How the west was won: the Norman dukes and the Cotentin, c.987–1087
This paper addresses a neglected aspect of the political and geographical development of the duchy of Normandy between c.987 and 1087: the expansion of the dukes' authority into the Cotentin peninsula. As narratives conceal more than they reveal about this process, ducal acta are the principal means of understanding it. In particular, the article examines the composition and use of the ducal demesne (and includes an appendix listing the lands that appear as demesne before 1087 and describing their subsequent descent). In addition, the essay looks at the men the duke recruited as supporters, the role of ducal women as ‘deputies’ in the Cotentin, and the motives of the leading rebels who fought against Duke William at the battle of Val-ès-Dunes in 1047, which have not previously been subject to close scrutiny. Comparisons are made with other parts of northern France or England, where appropriate, and the conclusions reached are relevant not just to William the Conqueror's rule in England, but also to wider arguments about how theoretical power was turned into reality.
France in the Middle Ages 987-1460 : from Hugh Capet to Joan of Arc
Translatora s Note. Foreword. List of Illustrations. List of Genealogical Tables. Part I: The Inheritance: . 1. The Empire. 2. The Frankish People. 3. The Principalities. 4. Disturbances. Part II: Lordship:. 5. The Village. 6. The Castle. 7. The Church. 8. King and Lord. Part III: Origins of State and Nation:. 9. The Great Age of Progress. 10. Louis VII. 11. Philip Augustus. 12. The South. 13. The Thirteenth Century. 14. The Fourteenth Century. 15. The Maid of Orleans. Epilogue. Chronology. Bibliography. Index.
Reid on Hypotheses and the Ether; A Reassessment
In recent years historians of science have come to see that Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man had a profound impact on the development of British methodological thought in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Larry Laudan has argued that Reid was “the first major British philosopher to take Newton’s opinions on induction, causality, and hypotheses seriously”; and that Reid was thereby instrumental in changing the character of British methodological discourse in the Enlightenment.(1) Geoffrey Cantor has examined in detail the influence of Reid’s critique of ether theories and hypotheses in the Essays on leading protagonists in the nineteenth-century debates surrounding the wave theory of light,(2) and Richard Olson has traced the origins of the scientific style of British physics in the Victorian period to the writings of Reid and other Common Sense philosophers. (3) As well as delineating Reid’s influence, Laudan, Cantor, and Olson have attempted to identify the problems to which he addressed himself in articulating his methodology, and they have analysed with some care the internal structure of his methodological views. Thanks to the work of these historians, therefore, we have a fairly comprehensive picture of Reid’s methodology and its fortunes in the nineteenth century.