Peacemaking in the Middle Ages is a truly phenomenal book, the kind of book that excites me as a historian and fills me with energy for my next project. The title would suggest that this is a very niche book without a wide appeal, but I think that anyone with an interest in medieval history should buy a copy and read it – it’s barely over two hundred pages and the paperback edition retails for a fairly reasonable £25 so you really don’t have an excuse!
It also has a gorgeous cover
Bear with me here, but the structure of this book is an impressive thing to behold. Jenny Benham’s writing is direct and purposeful, it never says more than it has to, and each point is well structured and supported without being didactic or boring. It is a master class in efficient and engaging writing throughout. I wish I could write a book this well. Benham is wading through some fairly dense material and writing about subjects that it would be trivial to make boring, but she avoids getting lost in the weeds and delivers her book in just the length it needs to be. It’s phenomenal.
The book also has an excellent scope. Benham focuses exclusively on peacemaking between rulers and further narrows her work down to two case studies primarily focused on the twelfth century – the reigns of Henry II and his sons, Richard I and John, in England and the reigns of Valdemar I and his sons, Cnut VI and Valdemar II, in Denmark. These two case studies have the ideal overlap of similarity and differences to make for a very illuminating discussion. Both are cases of a father succeeded by two of his own sons, they’re both roughly contemporary, and both kingdoms endured an awkward relationship with their larger neighbour, France and the Holy Roman Empire respectively, but England and Denmark were also very different kingdoms facing very different challenges. Given that much of the book’s attention is on these case studies the work focuses primarily on twelfth and early thirteenth-century diplomacy, but it does draw on examples from earlier and later periods and the elements Benham breaks down are applicable beyond just that narrow period of time. While the processes around medieval peacemaking changed throughout the centuries, there were often core features that carried through the various periods and scholars from any period have a lot to learn from the twelfth-century examples.
Each chapter in the book focuses on one aspect of medieval peacemaking, such as the locations where rulers met with each other, the role of envoys, or the many rituals and behaviours associated with medieval peacemaking. Each chapter forms a coherent whole that is then elegantly built upon in later chapters. Given how complex the topic can be, Benham does an excellent job steering readers through the subject matter and no prior experience with medieval peacemaking is required to understand the book. The opening chapter is particularly strong with a fascinating exploration of the locations where rulers met with each other to make agreements. This slowly morphs into a discussion of how borders were perceived in the Middle Ages, examining questions like: where was the border between the Duchy of Normandy and the lands of the King of France? Benham rejects several previous definitions to point out the more complex and fluid understanding of borders that dominated medieval thinking, including how a border could simply be one point on a map – the location where the two rulers met. It’s really interesting and shows how the study of peacemaking is not an isolated subject but something that integrates into so much of what medieval historians do.
The book concludes with one of its strongest discussions, an examination of the flawed way that many historians conceive of the effectiveness of medieval peace treaties and agreements. Benham argues that while it is true that few peace treaties lasted for even five years without the resumption of hostilities between the two parties, declaring them failures based on this fact is missing several important points. Firstly, she notes that this kind of thinking often leads historians into a teleological trap, where they look at the result and then apply that knowledge back to the treaty. If hostilities resumed it must be due to a flaw in the treaty that the original authors missed. This can have far reaching implications, as an example she cites discussions of King John’s various treaties with King Philip II of France and how they are almost always viewed with the hindsight that John would eventually lose his French holdings and be driven from the continent. This can cause historians to judge historians against factors the participants could not have foreseen rather than looking at them in the context in which they were agreed.
The other aspect that these discussions often overlook is that the cause of the new hostilities may have nothing to do with the old treaty. Benham cites several examples where a treaty resolved a matter, only to have the two principal parties fighting each other within months about a completely different disagreement. Can we truly say the treaty failed if it seemingly resolved what it was meant to resolve? It’s hardly the fault of the treaty or its negotiators if a new issue arose so soon after the last one was put to bed. The lines of thinking Benham explores in the conclusion could have far reaching implications for how political and military historians discuss the ebb and flow of peace and war in medieval Europe and should be read by anyone who spends time with either subject!
It's hardly a very strong declaration in February to state that Peacemaking in the Middle Ages is one of the best books I’ve read this year – but I expect that come the end of the year it will still hold pride of place in my best of the year. It’s seriously that good, it’s not very long, and for an academic history book it’s practically cheap. You should definitely read it.