2 results for "Technology History"

Merovingian Military Organization, 481-751

Bernard S. Bachrach
Merovingian Military Organization, 481–751 was first published in 1972. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In the area which is now France and was then Gaul, military institutions fundamentally influenced the successes and failures of the Merovingian dynasty, from 481 to 751. Professor Bachrach examines this period in detail, studying the forms of military organization and their relation to political power. Various aspects of the subject are controversial among scholars specializing in early medieval history, yet this is the first book-length study on the subject to be published. For a hundred years scholars have equated the military institutions of Merovingian Gaul with the customs of the Franks, a minority of the population who were rapidly acculturated. Professor Bachrach's study shows the heterogeneous nature of Merovingian military organization, composed of many institutions drawn from non-Frankish people especially from the remains of the Roman Empire. By dealing with all of the significant sources he demonstrates that there was frequent change in the military institutions rather than revolutionary change. The fluid nature of the military organization also is seen to have had profound effects upon the exercise of political power. Probably the most significant finding of the study is that Merovingian military organization, like much else in Merovingian Gaul, resembled Romania far more than Germania .
U of Minnesota Press 1972-05-10 157 pages

Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe

Bernard S. Bachrach
Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe was first published in 1977. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. This is the first study of early medieval Jewish policy in the West which examines the nature of this policy from the perspective and aims of its formulators. As the author points out, most specialists in Jewish history have been dominated by what the historian Salo Baron has called the lachrymose conception, ' a view which emphasized persecution and suffering as a fundamental theme of Jewish history. Professor Bachrach challenges this view and attacks what he calls the myth of Christian church domination of the early medieval world.
University of Minnesota Press 1977-07-07 228 pages