This is the fourth of the medieval history lectures.  In the run-through of politics, I cover major political and power questions from the end of Rome to the end of the fifteenth century.  This lecture talks about the breakdown of Carolingian power, control of land in the absence of centralized states, and the Vikings (and who doesn’t love the vikings…although honestly, I don’t talk that much about them.)  I spend at least some time at the end talking about the scholarly debate surrounding “feudalism” and what the hierarchy of society looked like during the tenth century.

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