The Civilizing Process Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Wiley Blackwell 2000) by Norbert Elias

Author:Norbert Elias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

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State Formation and Civilization

ảnt parts of Poitou and Saintonge; Artois, Valois, Vermandois; the region ens and a large part of the region around Beauvais. "The lord of Paris and s has become the greatest territorial lord in northern France." He had he Capetian house the richest family in France"." His domain had utlets to the sea. In other territories of northern France, in Flanders, pagne, Burgundy and Brittany, his influence was increasing in proportion s power. And even in the south he already controlled a not inconsiderable

is Capetian dominion was still anything but an integrated territory. een Anjou and the Orléans region lay the domain of the Count of Blois. In uth the coastal districts around Saintes and, further east, Auvergne, were as carcely connected to the northern regions. But the latter, the old family aim together with Normandy and newly conquered areas stretching beyond to the north, already constituted a fairly unified bloc in a purely ographical sense.

Even Philip Augustus did not yet have "France" in our sense in view, and his al dominion was not this France. What he aimed at above all was the territorial, ilitary and economic expansion of his family power and the subjugation of its ost dangerous competitors, the Plantagenets. In both these aims he succeeded, on Philip's death the Capetian dominions were roughly four times as large as at is accession. The Plantagenets, by contrast, who had lived hitherto more on the ntinent than on the island—and whose administration in England itself was ade up as much of continental Normans and people from their other mainland ssessions as of natives of the island—now controlled on the mainland merely art of the former Aquitaine, the area north of the central and western Pyrenees ong the coast as far as the Gironde estuary under the name of the duchy of Guyenne, apart from that there were a few islands off the coast of Normandy. The balance had shifted against them. Their power had decreased. But thanks to their island dominion it was not broken. After a time the balance on the mainland shifted back in their favour. The outcome of this struggle for hegemony in the former western Frankish area long remained undecided. It appears that Philip Augustus regarded as his chief rivals after the Plantagenets the counts of Flanders; and that a new power centre had indeed come into existence there is shown by the whole subsequent history of France. Philip is reputed to have once said that either Francia would become Flemish or Flanders French. He certainly did nor lack awareness that in all these conflicts among the

lesser territorial houses, what was at issue was supremacy or the loss of independence. But he could still imagine Flanders equally well as Francia as dominating the whole area.

7. Philip Augustus' successors at first held firm to the course that he had set: they sought to consolidate and further extend the enlarged dominion. No Sooner was Philip Augustus dead than the barons of Poitou turned back

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