“The subjugation of Germany withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy.”

I’ve always felt that Judaism had a much stronger influence on the development of Islam; the role of the ulema, the emphasis on rule-bound behavior, the elaboration of rules from sketchy evidence. If there’s Christian influence, it’s in Shi’a Islam and the focus on the martyrdom of Hussein.

start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Crone#Bibliography

but don’t end there. the fact that islam is sui generis as a religion of barbarians which conquered civilized lands, and, that i’m an atheist who believes there isn’t a god, actually inclines me to think that there is something to the idea that islam emerged in the decades after the arab conquest. though i assume that most of the current hypotheses are probably false in most of the details.

If you’re talking about the Romanization of cuturally Celtic Gauls, you’re spot on. But if you’re talking about the Frankish period (”500-1000″) then I don’t get it. The Frankish elite was utterly assimilated by the Gallo-Roman majority in Western Francia (=Gaul=Modern France). Only the name stuck.

to a first approximation, i agree. but when i read about the merovingian period i was surprised at the extent of cultural emulation of the gallo-roman elite south of the loire of frankish german norms. and note that the german nature of the franks was still salient before verdun. the pippinids were from austrasia. two of my sources:

http://www.amazon.com/Before-France-Germany-Transformation-Merovingian/dp/0195044584/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274816629&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Age-Charles-Martel-Medieval-World/dp/0582064759/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274816666&sr=1-3

Vikings did have a lasting influence on Western Europe – but only after they had been thoroughly Gallicized and become Normans. So I guess it doesn’t really count for your story.

again, correct for a first approximation. but if it were not for the norman conquest, the vikings would have had a stronger influence in england via their settlement of the danelaw. as it is, the vikings were assimilated into the anglo-saxon aristocracy which the normans swept away.

The last medievalist I talked to didn’t seem at all interested in the idea that the Norman trade sphere and political zone of 800-1050 transformed Europe and produced a hybrid Norman culture zone speaking more than one language. She seemed to think of it more as a case of the Norse learning the ways of civilization and only transiently influencing the rest of the area, with the French remaining French and the English remaining English (with Norman French influence). She hadn’t seem terribly interested in the question and seemed to be thinking entirely in national and linguistic rather than areal terms.

In any case, 800-1050 the English and the French were on the defensive against the Norse, and when finally the Norse became part of the family of nations, united NW Europefollowed the example of the Norman French in Sicily and began the Crusades at the other end of their world. My theory was that just as the Norse had been Christianized, Christian NW Europe had become Normanized both by Norse in Christian service and by changes they had to make in response to the Norse threat.

If you’re talking about the Romanization of cuturally Celtic Gauls, you’re spot on. But if you’re talking about the Frankish period (“500-1000″) then I don’t get it. The Frankish elite was utterly assimilated by the Gallo-Roman majority in Western Francia (=Gaul=Modern France). Only the name stuck.

with civilizational boundaries hardening into forms which were robust to exogenous shocks.

I’d say 843 (Treaty of Verdun) is a good candidate for the critical timepoint. The Frankish empire divides into France, Germany, and a highly heterogenous middle strip of land (Lotharingia=”Lorraine”) that will keep history busy for a bit more than a millenium. By that point the map of Western Europe is pretty much recognizable.

Vikings did have a lasting influence on Western Europe – but only after they had been thoroughly Gallicized and become Normans. So I guess it doesn’t really count for your story.

Zora: check out Patricia Crone. Pretty far out I’d say.

Which scholars? Do you mean Christoph Luxenberg and his white raisins? I’m somewhat out of touch with the latest scholarship in early Islamic history, so would appreciate some references.

one interesting fact i learned is that the skaldic oral tradition is basically danish & norwegian, with very little input from the swedes. so the back-story of swedish oral history is really thin. otoh, the swedes were more enthusiastic about memorial rune stones.

“The Swedes are overrunning the whole country. I bet there are more Swedes in the town of East Jolloppi than there are in the rest of the country….Stanley doesn’t know the Swedes like we do… There’s no way of stopping a Swede from doing what he sets his head to doing.”

I’m not sure that the story had any actual basis in anti-Swedish prejudice. It may just have been Caldwell’s satire on racism and ethnic enmity.

Geographically and economically, Hodges and Whitehouse (building on Pirenne) argued that during the period 800-1000 or so a northern (Baltic and North Sea) trade sphere and interstate system developed which in the end ran from Greenland to the Caspian and Constantinople, and that the Franks traded with this sphere and were economcally dependent on it in some respects. (The Normans and Rus became French and Russian quite early, but they were part of this political-economic-military zone. Norse and Anglo-Saxon exiles took refuge with their Rus cousins at least into the eleventh century: Gabriel Ronay, “The Lost King of England”)

You have mentioned Russell’s “The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity”, but the Christian-pagan line was culturally permeable in both directions.

Also in East Asia, literacy and affiliation with a world religion seem to coincide with entry into the international system as a full member rather than as a raiding barbarian or helpless savage. The religion was usually Buddhism, Islam, or Christianity, but the Khazars chose Judaism and the Uighurs chose Manichaeanism. In the latter cases the goal was probably to attain the dignity and powers of literacy without binding themselves to any one of their contending neighbors. Lithuania’s late paganism probably can be explained this way too, as a way of playing off the Orthodox and Catholics against one another.

Finally, the whole question of raiding v. trade is analyzed very penetratingly by Frederic Lane in “Venice and History” and Niels Steensgaard in various works. The gist of is that trade lies on a continuum from pure plunder on one end to pure tribute on the other, with equal exchange in the middle. Nations that are able to raid successfully on a routine basis normally either end up receiving tribute or entering into normal trade relations. Sometimes raids and plundering are just responses to an attempt at blockade and the refusal of trade. (“Forced trade” was characteristic of certain phases of the imperial expansion of madern Europe). A key question for long-distance trade is control of land and sea trade routes, and various nations (Venice, Portugal, Holland, England, and you’d have to add the Mongols and early Muslim Arabs) solve this problem in various ways, but these ways are always violent and always involve the suppression of piracy and excessive tariffs, and usually involve the suppression of competing traders (E.G. Venetians attacking Genoese ships.) Trading and piracy thus can be different phases of the same operation, and a pirate can be a former trader or vice versa.

In other words, trade always occurs within certain power relationship and a lot of economic ideology is unrealistic.

The two relevant essays in Lane and the short veriosn below of Steensgard total less than 100 pages and I recommend them to everyone.

Hodges, Richard and David Whitehouse (1983). Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the origins of Europe

Mohammed and Charlemagne by Henri Pirenne

Niels Steensgaard, “Violence and the Rise of Capitalism: Frederick C. Lane’s Theory of Protection and Tribute,” Review [of the Braudel Society] 5 (1981) Short version

Niels Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century