Christianisation and State Formation in the European Periphery c. 900-1200

A new Europe emerged during the eleventh and twelfth centuries through the transition from an economy of plunder to an economy of exploitation and the development of a sharp distinction between a secular and a clerical elite.

Other important factors in this development were: the growth of royal and ecclesiastical government through a standardised education, the emergence of a class of people dependent on their superiors for their careers, and the formation of a common European intellectual culture claiming a monopoly and suppressing rivals by stamping them as heretical. These exciting changes are in the focus of the activities of the Center for Medieval Studies when it participates in an international research project concentrating on christianisation and state formation, including specialists on Scandinavia , East Central European countries (Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) and Russia. The results from the first phase of the project are soon to be published as a book.

In tracing the development of this new Europe , scholars have mainly focused on what is usually regarded as the core areas of Latin Christendom, England , France , and Italy , only mentioning in passing the change on the borders through the inclusion of new areas which reduced the possibilities for plunder. If we regard a multiplicity of centres of political power as an essential feature of Europe , in contrast to e.g. China and the Islamic world, as is usually done, the expansion becomes equally important as the internal changes. Six new kingdoms came into existence during this period, i.e. the three Scandinavian kingdoms plus Poland , Bohemia , and Hungary , as well as a number of territorial principalities that later made themselves independent, e.g. Brandenburg , Mecklenburg , and Pomerania . Whereas most of Western Christendom had been united under one ruler in the Carolingian period and a substantial part of it under the Ottonian and Salian emperors, the expansion, combined with the weakening of the central power in Germany , made territorial principality the normal political organisation of Western Christendom. Thus the combination of cultural unity and political division was established and it has characterised Europe until the formation of the European Union in the second half of the twentieth century.

At the same time, the expansion from the tenth century onwards also marked the beginning of the European conquest of the rest of the world. Europe ,i.e. Western Christendom, expanded in the Mediterranean , Scandinavia and Eastern Europe . Like the expansion following the Great Discoveries from the sixteenth century onwards, the conquests were conducted by a number of powers, often in mutual rivalry, rather than by one, great empire. Unlike the Early Modern expansion, however, the medieval one was not directed at completely unknown peoples and territories. Furthermore, colonies in the real sense played a subordinate part. The conquests that took place mostly consisted of the extension of existing European polities. Examples for that are the Spanish kingdoms and the formation of independent European principalities in the new areas, as in Southern Italy and Sicily , and the towns and principalities along the southern shore of Baltic Sea. As already mentioned, however, an important result of the conquest was the formation of new, indigenous principalities, notably in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe . Generally, the northern and eastern expansion was to a greater extent religious and cultural than the Mediterranean one. Its most characteristic feature was the spread of the Christian religion, with the book, the Latin language, and a learning and literature derived from Classical Antiquity. But the expansion also had military, economic, and political sides: e.g. the formation of the Hanseatic trade network, the export of military technology (heavy cavalry and castles) and ecclesiastical and royal bureaucracy.

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