Jón Viðar Sigurðsson and Hans Jacob Orning

Medieval and Modern Civil Wars

(Brill, 2021), 316 pp. $200

This collection of essays brings together a variety of scholars and differing methodological approaches to bear on the history of civil conflict in twelfth and thirteenth century Scandinavia. The comparative perspectives collected here include essays examining the phenomenon of civil war in high medieval Scandinavia through the lenses of history, political science, law, anthropology, sociology, and literary analysis. At the heart of this collection is the desire to clarify the distinctions and continuities between medieval and modern civil wars without letting such analysis be colored by modern experiences and assumptions. It is all too easy to anachronistically project the familiar experiences and patterns of modern civil conflicts (such as the American Civil War in the nineteenth or the Spanish Civil War in the twentieth century) on a medieval socio-political context in which political power was far more decentralized and in which national identity counted for far less than familial bonds or loyalty to a local community. The emergence of centralized states from decentralized feudal monarchies has been addressed in terms of the history of law and finance (Joseph Strayer’s Medieval Origins of the Modern State), geo-politics and international relations theory (Andrew Latham’s Theorizing Medieval Geopolitics), and intellectual or philosophical history (Francis Oakley and Carey Nederman, among others). What this particular volume accomplishes is to examine the process of state formation within the geographic and historical confines of Scandinavia, and the particular emphasis on civil war offers potentially fruitful ground for similar comparative studies devoted to other regions and cultures in medieval Europe.

The book opens with an introductory chapter co-authored by the editors that provides a thorough survey of the recent historiography on the political theory of civil wars and of civil war in medieval Scandinavia. This chapter is especially useful in contextualizing the development of contemporary political theories of civil conflict (e.g., Kaldor’s “New Wars” thesis) and highlighting the difficulties in applying national theories of conflict (such as Hobbes and Clausewitz) to a medieval context where few of the accepted norms of modern conflict apply. This thread is expanded on in the first two essays. “Constant Crisis” (co-authored by Orning and Henrik Vigh, an anthropologist) begins by tracing the history of modern political theory. Vigh and Orning argue that modern political theory tends to be based on philosophical assumptions derived either from a pessimistic model (Hobbesian and Machiavallian) that views the nation-state as a necessary historical development to protect human beings from the cruelty of nature and the threat of violence from their fellow human beings, or romantic idealism (via Rousseau) that glorifies the pre-national “state of nature” and the purity of the “noble savage” (i.e., indigenous, non-nationalist societies) as morally purer and more admirable than the nation-state that supplanted them. Vigh and Orning assert that neither of these philosophical conceptions adequately explain the dynamics of tribal and pre-national societies, and fault both philosophical perspectives for tending to privilege a teleological reading of history that assumes there is an “ideal state” to which all societies are progressing in history; as a result, scholars of both persuasions give scant attention to understanding the historical development of societies within their own historical context.

This critique leads the authors to adopt a perspective informed by the anthropological work of E. E. Evans-Pritchard in Sudan and Vigh’s own studies of recent conflict in Guinea-Bissau, where tribal kinship networks and patron-client relationships play vital roles in shaping political order and conflict. Vigh and Orning’s contribution highlights how civil conflict occurs in the context of conflicts between rival groups of elites who utilized their access to resources to develop patron-client relationships with larger groups and mobilize resources both for peacetime governance and for war-making. These reciprocal relationships in Guinea-Bissau and medieval Scandinavia are further expanded upon in the second chapter, “Multipolar Micropolitics” (authored by Sigurđsson and Vigh), which offers a series of valuable case studies in Guinea-Bissau that shed light on similar group dynamics in medieval Scandinavia. Medieval Scandinavian military leaders had to retain the loyalty of their followers (via gift-giving, for example) in exchange for service from their vassals and household retainers. Thus, comparative study helps highlight common patterns in patron-client relations across time and cultures: for example, the recruitment of soldiers in both societies tended to center on young men of low social status who would be willing to trade loyal military service in exchange for protection and status.

The third chapter, co-authored by Orning and Frederick Rosén, examines the thirteenth-century Sverris Saga. The saga offers a colorful account of the rise to power and reign of the Norwegian king Sverre Sigurdsson in the latter half of the twelfth century. Orning and Rosén examine how the author narrates events and draws on Biblical imagery (such as the prophet Samuel and king David) to both legitimize Sverre’s claim to power and demonstrate the superiority of government by a unitary sovereign ruler. Seen in this light, the saga functions not simply as a narrative history of an individual ruler, but a political treatise intended to demonstrate the superiority of a new and more assertive form of monarchic governance and articulate a sense of national unity that would be built upon by future Norwegian rulers. In a similar vein, the fourth chapter (authored by Rosén and Helle Vogt) traces the evolving concept of private property in medieval Norway in relation to the growth of the Norwegian monarchy under Sverre. Rosén and Vogt argue that private property was an integral concern of the emerging monarchic state, as powerful rulers such as Sverre justified their claim to authority by pledging monarchic protection to loyal subjects while simultaneously depending on the taxation of private property to fund the nascent monarchy. A particular highlight of this section is its discussion of the relation of private property to civil war, as the authors analyze how Norwegian monarchs had to balance their constant need for funding against the possible danger of inciting a revolt if they pressed their subjects too hard.

The fifth chapter, authored by Ebrahim Afsah and Jenny Benham, returns to an anthropological perspective by comparing the emergence of Afghani national identity in the context of civil wars and foreign invasions before examining similar processes in medieval Denmark; of particular note is the authors’ careful distinction between the emergence in both of these societies of ideals of statehood from the experiences of these conflicts (i.e., a growing sense of common national identity, belief in legitimate authority, rule of law, etc.) and the actual practices of governance in medieval Denmark and modern Afghanistan. This comparison between Afghan and Scandinavian state formation is continued in chapter six (authored by Afsah and Sigurđsson) with an examination of peace-making processes in medieval Iceland and modern Afghanistan, particularly the centrality of gift-giving in both societies as a diplomatic tool for achieving peace; the chapter also includes an excellent examination of the structural causes for violence (tribal, ethnic, and religious conflict, for example) in both societies, providing a helpful analysis as to why Scandinavian societies gradually coalesced into more centralized monarchies whereas such processes have never taken root in Afghanistan.

Stephen D. White’s contribution in the seventh chapter is welcome but somewhat unusual when taken in the context of this book. Unlike the other essays presented in this volume, White’s focus is not on medieval Scandinavia, but the Angevin empire of Henry II and the rising led by the Young King against his father in 1173-1174. White’s chief aim is to demonstrate the insufficiency of terms such as “civil war” or “revolution” for describing the war between the two Henrys; in White’s reading, these classifications ignore the central role of longstanding structural tensions in a decentralized and conflict-prone monarchy. The immediate cause of the war lay in Henry II’s decision to anoint his son as co-ruler while denying him the ability to act as an equal monarch. This created an unsustainable legal crisis that drove the frustrated Young King to forcibly assert his rightful claim to power through war against his father. As White amply demonstrates, this conflict over legal rights occurred on top of long-standing tensions between the feudal magnates of Normandy and England and Henry II, and these structural tensions provided ample reason for the barons to aggressively pick sides as best suited their interests. While White’s discussion of the legal casus belli and baronial resentments preceding the conflict and the military campaigns is illuminating and well worth consideration, his larger argument that the rising of the Young King should not be classified as either civil war or rebellion, and that to do so “creates confusion” and is “misleading” (-/pg. 219) is itself possibly confusing and misleading. White is not wrong to observe that the decentralized Angevin monarchy was prone to conflict and violent outbursts that do not typically get treated as acts of rebellion or civil war; it is much harder, however, to then leap to the conclusion that evidence of long-term structural tensions within the Angevin state therefore invalidates the conventional classification of the Young King’s uprising as a revolt or a civil war. Endemic structural tensions are a frequent and arguably necessary precondition for the outbreak of civil conflict in any context: consider, for example, the importance of political tensions in relation to the institution of slavery in the decades prior to the American Civil War in the nineteenth century, or the thorny structural tensions between monarchic and Parliamentary power in England prior to the English Civil War in the seventeenth, or the complex knot of constitutional crises and personal ambitions that fomented the civil wars of the late Roman republic in the first century B.C. Scholars in these fields frequently acknowledge and address these long-standing tensions without leaping to conclude that each of these societies were in a state of perpetual war, or that “civil war” cannot serve as an apt descriptor of internal conflict; on the contrary, one could argue (convincingly, in the judgement of this reviewer) that such structural tensions and the emergence of endemic violence are often necessary preconditions for civil war and rebellion. Additionally, we have ample testimony of contemporaries to Henry II’s own reign who appreciated the comparative peace of his rule as opposed to the preceding turbulent “Anarchy” under Stephen and Matilda, which would seem to challenge the thesis that Henry II’s reign must needs be understood as one of a “constant state of war” between the monarch and his barons. However, if White’s argument constitutes “a bridge too far” in places, that does not make it any less worth reading; on the contrary, his stimulating analysis of the sources and challenges of conventional wisdom merit serious consideration even if his conclusions are not always convincing.

The final three essays nicely round out this collection by examining processes of peace-making, distinctions between pre-state and post-state (nationalist) wars, and the role of political theology in medieval warfare. Gerd Althoff’s “The Formation of Trust” provides an excellent analysis of mediation in medieval Scandinavia and the role mediators played in negotiating an end to civil wars, as well as the role of public rituals in cementing and maintaining negotiated peace settlements in medieval Scandinavia. In contrast, Øyvind Østerud’s “Rise and Fall of the Leviathan” is an examination of the “military revolution” hypothesis, which famously asserts that the increased needs for war-making in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries drove more complex processes of centralized control (such as taxation and conscription) that laid the foundation for the centralized and bureaucratic nation-states that came to replace the decentralized feudal monarchies of medieval Europe. Østerud challenges this thesis by pointing to its limitations, particularly its failure to explain why many regions subject to intense violence in the modern world (such as Somalia and Yugoslavia) have experienced ferocious violence with little evidence of state formation (such as Afghanistan and Somalia), and the total absence of other non-military factors (such as the emergence of supportive political ideologies, favorable economic forces, international relations, or ethnic solidarity, for example) that play a key factor in successful political centralization. The final chapter, John Comaroff’s “Reflections on Political Theology,” ties together the central arguments from the preceding chapters to insights of political theory, highlighting in particular the shortcomings of teleological histories that assume a fixed direction of progress in human history (i.e., the inevitable and progressive evolution of centralized and more peaceful societies). Comaroff instead emphasizes the “endemic” and constant nature of social conflict, such as tensions between centralizing and decentralizing forces, or differing ideological factions, that are inherent within all political societies regardless of whether or not such stresses result in armed combat.

Interdisciplinary studies such as this can be difficult to execute convincingly, particularly given the inherent difficulty of applying methodologies from contemporary social sciences (such as political science and anthropology) to an ancient or medieval context where viable data is often lacking. At their worst, such attempts can suffer from overconfidence in applying modern scientific methods to a historical subject with insufficient data to support a desired conclusion, resulting in the anachronistic projection of modern values and concerns inappropriately on the past. Thankfully, that is not case in this volume, as Sigurđsson, Orning, and the individual contributors have shown careful tact and humility in their approach to the sources and their usage of comparative methodologies. The editors deserve credit for ensuring that the individual chapters can be read profitably either as stand-alone essays or as complimentary pieces of scholarship. This book offers a welcome attempt to illuminate the nature of civil conflict in medieval Scandinavia, and should be read not only by specialists of Scandinavian history, but more broadly by scholars of political history and warfare in medieval Europe.

Trevor J. Davis, M.A.
Founders Classical Academy of Corinth