Chapter 1 - War and Peoplehood in the Middle Ages: An Introduction

Summary

THE ROLE OF war in shaping and reshaping various types of polities and visions of community in the Middle Ages is a topic that deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. In historical sociology, it is commonplace to claim that collective identifications, group solidarity, and homogeneity are not a cause but rather a product of warfare and intergroup violence.1 Historical evidence, on the other hand, demonstrates that the impact of war on the stability, cohesion, and/or cultural homogenization of various kinds of groups such as ethnic or national communities, as well as kingdoms, empires, and nation-states, can be both constructive and destructive. This means that, even if warfare is a situation that often enhances discourses of collective demarcation and othering, thus sharpening group boundaries and hardening stereotypes, collective identities can be considered as neither a natural nor an automatic result of war.

When I conceived the idea of a workshop on the relationship between war and collective identities in the Middle Ages that would result in a comparative volume, one of the main incentives, besides cross-cultural comparison, was to encourage a more direct dialogue between the fields of historical sociology and social history— in particular, the history of collective identities in the Middle Ages. While I delved into modern sociological theories on ethnicity and nationhood for the purposes of my own research on collective identity in the so-called Byzantine Empire some years ago, it became increasingly apparent to me that historical sociologists often avoid serious engagement with the debates of medieval specialists on identities. Historians, on the other hand, can be prone sometimes to base their methodology on a single sociological approach, usually the one that has established itself as the current orthodoxy in the field. The result of that is, often, books or articles based on evidence from the sources that is cherry-picked to suit and confirm the theory. Both these strategies testify to a lack of proper communication and meaningful dialogue between the two fields, with notable exceptions of course; a dialogue which would help both sides refine their arguments and address evident problems which they are often allowed to overlook in the safe environment of their respective field bubbles.