Overview

In a young American republic seeking to define itself in relation to European cultural and political models past and present, it was assumed that the history of Europe’s peoples could be tracked across time over the longue durée. From this perspective, even the barbarous long-haired kings of the distant Merovingian era helped to define the political and cultural identity of a France—and, indeed, a Europe—whose actions Americans recognized as relevant to their own republic. Americans saw medieval parallels not only in the actions of successive French regimes, but in contemporary transatlantic issues of anxiety, including the adjudication of claims of political legitimacy and the debate over the perpetuation of racial slavery. That early American writers located their own meanings in the history of Merovingian Francia is indicative of a less linear, and more diverse and transnational, historiography than previously recognized.

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9781802700930

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Reviews

This is a very original book—I do not believe I have ever before seen a discussion of how early American writers treated the Merovingians. Halfond has done an enormous amount of research in newspapers, magazines, political and historical works, and schoolbooks. He also brings the reader interested in the Merovingians for their own sake up to speed on the most recent scholarship on the era. This slim but dense volume should generate attention from Americanists as well as medievalists. -- Constance B. Bouchard * Speculum 100, no. 4 (October 2025): 1167-69 *

Author Information

Gregory I. Halfond is Professor of History at Framingham State University. His prior publications include The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511–768 (2010), The Medieval Way of War (2015), and Bishops and the Politics of Patronage in Merovingian Gaul (2019).

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