This volume centres upon the era conventionally labelled the 'Making of
the kingdom', or the 'Anglo-Norman' era in Scottish history. It
challenges current historiographical concentration on the
'feudalisation' of Scottish society as part of the wholesale importation
of alien cultural traditions by a 'modernising' monarchy, instead
offering a parallel analysis of the continuing vitality and centrality
of Gaelic culture and traditions within the twelth- and early
thirteenth-century kingdom.Part I (1070-1157) explores the mutation of the Gaelic-Scandinavian
kingship of Alba first into Scotia then into the hybridised medieval
state. This process is set into the wider context of the expansion of
Latin Christendom and of Frankish cultural norms, but the refashioning
of Scottish society is viewed more specifically in parallel to the
post-1066 reconstruction of England, and the projection of both insular
Anglo-Saxon and continental 'Norman' traditions into Wales and Ireland.Part II, focussing on the period 1157-1230, explores Scotland's role as
both dominated and dominator. It examines the redefinition of
relationships with England, Gaelic magnates within Scotland's
traditional territorial heartland and with autonomous/independent
mainland and insular powers. These interrelationships form the central
theme of an exploration of the struggle for political domination of the
northern mainland of Britain and the adjacent islands, the mechanisms
through which that domination was projected and expressed, and the
manner of its expression.