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From Stenton to McFarlane: Models of Societies of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

David Crouch
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Extract

The growth of the study of medieval society is a process which falls well within living memory. Precisely how old it might be considered to be is a matter of definition. Taking social history to be the empirical reconstruction of past social and political systems, structures and their properties, then social history was a phenomenon of the inter-war period in Britain. If one looks for a significant date to mark its full emergence (so far as we are considering later medieval society) then there is no date more significant than 1929, when Frank Merry Stenton delivered the Ford Lectures, which set in train the publication of The First Century of English Feudalism; a seminal event in the writing of social and medieval history in this country.

Type
From Knighthood to Country Gentry, 1050–1400?
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 5 , December 1995 , pp. 179 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1995

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References

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