Charles West - Reframing the Feudal Revolution: Political and Social Transformation Between Marne and Moselle, c.800-c.1100

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If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes almost as many people to write a book, especially one as long in preparation as this. In first place, I should like to thank Rosamond McKitterick, who supervised the PhD thesis that was really this books first draft, and who has continued to offer tremendous advice and support ever since; and Chris Wickham, who supervised the MPhil dissertation in which I first grappled with the Feudal Revolution and the Carolingians, who examined the PhD, and who has been very generous with his time subsequently. I am acutely conscious of my debt to Matthew Innes and Stuart Airlie, who acted as examiners at different stages and gave me much less of a hard time than I deserved, and from whose thoughts I have benefited on many other occasions besides. I am very grateful to Liesbeth van Houts, who over a decade ago supervised an undergraduate dissertation which first led me to think about the twelfth century in relation to the ninth, and to Rgine le Jan, who facilitated a stay in Paris and made me feel very welcome there. I would also like to thank the anonymous Readers for this series, whose suggestions have greatly improved what follows. It need hardly be added that the errors in interpretation or detail that follow are entirely my own.

Many others have played a part in the slow gestation of this book, directly or indirectly. Lists are always invidious when incomplete, and this one is no exception; but it would be shameful not to register my gratitude to Aysu Dincer, Olga Magoula and Duncan Probert, all of whom I met in Birmingham; Helen Carrel, Thomas Faulkner, Julian Hendrix, Paul Hilliard, Christina Pssel, Christof Rolker and the GEMS in Cambridge; Rachel Stone in London; Christopher Tyerman in Oxford; Miriam Czock, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Sylvie Joye and Jean-Baptiste Renault in Germany and France; and Michael Raw and Mark Stephenson in Cumbria. Since 2008, Sheffield has provided a most convivial place to work, thanks to Sarah Foot, Julia Hillner, Simon Loseby, Amanda Power, Martial Staub and all my other colleagues in the History Department, both academic and support staff, as well as its students, notably those of HST 3115/6.

Debts to institutions may not be as personally felt as those to supervisors, examiners, colleagues and friends, but institutions are vitally important in enabling a long-term project like this to come to fruition. The Arts and Humanities Research Board, and then the Arts and Humanities Research Council, funded the postgraduate work from which this book grew, with the University of Birmingham and Emmanuel College providing the scholarly environment; I am grateful, too, to the Fellows of Hertford College for electing me to a Research Fellowship, and to the Drapers Company for providing the wherewithal for them to do so. I have also benefited from the resources of what I maintain to be the best library in the world, the Cambridge University Library, whose help in procuring the foreign-language material that research projects such as this require was invaluable: this book simply could not have been written without the University Library and its wonderful staff. Other libraries, archives and research institutes have also been very accommodating, particularly the Bibliothque Nationale and the Institut de recherche et dhistoire des textes in Paris, libraries in Epinal, Nancy, Oxford, Rheims, Trier and Verdun and archives at Bar-le-Duc, Chlons, Metz, Rheims and Troyes: my thanks to them all.