Colin Veach

The four realms of this book's title are England, Ireland, Wales, and Normandy. Colin Veach displays an admirable command of sources from Irish, French, and British archives as he assesses the scope and nature of high medieval seigneurial lordship through a case study of the rise and fall of the de Lacy family between the mid-twelfth and the mid-thirteenth centuries. Veach argues fairly convincingly that a transnational approach is the best way to understand much of the elite politics of this part of northwestern Europe during this period of some hundred years. This will probably be easiest to follow if you already have some grounding in the history of at least the Anglo-Norman colony in Ireland—the publisher could definitely have profitably included more maps.… (más)