Baronial Reform And Revolution In England 1258-1267, edited by Adrian Jobson

For reasons that are either too obscure or too personal to wish to explain in detail, I am fascinated by the problems of legitimacy that governments have faced throughout their history [1].  This book is an example of depth and breadth of that particular interest to a degree that many people would likely find difficult to understand.  In the period between 1258 and 1267 England faced one of its many crises of legitimacy during the Plantagenet period as the son of John I (most famous for signing the Magna Carta) faced rebellious barons who wanted to limit his power and set up Simon de Montfort as a figurehead or regent or Lord Protector of sorts.  The era is one of the more obscure periods of division within English history and when it is studied it is usually done so from the point of view of being a precursor to the English Civil War of nearly four hundred years later, another period where there was a crisis of legitimacy within the English speaking political world.

So, given that this book from the De Re Militari is a book that will potentially be of interest to someone who is as much of a political/military history nerd as I am, there are at least a few aspects of this book that ought to explain its interest:  my general fondness for esoteric and odd areas of history, the way that this book consciously tries to bring to light areas that are obscure even to specialists on the troubled history of Plantagenet England like the political worldview of different classes within England and the naval history of the conflict, all of which are largely unknown areas of a largely unknown era within history as a whole.  The result, I hope, is a collection of enjoyable essays that takes up, at 250 pages, a rather small demand of reading time and will hopefully be a historical resource for a time period that few people know about or care about.  Whether or not the book will offer any substantial insights about the contemporary political crisis of the English speaking political world, it should at least offer an explanation of a troubled past, and few people care more about the troubles of the past and their ramifications than I do.  Perhaps my interest in a book like this is not so surprising after all.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011/09/27/a-refracted-mirror-consensus-building-in-autocratic-regimes/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015/03/03/i-get-by-with-a-little-help-from-my-friends-on-the-legitimacy-and-viability-of-mini-states/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2010/11/24/a-lesson-that-needs-to-be-learned-building-legitimacy-from-the-ground-up/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2010/11/19/contested-legitimacy-in-lope-de-vegas-fuente-ovejuna/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/12/14/book-review-dietrich-bonhoeffer-an-introduction-to-his-thought/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/12/12/our-chickens-have-come-home-to-roost/