Modern historians of the Normans have tended to treat their enterprises andachievements as a series of separate and discrete histories. Such treatments arevalid and valuable, but historical understanding of the Normans also dependsas much on broader approaches akin to those adopted in this book. As thesuccessor volume to Norman Expansion: Connections, Continuities and Contrasts,it complements and significantly extends its findings to provide a fuller appreciationof the roles played by the Normans as one of the most dynamic andtransformative forces in the history of medieval ‘Outer Europe’. It includespanoramic essays that dissect the conceptual and methodological issues concerned,suggest strategies for avoiding associated pitfalls, and indicate how farand in what ways the Normans and their legacies served to reshape sociopoliticallandscapes across a vast geography extending from the remoter cornersof the British Isles to the Mediterranean basin. Leading experts in their fieldsalso provide case-by-case analyses, set within and between different areas, ofthemes such as lordship and domination, identities and identification, namingpatterns, marriage policies, saints’ cults, intercultural exchanges, and diaspora–homeland connections.The Normans and the ‘Norman Edge’ therefore presents a potent combinationof thought-provoking overviews and fresh insights derived from newresearch, and its wide-ranging comparative focus has the advantage of illuminatingaspects of the Norman past that traditional regional or national historiesoften do not reveal so clearly. It likewise makes a major contributionto current Norman scholarship by reconsidering the links between Normanexpansion and ‘state-formation’; the extent to which Norman practices andpriorities were distinctive; the balance between continuity and innovation;relations between the Normans and the indigenous peoples and cultures theyencountered; and, not least, forms of Norman identity and their resilience overtime. An extensive bibliography is also one of this book’s strengths.
