Framing the Early Middle Ages Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800

The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole. By contrast, the early middle ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to modern nation states. As a result, early medieval history-writing is much more fragmented. There have been few convincing syntheses of socio-economic change in the post-Roman world since the 1930s. Although, in recent decades, the rise of early medieval archaelogy has transformed our knowledge of the period, this has been adequately integrated into wider syntheses anywhere. This book aims to change this.

Chris Wickham received his DPhil from Oxford in 1975. He has taught at the University of Birmingham since then and is currently Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford. He has been editor of Past and Present since 1995.