Competing Hegemonies: The High Middle Ages

Abstract

The period from around 1000–1250 is generally represented as a major shift in European culture, trade and the construction of the self. The Carolingians notwithstanding, the period 500–1000 can be analysed as one dominated by centrifugal forces, with previously connected units becoming increasingly dissimilar. In this new period tendencies of cultural and political homogenization, associated with centripetal forces, became dominant. Although much recent scholarship (for instance, Reynolds 1994) has shied away from seeing the full-blown development of feudalism as the primary cause for homogenization, there is no doubt that, in much of western Europe, power and land tenure did become concentrated. Moore (2000) goes so far as to describe the period as the ‘first European revolution’.