how and why most of the northern and eastern periphery of Europe was divided into relatively stable kingdoms and how these kingdoms gradually acquired a more state-like character.

General studies of European state formation mostly come from the field of historical sociology. Stein Rokkan focused on the differences between European regions originating in their distance from Rome, from the sea and from the central urbanised zone extending from the Low Countries to Northern Italy (Rokkan 1975). The model is elegant and illuminating but somewhat static. It exaggerates the difference between east and west, at least during the medieval period, and pays too little attention to war and struggles for power. By contrast, this latter dimension plays a major part in a number of recent studies which point to the state as a main factor explaining why Europe came to dominate the rest of the world (Tilly 1975, 1992; McNeill 1983; Mann 1986, 1990, Kennedy 1989). The majority of these studies find the origin of this form of political organisation in the Early Modern Period. Because of the new military technology developed during this period, only countries with the power and administrative machinery to tax their population heavily, could afford the armies and navies necessary to survive in the fierce competition. Similary, students of law and political thought claim that the idea of the sovereign state dates from this period and have been reluctant to talk about states in the real sense in the Middle Ages (e.g. Skinner 1978). Nevertheless, there are good reasons for regarding the Middle Ages as a crucial period in the development of the European state. Despite the fact that medieval military technology did not necessarily favour large political entities, kings of the most successful medieval states managed to establish a close cooperation with the aristocracy, which made its members support rather than resist political centralisation.

We are still far from an adequate understanding of the medieval state, in the periphery as well as the centre. In the strongly 'modernist' English-American tradition dominating the first two thirds of the 20th century (Maitland, Strayer etc.), the medieval state was regarded as the direct forerunner of the modern one. Since then, a 'primitivist' reaction has set in, most clearly in the study of early medieval political culture. Instead of regarding early medieval politics as the expression of the absence of social order, scholars have now, drawing their inspiration from social anthropology, attempted to understand it as a system in its own right, based on personal relationships, and tried to trace its rules of political behaviour (Keller 1986; Koziol 1992; Geary 1994; Althoff 1996, 1997; Bartlett 2000).

The transition from this kind of society to a more bureaucratic one, based on the idea of the king as God's representative on earth, governing a hierarchically organised society according to principles of objective justice, forms a major challenge to present-day historians. On the one hand, there is no doubt that a bureaucratisation took place and that new political ideas were introduced, on the other, modern historians may have interpreted these phenomena too much in the light of the later model of the bureaucratic state. Here we have excellent source material in Scandinavia, from the early period in the Old Norse sagas and from the later in numerous charters, letters and propaganda pamphlets from the Later Middle Ages. We also have a strong scholarly tradition, mainly 'modernist', which, however, has laid a firm basis of solid knowledge about institutional developments (e.g. Seip 1940,1942; Rosén 1962; Helle 1964, 1971; Christensen 1968; Bagge 1976). Recently, 'primitivist' approaches have become more prominent (Lunden 1972, 1976; Bagge 1986, 1999a, 1999b; Hermanson 2000). Recent studies of the saga literature, the sagas of the Icelanders as well as those of the Norwegian kings, have given new insight into the way the saga writers understand society and politics (Meulengracht Sørensen 1977, 1993; Miller 1990; Bagge 1991, 1996; Mundal 1997b) which remains to be applied to the study of historical reality.

So far, the questions with which we shall be dealing are common to all studies of general European history. In addition, the northern and eastern periphery poses some particular problems, primarily because the kingdoms here were formed at a late stage, mainly in the 10th and 11th centuries, and under influence from the centre. Research until now has mainly focused on the unification of each country. There is therefore much to be gained by following up recent tendencies towards dealing with regions instead of separate countries and focusing on general patterns of state formation (Lindkvist 1988; Bagge 1989, 2002a). Historical sociology is an important source of inspiration in this area of study. The formation of kingdoms or larger principalities, which forms the first theme of this project, can be understood as a response to particular challenges, the end of external expansion, followed by pressure from western neighbours. Moreover, as soon as one country had been united, others would be likely to follow suit; the alternative would be to be conquered by their stronger neighbour. Further, Christianity was an important factor, through the centralisation of religious cult and the administrative expertise of the clergy. These general observations now need to be applied more systematically to each country and the comparison between them, while contingent factors within each country also must be taken into account. Dealing with these problems will be the main task of the Cambridge-Bergen project, which will receive particular attention during the first phase of the CoE.
The fact that not the whole of Eastern Europe was organised in this way forms a special problem. Most of the countries along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea were conquered in the literal sense by invaders from Western Europe, whereas the three kingdoms respectively in the north and the east were established according to the common European model. Time may be an important factor in explaining this difference. Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and the Scandinavian countries were Christianised and westernised at a time when the countries of Western Christendom were still weak. In dealing with this problem, we shall use the results of the just finished project on the Baltic area in the Middle Ages, led by Nils Blomkvist, and with which we have had close contact. Blomkvist will also participate in the Bergen-Cambridge project.

The second theme deals with the following centuries, which can to some extent be regarded as a period of state formation. This process did not, however, correspond to a strengthening of the king's power. On the contrary, a powerful aristocracy of lay and clerical landowners established themselves between the king and the common people and forced the king to share his power with them. An important factor in this development was the introduction of western military technology, castles and heavily armoured knights, instead of the mass levy of the earlier period. This meant that the peasants were reduced to taxpayers and that the king became dependent on the new military elite. It would thus seem that 'feudal anarchy' and bureaucratic government were imported from the west at about the same time. This question should, however, be discussed in the light of the recent revision of earlier ideas about European feudalism by Susan Reynolds and others (Reynolds 1984 and 1994). Rather than being the result of a breakdown of the social order, the feudal institutions should be regarded as instruments for the king to secure the loyalty and cooperation of the aristocracy. The two sorts of import from the west are therefore less opposed than it would seem according to earlier theories. Both can be regarded as a kind of modernisation and, as pointed out by the Danish historian Michael Gelting, the periphery had the advantage of being feudalised at a time when instruments of strong government were available in the form of writing, an educated clerical elite, and a more developed money economy than in Western Europe during the post-Carolingian period. Exactly how these new forms of administration were introduced in the various parts of the periphery and the relationship between direct influence and parallel development in the centre and the periphery, remain to be considered.

Further, the aristocracy and the royal dynasty became more exclusive as well as more international in the Later Middle Ages. An important aspect of this internationalisation is the introduction of courtly culture, in the form of new manners and dress, art and architecture, and literature (e.g. Bagge 1993, 1998). The formation of an international aristocratic elite contributed to one of the most characteristic features of the interstate system of the period all over Europe, the dynastic unions between two or more countries, which forms the third theme of the project. These unions deserve to be discussed against the background of the earlier tendencies towards state formation. The formation of unions as well as the various practical arrangements for solving the problem that the king had to move between various countries, throw light on the relationship between monarchy and aristocracy, dynasty and state, the internationalisation of the elite versus national ideas or interests in national independence. Scandinavian scholarship in this field has been strongly influenced by national ideas as well as by the notion of the Later Middle Ages as a period of decline. This approach has dominated Norwegian scholarship until the last decades, whereas in Sweden and Denmark, the conflict between monarchy and aristocracy was already in the 1930s understood as the main issue of contemporary politics (Lönnroth 1934, 1940; Albrectsen 1997). Both interpretations have met with criticism recently (e.g. Haug 1996, 2000; Larsson 1997; Hamre 1998; Bagge 2000c), and the field is now open for new interpretations, reinforced by dealing with dynastic unions as a general European phenomenon.

On the level of abstraction indicated above, the process of state formation seems fairly similar all over the area, but much remains to be done in order to trace differences and similarities between the countries and areas. A considerable amount of knowledge exists within each separate country regarding this process. It is now time to mobilise this knowledge in an attempt to get an overall view of the expansion of Christianity and the state to the fringes of Europe. By combining institutional, political, and cultural studies and comparing Scandinavia with Eastern as well as Western Europe we hope to get a clearer picture of European state formation in the Middle Ages. Specific topics for study are changes in legal thought and practice, political cultu25-Sep-2007olitical communication, i.e. political rhetoric, the use of writing, and non-verbal and ritual forms of expression, and the introduction of courtly culture in connection with the formation of an aristocracy of the realm. The narrative sources will play an important part in this research, and there will therefore be a close connection with Project 4.