Early Medieval Europe (Palgrave History of Europe) - Hardcover

'The historical spectrum covered is astonishingly extensive, and, ebcause of this, the volume will be useful as a reference work.' - Professor Albrecht Classen, Department of German Studies, University of Arizona Review of first edition: 'A large and intricate body of fundamental research on the narrative sources, deployed with clarity and expertise for which many readers will be extremely grateful.' - Times Higher Education Supplement

In this text the author provides an account of the centuries during which Europe changed from being an abstract geographical expression into a new, culturally coherent, if politically divided, entity. It examines how the social, economic and cultural structures of Antiquity were replaced by their medieval equivalents and also seeks to define the European context, by looking at those external forces, such as the nomadic confederacies of Central Asia and the Islamic empire of the Arabs, which helped to shape it through conflict.