The Normans: From Raiders to Kings

The Normans: From Raiders to Kings
By Lars Brownworth
Published in 2014
254 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

The Normans: From Raiders to Kings is a sweeping history of the Norman people and their incredible exploits throughout Europe. It is very well written and a great book for a novice who has only a little bit of historical context.

The history starts with the origins of the Normans. It describes how a viking warlord - Rollo the Walker - began raiding what is today France. The local elites spent twenty years fighting him. After two decades of nonstop warfare, the local elites realized that their struggle was futile. Instead they came up with a new strategy: they Christianized the invaders, and granted them a fief at the mouth of the Seine river. The Normans were given the task of maintaining fortifications along this river to prevent other vikings from invading inland.

The Normans were settled in a region known as Armorica. This region - today called Normandy - became the bastion of a powerful medieval civilization.

Within a couple generations, the Normans became thoroughly French. Worshiping the old gods was seen at first as rustic, and later as heretical. The viking elites made an extreme effort to ingratiate themselves to their Armorican subjects. This forced the Normans to become competent at warfare and governance. They retained the best aspects of Norse culture while adopting the refinement of France. These traits would allow the Normans to establish many powerful states across Europe.

The obvious example is William the Conqueror’s conquest of England. There, the Normans established themselves as a small dominant elite ruling over a mostly Anglo Saxon population. Here the typical Norman pattern of conquest repeated itself for the first time. Slowly, they intermarried with the local population. They adapted the language, clothing, and customs of the conquered. Today Britons speak English - not Norman. They adopted the Anglo Saxon legal system, and many of their religious quirks. But they also changed many customs, refining them. In many ways this pattern was a repetition of the viking settlement of Normandy - and will be seen elsewhere.

Around the same time as the Norman conquest, many landless Norman nobles left with their warbands to seek their fortunes as Italy. Initially, the Normans arrived as mercenaries. They found a patchwork of weak squabbling states dominated by a wide variety of powers - papal fiefs, Lombard duchies, Byzantine Greek outposts, and even North African Muslims. Starting in the 1040s, two decades before the conquest of England and continuing throughout the 11th and 12th centuries, the Normans carved out many enclaves and outposts in the Southern Italian mainland.

The most notable Norman conquest in Italy would be the establishment of the Kingdom of Sicily. In 1061, the Normans established their first city state. Within 40 years they had conquered the entire island. Sicily retained a strong independent character - and the Normans started mixing the local Italian, Greek, and Arab cultures. They baptized part of the Arab nobility allowing them to rule, bullied and negotiated with popes to get Catholic support, and adopted Greek style dress and governmental language. They even attempted to marry into the Byzantine royal family on several occasions.

Norman Sicily would become the launchpad for the crusades - and benefit greatly from it. The Normans established the first written constitution. By medieval standards, it was incredibly economically prosperous. Science flourished - beginning the process of transmitting the advanced Islamic sciences to Europe. Eventually Sicily became too powerful. Sicilian Norman elites began meddling in Papal and Holy Roman politics. Although Sicily successfully established several popes and Sicily's monarchs (briefly) held the title of Holy Roman Emperor, the success was short-lived. Sicily collapsed into constant war and would eventually be absorbed into other regional powers. By the 1200s, Norman culture had been so Italianized that the Norman elites of Sicily were unrecognizable as Normans.

The Norman states and statelets of Southern Italy would lead Normans to establish dozens of small Norman states before and during the crusades. In the decade immediately before the crusade, two separate groups of Norman mercenaries serving the Byzantine emperors carved out two small states in Anatolia each of which lasted only a year. Normans also established several (very short lived) states in North Africa before and again during the crusades.

The crusades themselves were predominantly led by Normans. Although Normans played a key role in nearly all of the major crusader states and knightly orders, the only true Norman crusader state was the long-lived Crusader Principality of Antioch which lasted roughly 150 years.

The Norman secret for success was extreme integration into the local population. This would also be their undoing. Norman influence spread rapidly in the 11th century; but by the 13th century they had so thoroughly integrated anywhere that although their children sometimes still governed any semblance of “Normanness” was lost - this occurred everywhere from England to Antioch.

This would also be the undoing of Normans in Normandy. The Normans immediately began influencing the politics of nearby city states and kingdoms such as Anjou, Gascony, and Aquitaine. Doing so caused them to become increasingly politically and culturally integrated into the French mainstream. By the mid 13th century, Normandy was annexed into the rising kingdom of France, with its elites having already been fully assimilated into the French elites. Normandy itself assimilated itself out of existence.

As long as you have a basic understanding of what happened in the Middle Ages, you will enjoy this book. If you want to understand the success of a forgotten ruling minority, read this book.

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