Visigothic Spain 409 - 711 1st Edition

by Roger Collins (Author)

9 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1405149662

ISBN-10: 1405149663

Why is ISBN important?

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers

from

Other Sellers

See all 6 versions

In stock.
Usually ships within 2 to 3 days.

Ships from and sold by SuperBookDeals---.

List Price: $66.50 Details

Save: $15.68 (24%)

19 new from $54.80

$3.99 delivery: April 14 - 20

This history of Spain in the period between the end of Roman rule and the time of the Arab conquest challenges many traditional assumptions about the history of this period.

Presents original theories about how the Visigothic kingdom was governed, about law in the kingdom, about the Arab conquest, and about the rise of Spain as an intellectual force.
Takes account of new documentary evidence, the latest archaeological findings, and the controversies that these have generated.
Combines chronological and thematic approaches to the period.
A historiographical introduction looks at the current state of research on the history and archaeology of the Visigothic kingdom.

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Charles River Editors
Paperback
$5.70
Roger Collins
14
Paperback
$36.99
Roger Collins
11
Hardcover
$76.47
Joseph F. O'Callaghan
42
Paperback
$29.95
Dario Fernandez-Morera
356
Hardcover
$25.28
Santiago Castellanos
1
Hardcover
$74.36

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Roger Collins
14
Paperback
$36.99
Joseph F. O'Callaghan
42
Paperback
$29.95
Roger Collins
11
Paperback
$40.47
Dario Fernandez-Morera
356
Hardcover
$25.28
Joseph F. O'Callaghan
35
Paperback
$30.47
Janet L. Nelson
162
Hardcover
$24.95

Special offers and product promotions

Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now
Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Readers interested in more detailed accounts of Spanish history will ... find this book very accessible." British Bulletin of Publications

"There is much to admire and enjoy in this volume … highly readable and impressively researched work." History

From the Inside Flap

Between the end of Roman rule in the early fifth century and the Arab conquest in the eighth, Spain’s destiny lay with the Visigoths, a confederacy of different ethnic groups formed in the Balkans in the later fourth century. Taking account of important new documentary evidence and of the latest archaeological findings, the author presents a wealth of original theories, challenging many traditional assumptions about Visigothic Spain – about how the Visigothic kingdom was governed, law in the kingdom, the nature and methods of the Arab conquest, and the rise of Spain as an intellectual force in the West.

The book falls into two parts: the first providing a chronological overview of political and military events; the second reviewing the evidence for social life and organization in Visigothic Spain. A historiographical introduction summarizes the current state of research on the history and archaeology of the period.

Start reading Visigothic Spain 409 - 711 (A History of Spain Book 1) on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Product details

Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell; 1st edition (July 11, 2006)
Language : English
Paperback : 272 pages
ISBN-10 : 1405149663
ISBN-13 : 978-1405149662
Item Weight : 14.1 ounces
Dimensions : 6.1 x 0.82 x 9.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,684,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #825 in Middle Eastern History (Books)
- #4,936 in European History (Books)
- #7,314 in Middle East History

Customer Reviews:
9 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		37%
4 star		29%
3 star		34%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Joaquín Zaragoza Rojas

Excellent book, bad edition.

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a very interesting book, which can be read like a novel but thoroughly documented (a feature typical in history books written by English authors). But the digital edition is quite poor, because the font is inadequate for reading in a Kindle ebook, it has no index with hyperlinks to the different chapters, the hyperlinks to the notes are badly located, and the notes are no hyperlinks to return to the maintext.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

mjare

Very good depiction of the very interesting history of the Iberian Peninsula.

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2017

I was always wondering why the majority of scholars assumes that the veracity of historical sources, which come from the historical period that is subsequent to the historical period described by them is lower than those coming from times closer to the described historical period. Such attitude to the historical sources on the rough history of the Visigothic Spain is present in the book entitled ''Visigothic Spain 409 - 711'' by the British medievalist Roger Collins. Author all the time remains very prudent in making any statements that sometimes one can have impression that his precaution is even exaggerated. For instance author completely dismisses the historicity of the count Julian, the governor of Ceuta, who because of the personal reasons betrayed Roderic making him the last king of the whole and independent Visigothic kingdom. Authors argument that the issue with the count Julian is mentioned in the historical source that is several centuries younger than described events is not convincing. One has to remember that the sources that were contemporary to the describing events not necessarily survived to our times. Moreover it is also good to remember that ''there is no smoke without fire''. When scholars remain too prudent in their analyses of historical sources they can finish their work with totally wrong conclusions. In the extreme cases such analysis could finish with the completely wrong (or even absurd) conclusions, like some people living at the turn of the 19th and 20th century were even able to the deny the existence of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the issues mentioned above I regard the book on the Visigothic Spain by Roger Collins as a solid scholarly work that is well-written and very informative.

Helpful

JPS

Dispelling long-held beliefs

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2012

There aren't that many book in English which summarize in a single volume the 300 hundred plus years of history of the Visigoth Kingdom in Spain (and in the South of France). Even if not the only one, this one seems to be the most recent one available. While perhaps not perfect, it does cover all the ground rather well and offers interesting discussions of a society and civilization about which we know little and generally learn even less about. The book is structured in two parts.

The first half (a bit less than 150 pages) is a summary in five chapters of the Kingdom's political history, from AD 409, just before Alaric and his Visigoths attack and pillage Rome, down to 711 and the Arab Conquest. It offers some very valuable insights about their arrival in Spain as "federate" allies of the declining Roman Empire and on the establishment of a powerful Visigoth Kingdom in Iberia and Southern France during the second half of the 5th century. It also shows how the Kingdom survived the death of its King in battle against the Franks and the loss of most of its territories north of the Pyrenees and reinvented itself into an elected monarchy, how it converted to Catholicism and how it had to contend with the Eastern Roman Empire which reconquered a coastal strip of Spain during the reign of Justinian and held on to it for three-quarters of a century. Finally, this first section examines what it terms "the Visigoth Twilight", the nature of the Arab Conquest, and the rather parlous state of the Kingdom, racked with civil war, when it happened.

The author makes a number of very interesting points, showing for instance that the defeat in AD 507 at the hands of the Franks occurred at a time when many of the Goths seem to have been resettling in Spain. Another interesting element is to view the Goths more as an army rather than the traditional "migration" of a whole population. A third point is to show that their origins were rather mixed rather than mostly "Germanic" with numerous elements having been added or having dropped out along the way as the army moved in and out of Italy into Aquitaine, then into Spain, then back again into Aquitaine where they were settled by the Empire, and then again into Spain and eastwards into Narbonnensis. A related point, in line with the current view about what used to be called "the Great Barbarian Invasions" is the relatively small numbers of the Visigoths. Roger Collins estimates them at around 20000 for a total population of about a million in the whole of Iberia (modern Spain plus modern Portugal). While his estimates are no more than educated guesses and the number he comes up with might apply to warriors only, the total population estimate could perhaps also be doubled. Anyway, they clearly made up significantly less than 10% of the total population and probably even less than half of that. Another very interesting point is to show how the political institutions changed with a shift from a dynastic monarchy from an elected one. The election being controlled by a very small number of families (Collins believes they were about two dozen) which shared among themselves the palatial positions, the bulk of the land and at least most of the main bishoprics. It was such an oligarchic system which was in place, in which none of its members wanted the King to become too strong, that was in place on the eve of the Arab Conquest, which Collins shows as being essentially opportunistic rather than planned in advance. Rather than dealing the death blow to a decaying Kingdom, as the Visigoth regime has traditionally been portrayed, the onslaught seems, according to the author, to have taken advantage of extraordinary favourable circumstances when a new King had violently seized the throne from his predecessor and was facing civil war.

The second section deals with society and culture and is, if possible, even more interesting. It deals, respectively, with books and readers, showing to what extent the Spanish Church, but also the Visigoth Kings imported books, mainly from Byzantine Africa. It also relies heavily on archaeology of cemeteries, churches, rural and urban settlements, showing how much progress has been made over the last couple of decades prior to the book's publications. Cemeteries and churches that were believed to be Gothic are now being re-assessed, with the origin of churches being often much more complex than initially believed. Some of them seem to have been built, or at least repaired and modified according to late-Roman and early-Byzantine patterns or even in the first decades following the Moslem Conquest. Rural archaeology also shows how the Roman villa system decayed and was replaced by hamlets and villages of self-sufficient dwellers. Urban archaeology, and the two case studies of Merida and Carthagena, in particular, tells a fascinating story of how these cities started to decline at the end of the Empire, before shrinking during the Visigoth period. Finally, the last chapter deals with the so-called Visigoth laws and demonstrates, among much else, the role they played in the development of a common Gothic identity between a very small number of warriors and conquerors and the overwhelming majority of pre-existing inhabitants of the peninsula during the 7th century.

Finally, it should be noted that this book, like all others in the series, tends to be a scholarly one. Accordingly, it may not correspond to everyone's tastes, despite being just an overview. Some may also find that some sections, whether the first part on the Kingdom's political history, or the second part, on the society and culture, are either too long or too short, or enter into discussions that may be found to be tedious. Because this is merely an overview, although a comprehensive and well-structured one, all that the reader needs to do in most cases is to just skip a couple of pages.

17 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

JPS

Dispelling long-held beliefs

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 13, 2012

Verified Purchase

6 people found this helpful

Angharad Gask

Nice summary

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2014

Verified Purchase

Nice summary, but focused on history, rather than the archaeology and frankly increasingly dated. A more uptodate book on the archaeology is needed to survive THAT college essay.

Mr. WA Bowman

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2013

Verified Purchase

Provides a good background to pre-Moorish Spain about which there are many books as there are about the post-Moorish Spain.

See all reviews

Visigothic Spain 409 - 711 1st Edition

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Customers who bought this item also bought

Special offers and product promotions

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Inside Flap

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries