Normans?

Originally posted by edgewaters Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl It is the same with the medieval Japan. There was an Emperor surrounded by hostile provinces, ruled by Daimyos. But they were all Japanese in the end. No, not at all. Again, you're projecting a notion of a French national identity backwards in time, before it existed. At that time, there were numerous groups who did not consider themselves "French"; Japanese had an island identity and all considered themselves Japanese, regardless of who their particular Daimyo might be. There were tiny minorities, like the Ainu, but they had no territories or leaders. There were no Burgundies or Brettonies or Basques or Gascons and if all these groups were considered French, then Adalberon wouldn't have bothered to give Capet the title of king of the Burgundians, Bretons, Basques and Gascons; "King of the French" would suffice, just as the Emperor of Japan was the Emperor of Japan.

Originally posted by edgewaters Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl Hmmm, I think you are not quite getting it. Capet had direct rule over the Royal domain but didn't have direct rule over Franci Occidentalis, but he was Overlord of Francia Occidentalis. His rule was somehow theoretical. Not only was it theoretical, it was illegitimate. It was just an empty proclamation by a corrupt bishop, without any basis in law, tradition, or reality. Ile-de-France was not the "Royal domain" of Francia Occidentalis. It was just a duchy before Adalberon's proclamation. The capitol of Western Francia had been Rouen from the 5th century, until the Treaty of Verdun, when Charles the Bald moved the Western Francian capitol to Compiegne. Paris was a vassal's fief, not the Royal Domain. In fact, Paris was demoted in power by Charles; the Edict of Pistes forbid six (out of nine) cities which had formerly minted coinage, from continuing to do so - Paris being one of them.

Edited by Quetzalcoatl - 31-Jul-2006 at 03:27

Anyway, ignoring Edgewater's and gcle's flawed opinions, we all came to the conclusion that the Normans were as french as it can get (purest of all French, in fact, in those days since they had little Germanic blood unlike the Francilians) and the Merovingians were the yoke of the French culture.

Now I'm asking you guys, Chilb and Exarchus, do think the burgundians (kingdom) were French prior to the Sun king conquests. THe Burgundians were part of the HRE and at one time ruled an empire within an empire. The ruling elite of the burgundians spoke one of the three main French dialects: provencal, still spoken in the region. However, looking at the Burgundians cavalry, they were akin to the German counterpart in equipment unlike the French cavalry (Normans, Angevin, Francilians etc)for the same era . Their architecture was a French-german hybrid.

Nowadays, it is hard to think of burgundians anything but french, but during the 1000-1600 were they French?

 

Edited by Quetzalcoatl - 30-Jul-2006 at 23:55

Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl Capet ruled Danes? You people are crazy.

That was the crown he received from the Archbishop of Reims ... his whole title was BS.

In actual fact he only ruled a little area, the Ile-de-France ... he was no more king of the Bretons or a number of other groups in France, than he was king of the Danes. I.e. Capet's claim is a big load of BS.

And the French nation can be traced back to this phoney claim. Adalberon was full of it .... you can't accept there was any truth to his proclamation, because, as you say, it's "crazy". Capet didn't inheirit any political legacy of Francia Occidentalis under the Carolinigians, just because Adalberon said so. Adalberon said he was King of Spain too! He ruled Spain about as much as he ruled France outside of his fief, which is to say, not at all.
    
    

Edited by edgewaters - 30-Jul-2006 at 12:31

Capet ruled Danes? You people are crazy.

Do you realise the contradiction here when saying Hugh Capet only ruled on Ile de France, and saying he ruled Gauls, Bretons, Danes, Aquitanians, Goths, Iberians and Gascons?


Edited by Exarchus - 28-Jul-2006 at 15:47

I'm a little bored for now, so I'll answer tomorow.

But, and in case you missed your own sources, they all clearly state France track it's existance from the Treaty of Verdun or was unified by Clovis.

If I may, the fact Hugh Capet was elected (and was the son of a previous king) is only a dynasty replacing another. The passage from the Franks to the Saxons in the HRE was a much bigger change, so using the same point I could strictly say the HRE was no the successor of the Carolingian Empire either.

Double (pro-Germanic) standards.

Originally posted by Edgewaters France was a duchy around Paris.

Well, Anglo-Saxon is used in political slang here to describe the negative aspects of the British model. It's mostly used as derogatory. We would rather use English or Scottish (British, more rarely) for normal terms.

Originally posted by edgewaters Lol, you really have a gift for twisting things. I don't know whether I should be amused or exasperated. The French don't speak a language that is really related to Franconian. Therefore, they cannot depend on language as a possible argument for inheiritance. That doesn't just apply to the French, it applies to everyone in the entire world who does not speak a language derivating from Franconian. None of them can claim a Franconian linguistic heritage. We identify groups in history based on a variety of things. Self-identification; language, etc. In France's case, three possible elements for heritage from the Franks could be political heritage, language, and geographical domain. Language I dispensed with immediatly for the simple reason that the French language has little in common with Franconian. That says nothing about how important language is in culture, it just says that it's not a possible legacy of the Franks for the French, since they don't speak a Franconian-based language. I wait in amusement for your next attempt to twist it all again.

Twist things? You first said, earlier in that thread, that Language was the dominating component of a culture. I'm sorry but that's not true

Old Frankish itself, Franc, isn't even attested but reconstructed from loan words in French, Flemish and Dutch.

Culture goes much beyond language, it includes religion, architecture, agriculture and many others. Reducing culture to sole language is... reducing.

Many groups are identified by language alone.

Yeah like the Basques do. The nationalists though are disputed in their own country. This is just wrong, it's much more than language. Can you say a Turk from Istanbul is the same than a Turkomen living in the steppes culturaly because they speak a related language? I just can't agree at all here.

I don't know how you do it.

You say the French culture is Gallo-Roman (let's say Gallo-Rhaetian but it's just a detail) but the Gallo-Roman culture was older than the Frankish one, it's was older than France itself. I don't that it stands, the only culture France can have is the one of a political structure since it has so many people in.

You've got the cart before the horse here. Are you quite sure you're not in a parallel dimension where time runs backwards? The French are the heirs of the Gallo-Romans, not the other way around. The French have ancestors who existed, but those ancestors weren't Frenchmen. They have ancestors going back to the caveman, do you think the caveman should be considered French? Or wait, I think I understand you now. The Frenchman is not descended from the caveman, because there were no Frenchmen around in the Paleolithic. Is that it?

What's with the personnal attack? For someone who has been accumulating anachronism I find that comment pretty out of place.

Of course the French have ancestors, bloody hell we all come Africa in the first place (supposedly), it's your statement French are Gallo-Roman you said it page 7:

I'm quoting: "The French are primarily the non-Germanic inhabitants, Gallo-Romans, that inhabited in the area and where dominated by the Franks".

I hate to cut it out, but in Gaul there were Germanic inhabitant already (here Germanic is a culture, not the people living between the two rivers). So according to you the Germanic people that lived in Gaul were: Primarily Non-Germanic inhabitants, Gallo-Roman?

Roman Gaul was multicultural too; it wasn't just Gauls that lived there. In fact, they had little notion of being a united people. There were a few tribal confederancies, but they had no common identity. The first time that anything looking like France gets an identity is Roman Gaul, and it was comprised of a myriad of different groups. Even some centuries-old Greek colonies!

But Roman Gaul had no political existance separated from the Empire. It wasn't even a single province, there were 4 (or 3, depending how you see things), Aquitania, Lugdunum, Narbonensis and Belgae.

The first thing wikipedia says about the history of France is that France's borders are almost identical to those of Roman Gaul, and then goes on to say how the Roman period developed not only the shape of France but also its language and religion. The next thing it says, it that the names "Francie" and "France" are two different things, the latter being originally the name of just a small kingdom around Paris.

We may not have been reading the same page because, if it also says France track it's existance legal existance to Clovis in 496 (so before even the battle of Vouill� here). You have taken the points that arranged you (although I'm not so sure the fact France more or less matchs Roman-Gaul is relevant since it's geography and people didn't care so much about geography).

It also says the Treaty of Verdun establish Francia Occidentalis which France evolved from and which represent only the legal establishment of the country.

It says also Western Francia is about the same land that is occupied by modern France, just smaller (and modern France is smaller than Gaul mind you).

Straight to the origin of the name part, I think you much have missed the largest and first part saying France comes from Francia Occidentalis directly and simply Francia (Frankland litteraly) when the HRE dropped the Media Francia and Francia Orientalis name. Even the article you use backs my point.


It then says "existance as a separate entity" (separate from the Frankish kingdom) began with the Treaty of Verdun, and modern France began when the Duke of France was crowned King.

Go look.

I suggest you to try it again (harder).

Yes, but modern France does not even descend from Western Francia. It descends from the Duchy of Ile-de-France, which expanded out from Paris.

The Duchy of France was part of the Kingdom of France. It's duke accessed to the throne. Until the first republic the Kings were uninterrupted. The Capetian dynasty was just another Frankish (in roots) dynasty replacing another one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_France

Note the first part of that article (there are disagreement on the establishment of France). Note that part too, the earliest known was Pharamond and Clovis was the first one to access true kinghood :).

Absolutely. For the Latin, see here: http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~econrad/lang/ln3.html Regis is the genitive of rex, indicating possession. So it wouldn't literally mean "King Childeric" more like "Childeric holds the kingship", or, more simply, "Childeric is king" (or perhaps the other way around ... my Latin isn't that good!)

Mine either, it's really old and rusty.

Absolutely. Many, perhaps all, religions were nothing but propaganda employed by some authority (even one as petty as a witchdoctor or chieftain supported by witchdoctors).

That can be then applied to basicly anyone, including modern leaders of the free world.

Of course! What do you think the term "Holy Roman Emperor" was? They didn't have a science of propaganda; they didn't understand it all that well, and they probably didn't have a word for it or recognize it as a phenomena (they had understood rhetoric mind you). But they sure employed it alot.

We were talking of Clovis and his conversion to christianism, not of the HRE here. I'm not so sure his conversion was an act of propaganda. More a reality on the land because several of his subjects, including Germanics, were christian. The HRE was different since the Emperor nearly controlled the pope for a moment under threats and used him for his political goals. Clovis was the opposite, he had to convert.

People had kings and saw them as legitimate sovereigns long before there was such a thing as Christianity. You were saying that no one could be a king unless sponsored by the church, except that there were kings around before there was a church (even the Romans had one, once). And there were very few Christians among the Franks before Clovis, so I don't see why they would need sponsorship of the church for their leader to be a legitimate king. Loads of primarily non-Christian peoples had kings, before and after the church was founded, and yes, they were "real" kings (though perhaps not in the manner of the absolute monarchs of the Renaissance era, but that's a different thing altogether).

But to claim a rule on Gaul, even northwestern one, Christianism was required to be accepted. That's how Clovis could munster armies of people from many origin united by faith against the Arianist Goths.

The whole point of the foederati was that they weren't subjects of Rome, but theoretically sovereign allies. Not necessarily equals, but sovereign. Rome was also theoretically bound to them.

Yeah, they were bound through treaty as ally and they didn't have the Roman Citizenship. They didn't have full sovereign since they were bound to defend Rome.

Anyway, you said they weren't kings but foederati. The terms are hardly mutually exclusive; in fact, being a king was almost a prerequisite for foederati status. The Romans would not make such a deal with a temporary tribal leader, they needed some guarantee that the individual really was a stable, long-term representative of his people able to make binding agreements.

Hum, most of those feoderati kings have been forgotten, were they so reliable? Seems to me it was really more warbands and warlords.

Alot of them also speak a non-French language related to Old Franconian.

But Antic Francia, on the map you posted, is writen straight on Wallonia and Northeastern France. Those are French speaking areas now.

Probably the reason people there speak French is because, being the heartland of the Frankish Kingdom, alot of people from the conquered territories in heavily Romanized areas ended up travelling there and doing business there and even settling down there. They didn't get assimilated because they were never far from the rest of the former Gallic provinces and the Romance languages and cultures were esteemed among Germanics.

So, language isn't the most determining factor of a culture. A culture can adopt a language that's not his.

A portion of it lay within northern Gaul after they were granted some lands there, I suppose.

Northern Gaul went to the Rhine. And most sources will clearly point the Franks settled in Northern Gaul.

Gaul doesn't egual France (despite all what is said). France excludes Belgium, Luxembourg and the western rhine of Germany.

You're confusing race and culture again. It doesn't matter what the ancestry of the Americans is (and dubious in any case) ... what matters is their cultural heritage, which is primarily English (irregardless of notions about "race")

Races don't exist, Germans have a culture but they were the biggest group that settled in the USA. Despite that, the English language prevailed, while the USA speak English they have a clearly disctinct culture from Britain.

Ergo => Language isn't the most defining point of a culture.

Related, as in, racially? No. But again, you're failing to grasp the difference between "race" and culture. If they speak a later form of a particular language, it is nearly certain that they have some cultural heritage with the speakers of the older language.

Races don't exist, there are many other factors beyond language that define a culture. Being religion, architecture, having more a ground or naval tradition, being more or less scientist of litterar etc...

Language is one part, yet not the dominating one, any other factor can be taken as a cultural bound.

For instance, Spanish is a Romance language, evolved from Roman, and they were a Roman province (even if they aren't

They aren't because they have a completly different culture than Rome had beyond the language and religion. I go to Spain on a regular basis, we in theory speak both a romance language and are catholic. Yet it's another world, the culture is completly different, between French (overall) and Spanish (same).

You just can't reduce culture to language.

What claims? Fragments are fragments ... and none, after Verdun, had a claim. As your wikipedia article makes clear, after Verdun, France began as as a "separate entity".

Francia Occidentalis was a Frankish kingdom, that's fact. The other two collapsed and neither Prussia, Venice or the Spanish Netherlands were Frankish Kingdoms.

I posted this before, but oh well: From AD 512, Paris was the capital of the Frankish king Clovis I, who commissioned the first cathedral and abbey. On the death of Clovis, the Frankish kingdom was divided with Paris as the capital of a much smaller kingdom. By the time of the Carolingian dynasty (9th century), it was little more than a feudal county stronghold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France#History

Capital of a much smaller kingdom, since the kingdom of Clovis was split in the Kingdoms of Paris, Orleans, Soisson and Reims. It doesn't mean Paris itself was small.

I don't see anywhere in that quote that Paris was a small city proper.

Besides a few decades under Clovis, Paris was a really minor and unimportant place until the time of the Capetians, who slowly raised it up to become a great city. The Capetians evolved out of minor Counts of Paris and Dukes of France (France being originally just Ile-de-France). Adalberon, archbishop of Reims, proclaimed: "Crown the Duke ... The throne is not acquired by hereditary right ... but for the goodness of his soul". That's where the name France comes from; a duchy, not a kingdom (though there is an etymological relationship).

France was originaly not just Ile de France, you're confusing the Duchy of France (which was much bigger than Ile de France). There was a king of France all that time long (see the link of the Kings of France timesline) that ruled as an overlord. The Kingdom of France was a feudal state where feudal dukes and counts ruled with a lot of power on their lands, although to have the religious right to rule their land they had to recognise the King.

Not to mention the Capetians were relatives of the Carolingian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_the_Great

Look, Hugh the Great, Hugh Capet's father, was the first Duke of France and the son of King Robert and the nephew of king Eudes. Any attempt to put the establishment of France to Hugh Capet is doomed to fail.

And Hugh Capet's "Kingdom of France" was just his old duchy, the Ile-de-France, at that time about 400 square miles of land in the immediate area of Paris. A territory he couldn't leave, because it was too dangerous for him outside of that little area.

You're confusing royal domains, the land he had a direct rule on, and the whole kingdom, which included feudal states. You don't say the Kingdom of Normandy or Anjou do you? The kingdom of France was Francia Occidentalis. Even your own sources point it.

People move around within a country. Cities become less important, then more important, then less important again. It happens all the time.

That still doesn't make Paris a small city proper.



I don't understand your surprise here, claiming the HRE and the Carolingian Empire are disctinct doesn't mean claiming France was the Carolingian Empire.

Then neither can the Count of Paris just because some archbishop thinks he's a really swell guy (even though everyone outside of a 20 mile radius of Paris wants to kill him).

The Count of Paris alone couldn't claim that of course.

The King of France could, see the timeline I gave you, there is an uninterrupted line of King of France until the revolution (apart maybe in the 100 years' for a short time, but then it was the King of England that claimed the title).

Gallo-Roman is just a term. It doesn't mean exclusively Gallic and Roman, just means "predominantly Romanized Gauls" or maybe even just "inhabitants of Roman Gaul". We call the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, even though the people that inhabited present-day England were more like Brito-Anglo-Friso-Saxo-Juto-Picto-Corno-Scoti. "Anglo-Saxon" just rolls off the tongue a little better! Most any person with a basic grasp of English history who uses the term doesn't mean a "race" but more like a cultural character of a certain time, or, the ethnicity that has its roots in that time.

But romanized Gaul is already wrong in essence. The Gauls were a Celtic people. The Roman gave the name to the whole landmass, which then disapeared. If you apply, strictly, the term Gaul to all inhabitant of Roman Gaul than the Franks themselves were Gauls. Misleading at least.

And only old conservative people using it as a derogatory term call the British, Anglo-Saxons.

EDIT: Quote fixing and some spelling


Edited by Exarchus - 28-Jul-2006 at 06:24