© Columbia University Press
Domination and Lordship: Scotland, 1070-1230
Paper, 400 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-7486-1497-4
$40.00
March, 2011
Cloth, 400 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-7486-1496-7
Edinburgh University Press
$125.00
Richard Oram concentrates on the era commonly known as the "making of the kingdom," or the Anglo-Norman era of Scottish history. He balances a traditional historiographical focus on the "feudalization" of Scottish society and its wholesale importation of alien cultural traditions with a more recent emphasis on the continuing vitality and centrality of twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century Gaelic culture.
Part I explores the transition from the Gaelic kingship of Alba to the hybridized medieval state, examining Scotland's role as both dominated and dominating country. It discusses the redefinition of relationships among the English, Gaelic magnates operating within Scotland's traditional territorial heartland, and autonomous or independent mainland and insular powers. These interactions lie at the center of an intriguing investigation about political domination in northern mainland Britain and adjacent islands, as well as a the mechanisms and manner through which that domination was projected and expressed. Part II thematically explores central aspects of the society and culture of late eleventh- and early-thirteenth-century Scotland, which gave character and substance to the emerging kingdom. It considers the evolutionary growth of Scottish economic structures, changes in the management of land-based resources, and the manner in which secular power and authority were acquired and exercised. These themes are developed in discussions of the emergence of urban communities and in the creation of a new noble class. Religion is examined both in terms of the development of the Church and the religious experience of the lay population.