Frankish Neighbours: Carolingian Foreign Relations in the Ninth Century

• Applicant: Samuel Ottewill-Soulsby, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 563173864

This project rewrites the political history of ninth-century Europe by examining the Carolingian empire from the perspective of its neighbours. It will show how the Frankish world was fundamentally shaped by changes taking place far beyond its borders, revealing a multipolar, interconnected Europe in doing so. For over a century, the Carolingian empire was the greatest power in western Europe. By 790 the territory ruled by Charlemagne (r.768-814) stretched from Denmark to Dalmatia and from Brittany to Bohemia. The Carolingian annals are filled with records of successful campaigning, while Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard reported a saying in Byzantium that ‘if a Frank is your friend, he is not your neighbour.’ The history of ninth-century foreign relations has been told almost exclusively from the Carolingian perspective, in large part because most of the surviving sources are Frankish. The problems with this approach are manifold. In addition to prioritising Carolingian interpretations of events, this turns the neighbouring peoples and polities of the empire into passive spectators and places to be acted upon, rather than agents in their own right. Scholarly neglect has wider repercussions for our understanding of the Carolingian empire as well. Debates about whether it declined in the ninth century have been conducted on the basis of internal developments. Little attention has been paid to how changes within the neighbours of the Franks shaped Carolingian politics. Finally, discussion of relations between the Carolingians and specific polities misses trends and connections that were taking place across Europe, affecting all the actors involved. Frankish Neighbours will respond to these problems by viewing the Carolingian empire from the outside. It examines five case studies, Brittany, Benevento, Denmark, Moravia and Muslim Spain, using a more detailed understanding of their ninth century history to reconsider their relations with the Franks. It will ask 1) how they changed in the period between 790 and 890, 2) how those changes impacted the Frankish world, and 3) how Carolingian rulers responded to these challenges. In doing so, the project will challenge the dominant narrative of the period created and maintained by Carolingian hegemonic power, revealing a more complex and polyvocal world. It will also take the currently isolated histories of the polities it studies and bring them together to demonstrate a fundamentally interconnected Europe.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants