Framing the Early Middle Ages : Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800

In the most ambitious and ground-breaking survey of the early middle ages ever written, Chris Wickham moves away from the fragmentary tendency to view the history of the period as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states. Instead he provides a comparative history of the years 400-800 systematically analysing each of the regions of the early middle ages, from Denmark to Egypt. In doing so he creates a framework for early medieval social and economic history in Europe that is both innovative and authoritative.