The Making of the Angevin Empire

Abstract

During the last half of the twelfth century the kings of England ruled a vast constellation of lands stretching from Ireland to the Mediterranean, known traditionally, if not quite accurately, as the “Angevin Empire.” While the empire lasted, its rulers were the richest and strongest in Christendom. When King John lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Touraine, he also lost much of his income and influence, and the kings of France became the great royal figures of the thirteenth century. It is the purpose of this paper to explore the origins of the Angevin empire, and in particular the union of its two chief components — the Anglo-Norman state and the county of Anjou. Did the empire come about by accident or by political design? And if by design, who was its architect? Was it Henry I, who arranged the crucial marriage between his daughter Maud and Geoffrey, heir to Anjou? Was it Geoffrey, or Maud? Or was it their son, Henry Plantagenet — the ultimate beneficiary of the marriage?At first glance, the empire would seem to have been conceived in the calculating mind of Henry I, who could hardly have failed to grasp the implications of a marriage joining the Anglo-Norman heiress to the Angevin heir. Indeed, many treatments of the subject, both old and recent, have suggested that the Angevin empire arose from King Henry I's “immensely grandiose designs” to absorb Anjou. But did Henry I have any such desire, or any such intention? The question can only be answered after a careful analysis of Henry I's diplomacy, both in its general contours and in its relation to Anjou.

King Henry I and Northern England

“…It has been suggested that he, unlike his father and brother, was content with the lands he had inherited, and 'rejected Norman imperialism'. 44 A variant on this view is that, whether Henry wished it or not, the opportunity for further expansion had disappeared, and that it took all his resources simply to defend what he had. 45 Yet views such as these are hard to reconcile with the suggestion that Henry sought to assert rights of 'overkingship' which the Normans had inherited from their Anglo-Saxon predecessors, and which formed the justification for imperialistic claims towards their neighbours in the British Isles.…”