Narrates the emergence of dynastic (neo-nation state) and church institutions in France, Italy, and Germany during the 9th and 10th centuries, contrasting the post-Carolingian order with Anglo-Saxon England. Several persevered into the pre-modern era and later. With the fall of Italy to the Lombards and Spain to Islamists, the center of a truncated Europe had moved north. The lasting importance of the Carolingian Franks lies in the spread of government and civil administration through the northern lands including Poland and Bohemia. In this era the allied Catholic Church became a force to be reckoned with (rather than merely the hallmark of a religious society). Carolingian learning, notably the copying of manuscripts but also innovative epistemology, set down the height of erudition and specifically the legacy of the Latins until the 12th century. The settlement of 812 crowned Charlemagne as a western emperor, fusing two kingdoms in his own right and separating them from the Byzantine lands. But Frankish rule was built on conquest and had already begun to sputter; relying on feudal vassals and missi dominici was too much for contemporary government especially in Lombardy, Bavaria, neo Hungary, and Saxony – even though later peoples would look back upon it as an idealized unity when forging their new state forms. The Danish, Saracen, and Magyar invasions acted as a solvent on the Carolingian state, which was partitioned under Louis, whose legacy is the establishment of the new nation-states as well as primogeniture. In this time, Nicholas I built up the independent role of the papacy.

The raids brought depopulation, agricultural decline, and people seeking protection from local strongmen. They hit hardest in France, hastening retreat to the country castle. Here the tendency to revert to pre-Carolingian traditions was most pronounced, here the author contends we most see the Carolingian breakup did not produce separate countries, but rather they were borne of different regional responses to anarchy. In France, it took more than two centuries for territorial and social restoration of order. Contra Wickham, there was no ‘caging of the peasant’: people willfully surrendered freedom from security from Viking raids. The criterion of nobility was ability to bear arms, not birthright. Vassalage lost stigma of servitude, gaining an ethos of common service and serving to demarcate the political classes. The ca 850 edicts of Charles the Bald required men to choose their lord, sanctioned the vassal’s oath, and sanctioned hereditary succession to the local fief. Thus the country would emerge into medieval feudalism, with 55 counties, up from 27 at the start of the 10th century. But the French rulers’ continued concession of lands to win the support of nobles all but bankrupt the Carolingian and Capetians: the monarchy did not regain really independent strength until 1100. Again the author contends feudalism did not produce anarchy but was an organic reaction. Its principles spread throughout Europe via the Spanish Reconquista, the Norman invasion of England, adoption in Germany and eastward; and would remain the basis of order down to 1789.

The history of post-Carolingian Italy is the struggle for control of the Lombard plain among two Frankish families, from Spoleto and Friuli, and one from Lucca.  As the raids in Italy were piratical, the towns continued to develop, under the tutelage of bishops; the role of counties weakened. Order was restored comparatively earlier, by the German Otto I in 961-62.

The Germans were the first to recover from anarchy, being less impacted by the raids and more inclined to retain elements of Carolingian government including a loyal aristocracy. Henry I prevented the breakup of eastern Frankish lands, his successor Otto I sought not to break the dukes but reasserted control over the royal demenses and the church in the duchies, so as to ally the church with the crown. Vassalage remained an onerous condition, marking another contrast with France. Otto’s crowning by the pope in 962 marked a turning point in progression to dynastic order in German lands under the Saxon dynasty, but its middle-term decline was germinated by its retroactive character.

England did not dissolve by result the Viking raids, as in France, but produced a more coherent, forward-looking response then the Germans: local government via the hundreds and the shires and a single monarchy from several pre-raid kingdoms. Alfred reorganized the military even while on the defensive, forging a mobile, unified force (i.e., not a local levy), a network of forts (burhs), and a navy for forward response. The forts became the basis of civil authority, as in Lombardy, France and to a lesser degree Germany; the hundreds extended the forts in promoting social order (e.g., responses to crime). By assuming responsibility for peace, the monarchy created a machinery for order where none had existed; this was extended beyond the Norman conquest.

The reestablishment of settled government broadened agriculture (notably in Italy), economic exchange, and indeed the purview of civilized northern Europe, most recently centered on Charlemagne’s Aachen but now more dispersed among Hungary and England. Monastic reform, another response to anarchy, also served to extend social order and played a related role in breaking down regional differences; but the church loosed sociopolitical forces which were to challenge the Saxon monarchy in the mid-11th century. Aristocratic hostility to Salian (successor to Saxon) reforms undermined royal authority. After a half century of struggle, a new order in central Europe emerged in 1122.