The Medieval Frontiers of Latin Christendom

Expansion, Contraction, Continuity

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, James Muldoon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754659730
• eBook ISBN: 9781351885768
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The aim of this first volume in the series "The Expansion of Latin Europe" is to sketch the outlines of medieval expansion, illustrating some of the major topics that historians have examined in the course of demonstrating the links between medieval and modern experiences. The articles reprinted here show that European expansion began not in 1492 following Columbus's voyages but earlier as European Christian society re-arose from the ruins of the Carolingian Empire. The two phases of expansion were linked but the second period did not simply replicate the medieval experience. Medieval expansion occurred as farmers, merchants, and missionaries reduced forests to farmland and pasture, created new towns, and converted the peoples encountered along the frontiers to Christianity. Later colonizers subsequently adapted the medieval experience to suit their new frontiers in the New World.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Editor's Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Expansion of Europe I
• 2 The American Frontier - Frontier of What?
• 3 European Colonial Experience: A Plea for Comparative Studies
• 4 The Significance of the Frontier in the Middle Ages
• 5 Medieval Real Estate Developments and Freedom
• 6 Colonization Activities in the Latin Kingdom
• 7 Missionary Problems in the Thirteenth Century: A Study in Missionary Preparation
• 8 Outsiders by Birth and Blood: Racist Ideologies and Realities around the Periphery of Medieval European Culture
• 9 The Closing of the Medieval Frontier, 1250-1350
• 10 The Transfer of Colonial Techniques from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic
• 11 The Medieval Background of European and American Oceanic History
• 12 The Middle Ages in the Conquest of America
• 13 The Iberian Background of Latin American History: Recent Progress and Continuing Problems
• 14 The Legacy of the Middle Ages in the American Wild West
• 15 The Pre-Columbian Discovery of America
• 16 Christopher Columbus and his Enterprise to the Indies: Scholarship of the Last Quarter Century
• 17 European Expansion before Columbus: Causes and Consequences
• 18 The Inter-Atlantic Paradigm: The Failure of Spanish Medieval Colonization of the Canary and Caribbean Islands
• Index