I certify that I have read this thesis and have ... - Bilkent University
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new art, a new architecture <strong>and</strong> a new language.” 44 Davis stresses <strong>that</strong> we cannot<br />
think of Normans as Sc<strong>and</strong>inavians. In the course of time, the Normans had adopted<br />
a different culture, largely a Frankish or French one. Initially, certainly, they were the<br />
Northmen, Sc<strong>and</strong>inavian pirates. But when they settled down in Norm<strong>and</strong>y, they<br />
were strongly affected by French culture. 45 They converted to Christianity <strong>and</strong> were<br />
assimilated:<br />
In 1066 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes two famous battles.<br />
In the first, which was the Battle of Stamford Bridge, it said <strong>that</strong><br />
the English king Harold defeated the Normen. In the second,<br />
which was at Hastings, it said <strong>that</strong> the same king Harold was<br />
defeated by the French (frecscan). 46<br />
Furthermore, in documents, Normans in Engl<strong>and</strong> only infrequently saw themselves<br />
as Normans, but most often as French. Kings in Engl<strong>and</strong> after 1066 preferred to call<br />
their public English <strong>and</strong> French, not English <strong>and</strong> Norman. Davis would argue <strong>that</strong> it<br />
was only after the Norman Conquest of Engl<strong>and</strong> <strong>that</strong> a ‘Norman’ identity (<strong>and</strong> even<br />
then more specific to Norm<strong>and</strong>y than Sc<strong>and</strong>inavian) was constructed by ‘Norman’<br />
historians living in Engl<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> Norm<strong>and</strong>y. 47<br />
Davis’s ‘Frenchness’ of the Norman invaders of Engl<strong>and</strong> brings us back<br />
nicely to Bartlett <strong>and</strong> his expansion, but it is R. R. Davies who has recently looked at<br />
the history of the British Isles through the lens of Bartlett’s ‘Europeanization’.<br />
Davies sees the progressive, though ultimately not completely successful<br />
Anglicization of the British Isles explicitly as an offshoot of Bartlett’s<br />
Europeanization. 48 If <strong>this</strong> Anglicization is a part of Bartlett’s Europeanization, it<br />
44<br />
Davis, Normans <strong>and</strong> their Myth, p. 103.<br />
45<br />
Davis, From Constantine to St Louis, p. 168.<br />
46<br />
Davis, Normans <strong>and</strong> their Myth, p. 12.<br />
47<br />
Ibid., pp. 27-8.<br />
48<br />
Davies, First English Empire, p. 170.<br />
15