Bread, Cheese and Genocide: Imagining the Destruction of Peoples in Medieval Western Europe

Scales, Len

doi:10.1111/j.1468-229x.2007.00396.x

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 2 publications

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“…Hugh Seton-Watson, for example, distinguished between old "continuous" nations such as England and France and newer nations (1977,7). Some authors have continued to argue for the comparatively old roots of at least some nations (Smith 2003;Gat 2012;Hastings 1977;Scales 2015;Scales 2007). However, the overwhelming trend for many authors, including Ernest Gellner (1983), has been to locate nationalism as a modern ideology and form of identity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Nationalism to National Indifference: Binary Logic and Sense of Time

Lieberman

2020

Nationalities Papers

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The vast body of inquiry into nationalism has traditionally seen Europe as a main center for the emergence of nationalism, but scholars of “national indifference” have countered with the idea that nationalism may not matter much at all as a motive for most people. The concept of national indifference calls into question the power of nationalism as a motive for action and the mass appeal of nationalism. Studies of national indifference have constructed an alternative non-national narrative, but face particular challenges accounting for major themes and episodes of discrimination and violence. At its core, national indifference paradoxically both rejects and accepts binary notions of identity and incorporates binary assumptions about motives. It is tempting to resolve the contest between parallel accounts of pervasive, powerful nationalism and national indifference by choosing a victor, but this contrast between models shows the fluidity and dynamism of nationalism. The debate between the now classic accounts of nationalism and the alternative of national indifference points to the importance of often overlooked variables: frames and sense of time.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Nationalism to National Indifference: Binary Logic and Sense of Time

Lieberman

2020

Nationalities Papers

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Immigration and the Common Profit: Native Cloth Workers, Flemish Exiles, and Royal Policy in Fourteenth-Century London

Lambert¹,

Pajic²

2016

J. Br. Stud.

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This article reconstructs a crucial episode in the relationship between the English crown, its subjects and the kingdom's immigrant population. It links the murder of about forty Flemings in London during the Peasants' Revolt in June 1381 to the capital's native cloth workers' dissatisfaction with the government's economic immigration policy. We argue that, in the course of the fourteenth century, the crown developed a new policy aimed at attracting skilled workers from abroad. Convinced that their activities benefited the common profit of the realm, the crown remained deaf to the concerns of London's native weavers, who claimed that the work of exiled Flemish cloth workers in the city encroached on their privileges. Confronted for more than twenty-five years with political obstruction, the native weavers increasingly resorted to physical aggression against their Flemish counterparts, which came to a dramatic conclusion in 1381. The dissatisfaction of London's cloth workers and the massacre of the Flemings thus had much in common with the frustrations over the royal government's policy that had been fermenting for decades among many other groups in society: all came to the surface during the Peasants' Revolt.

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Ethnic Identification and Stereotypes in Western Europe, circa 1100–1300

Weeda

2014

History Compass

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The central Middle Ages witnessed a remarkable upsurge in sources containing ethnic stereotypes. Should we interpret the increase in ethnic images as evidence that people identified more strongly with ethnic or national groups from the 12th century onwards? And to which extent was ethnic identity informed by cultural, religious, and medical discourses, as well as forged by political elites as part of a state-formation process? Addressing these questions from a broad range of perspectives and incorporating a wide body of research, this article offers a review of the scholarship on ethnic identity formation and the relevance of ethnic stereotyping in religious-eschatological thought, medical science, and political rhetoric from the 12th century. It challenges the notion that ethnic stereotyping reflected random expressions of hatred, or, conversely, expressions of nationalist patriotism in the later Middle Ages.Who or what crafted ethnic groups and nations, when, why, and how, is one of the most hotly debated topics in political, sociological, and anthropological studies. To date, there have been relatively few attempts to integrate research on ethnic identity in the Middle Ages with theoretical discussions on nationhood.1 Until recently, the predominant approach was to apply the modernist, post-Second World War instrumentalist view -that political elites craft nationsto premodernity. Mediaeval scholars have thus tracked the construction of the nation to, for example, 12th-century state-formation processes and the territorialisation of power. However, fresh research in the field of medical history has recently revealed how Hippocratic medical theory helped establish new beliefs about the nature of ethnic groups from the end of the 11th century. Furthermore, from circa 1000, lists of ethnic characteristics were appearing in monastic circles within a religious-eschatological context. It is therefore necessary to examine utterances about the nature of and identification with ethnic groups from a cultural, religious, social, and political perspective. Research should take a multi-facetted and longue-durée approach, in which political processes and structures are viewed as both forming and feeding off pre-existing cultural, religious -and from the 12th century also medical -customs, beliefs, and knowledge, in a social environment shaped by linguistic and legal distinctions. First, then, I will briefly discuss the role of politics and ideology in ethnic discourse; afterwards, I will turn to mediaeval beliefs about the make-up of ethnic groups, the influence of medical theory in ethnic stereotyping, and ideas about religion and ethnicity. Finally, I will present some ideas about possible new fields of research. Political Structures and Ethnic Group FormationScholars of the mediaeval era have often looked towards the growing bureaucracies and tightening judicial apparatus to partly explain the formation of nations from the 12th century onwards.2 For example, Adrian Hastings stated that ethnic groups, as oral commu...

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Bread, Cheese and Genocide: Imagining the Destruction of Peoples in Medieval Western Europe

Cited by 6 publications

References 2 publications

From Nationalism to National Indifference: Binary Logic and Sense of Time

From Nationalism to National Indifference: Binary Logic and Sense of Time

Immigration and the Common Profit: Native Cloth Workers, Flemish Exiles, and Royal Policy in Fourteenth-Century London

Ethnic Identification and Stereotypes in Western Europe, circa 1100–1300

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