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Description of  Writing about the Merovingians in the Early United States (Arc Medievalist)

1802700935 pdf In a young American republic seeking to define itself in relation to European cultural and political models past and present, it was assumed that the history of Europes peoples could be tracked across time over the longue dure. From this perspective, even the barbarous long-haired kings of the distant Merovingian era helped to define the political and cultural identity of a Franceand, indeed, a Europewhose actions Americans recognized as relevant to their own republic. Americans saw medieval parallels not only in the actions of successive French regimes, but in contemporary transatlantic issues of anxiety, including the adjudication of claims of political legitimacy and the debate over the perpetuation of racial slavery. That early American writers located their own meanings in the history of Merovingian Francia is indicative of a less linear, and more diverse and transnational, historiography than previously recognized. Read more