At the start of the forming of Western Europe there was the core state of Carolus Magnus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne



And it got modified by the treaty of Verdun and Meersen:



And we here in the nowadays Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg) the border people, had always trouble with the two remaining parts France and the HRE (Holy Roman Empire) (later added (of German Nation). The two, many times, using the border countries as battle grounds for their returning "disputes?" (it seems that quarrel is not the right word).
And yes we had them several times overhere, first the French Napoleon, then the German Kaiser and then the German Nazis

In my opinion it only calmed down with the Europe of the Six: the Inner Six...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Six


 
And at the end the inner six (on the map less Algeria and the Middle and South of Italy were again united after some eleven centuries and this time in peace and in economic cooperation. I wonder about the statistics? From my experience in a metal assembling factory in Belgium I had the impression that most came first of all from the Benelux, then Germany, France and the North Italian industrial zone...
And so we are back now with the Brexit to the Europe of Carolus Magnus? 

Will the British Isles become again countries of the periphery, as Eastern and Southern Europe (South Italy and Spain without the industrial Catalonia?) Them only subcontractors for the core industry of the axis Germany-France ?

And they have already a cultural connection with TV channel Arte...?
https://www.arte.tv/en/
And Germany has now access via the former colonial France to nearly the same EEZ as the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone

What is the opinion of the more knowledgeable members of this board?

Paul wrote:

Will the British Isles become again countries of the periphery

Depends on what you're calling the "British Isles". Ireland is certainly doing its damndest to remain integral to the European economic centre, despite its inconvenient geography and now the presence of a suicidal economy run by political buffoons situated on another island unfortunately placed between it and the sensible people.

I would question also your dating of the "European heartland" concept only as far back as Charlemagne. He was certainly one who wished to establish that theme as a geopolitical reality - with him as boss of course - but in many ways he was drawing on a much older concept. Columbanus, for example, certainly anticipated Charlemagne's empire when he wrote letters to political leaders dotted throughout northern territories and reminded them that they lived in a "United Europe". He was talking about spirituality in the main, of course, but he also reminded them that getting on board with the Jesus experiment would also be a great way of establishing political and economic bonds. 200 years before Charlie the Great and 1,300 years before the EU!

But even Columbanus wasn't being that original - 200 years before him again the Roman emperor Honorius, who had the thankless task of administering a fast disintegrating empire in the west which saw the original Brexit and the threat of the Belgians, of all people, threatening to become the centre of a rival empire, suggested to Constantine III that maybe the way out of the mess was to subsidise the people across what is now Northern France and western Germany to become "Europa" under one leader of their own. This would give Rome a buffer state against barbaric anarchy such as Britain had embraced and also - since they would now have to fund their own economy - save Rome a lot of money in the long run too. Constantine, no doubt with premonitions of Ursula van der Leyen et al in mind, reckoned this area could, if well administered, actually end up rivalling Rome itself and instead told Honorius maybe it might be better to carry on watching it fall out among itself, at least until a better suggestion sprang to mind.

Honorius's plan, by the way, which he had worked out in some detail even if it never got off the ground, was resurrected almost verbatim by the pope later and used as the political and legal justification for the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, using more or less the same people who by then were identifying as Franks and with Charlie as their boss.

So, while we are still aware of the undeniable geopolitical importance of the same area today, its economic significance - based on its natural infrastructure, trade hub potential and access to resources - was certainly not lost even on the Romans, and for the want of dependable records might even have been realised long before that again.

I have always admired the polish-lithuanian coalition.  The unruly areas they controlled must have taken some effort and diplomacy.

One part of Charlemagne's great legacy, the Holy Roman Empire, that still exists today is the continued independence of four of the smallest states in Europe: the principalities/duchies of Luxembourg, Monaco, Liechtenstein and Andorra. All the other hundreds of small, self-governing kingdoms, principalities, duchies, bishoprics, county palatines and margraviates, that made up the Empire have become absorbed into just a handful of modern states (and mostly republics too) but by deft historical footwork and not a small amount of luck these four small sovereign territories have weathered repeated invasion, conquest, revolution, and the wiles of their larger neighbours, to not only survive but thrive in the modern world. Each has its own unique history but they all trace their existence to territories created by Charlemagne. Their continued existence is due to their past rulers (or in the case of Andorra, elected co-princes) cleverly punching above their weight by playing their bigger neighbours against each other. At times one feels their very smallness and insignificance was an asset, since they were viewed as being no threat while still capable of acting as annoying thorns in the side to a rival, or just being viewed as harmless anachronisms as when Napoleon said, "Andorra is a political curiosity that should be preserved."

Andorra's national anthem "El Gran Carlemany"  even recognises Charlemagne's influence specifically: 

The great Charlemagne, my father,
from the Saracens liberated me
And from heaven he gave me life,
of Meritxell, the great Mother.

Princess, born Heiress
Into two nations, in neutrality;
I am the only remaining daughter,
of the Carolingian empire.

Faithful and free for eleven centuries,
Faithful and free I will be.
The laws of the land be my tutors,
and my Princes defenders!

brenogler wrote:

I have always admired the polish-lithuanian coalition.  The unruly areas they controlled must have taken some effort and diplomacy.

(bren, was it that what you meant? (showing the map)). Bren I see that the map now appeared in your message too, thus overhere it became superfluous. And see bren and MM, as the word "superfluous" comes from the French "superflu" no superphluous? ... Kind regards, Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

One part of Charlemagne's great legacy, the Holy Roman Empire, that still exists today is the continued independence of four of the smallest states in Europe: the principalities/duchies of Luxembourg, Monaco, Leichtenstein and Andorra. 

 
MM, "chapeau" (hat off?)...where do you find that all...
I have one of the close inner circle working in Liechtenstein...seems a bit boring...working from Switzerland...there you have something to do...

.

And yes : God save the queen...

Kind regards, Paul.

nordmann wrote:

I would question also your dating of the "European heartland" concept only as far back as Charlemagne. He was certainly one who wished to establish that theme as a geopolitical reality - with him as boss of course - but in many ways he was drawing on a much older concept. Columbanus, for example, certainly anticipated Charlemagne's empire when he wrote letters to political leaders dotted throughout northern territories and reminded them that they lived in a "United Europe". He was talking about spirituality in the main, of course, but he also reminded them that getting on board with the Jesus experiment would also be a great way of establishing political and economic bonds. 200 years before Charlie the Great and 1,300 years before the EU!

But even Columbanus wasn't being that original - 200 years before him again the Roman emperor Honorius, who had the thankless task of administering a fast disintegrating empire in the west which saw the original Brexit and the threat of the Belgians, of all people, threatening to become the centre of a rival empire, suggested to Constantine III that maybe the way out of the mess was to subsidise the people across what is now Northern France and western Germany to become "Europa" under one leader of their own. This would give Rome a buffer state against barbaric anarchy such as Britain had embraced and also - since they would now have to fund their own economy - save Rome a lot of money in the long run too. Constantine, no doubt with premonitions of Ursula van der Leyen et al in mind, reckoned this area could, if well administered, actually end up rivalling Rome itself and instead told Honorius maybe it might be better to carry on watching it fall out among itself, at least until a better suggestion sprang to mind.

Honorius's plan, by the way, which he had worked out in some detail even if it never got off the ground, was resurrected almost verbatim by the pope later and used as the political and legal justification for the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, using more or less the same people who by then were identifying as Franks and with Charlie as their boss.

So, while we are still aware of the undeniable geopolitical importance of the same area today, its economic significance - based on its natural infrastructure, trade hub potential and access to resources - was certainly not lost even on the Romans, and for the want of dependable records might even have been realised long before that again.

nordmann,

you said a "much older concept" and as I see it now you are right. But I wouldn't speak about Columbanus (I don't know that well the guy...we had overhere, as we learned at school, 10 years old (start of the Fifties), more an Amandus, a Remigius both from here and one Anglo-Saxon Boniface...
As I read it now the Irish Columbanus was not such an "easy" one, but at the end he earned some respect from the nobility...

And yes Honorius had the ungrateful task of holding together a Western Roman Empire already only a spectre of what it was before.
Already in 
260-274 the Gallic Empire
http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Gallic_Empire
286-296 the Carausian Revolt
http://www.gutenberg.us/articles/carausian_revolt

But then came the real thing in my opinion:
The Merovingians...in our Belgian class (start of the Fifties) in a Roman-Catholic school those Merovingians, especially the last ones had a negative connotation in comparison with the Carolingians, up to now I don't know why...in my opinion they were the core from which the empire of Charlemagne later would grow.

Clovis 466-511



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_dynasty



And they seem to have come originaly from the region around Tongeren Toxandria...
https://researchportal.unamur.be/en/publications/merovechs-blood-prehistory-of-the-merovingian-dynasty-and-kingdom

And Clovis was that clever to start a band with the then not yet split universal Catholic church and asked also for a role in the Roman Empire of Anastasius
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781614510994.79/html
https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Faith-500-700-History-Medieval/dp/019967535X
On page 123...

Thus as you said nordmann...and even 3 centuries before Charlemagne, aproximatively in 500 already a "heartland" Europe more than 15 centruries before the present turmoil of the Brexit...?

Kind regards, Paul.

PS: edited once for the "o" in Toxandria

PaulRyckier wrote:

I have one of the close inner circle working in Liechtenstein...seems a bit boring...

Oh I don't know, they still get invaded from time to time - most often by neutral Switzerland, which for a European country is quite unusual, neh?

The last time was in 2007 when a company of Swiss soldiers on a training exercise took a wrong turn due to bad weather conditions and mistakenly penetrated 2kms into Liechtenstein, although the Liechtenstein authorities did not even realise they'd been invaded until they received a letter of apology a few days later. There were similar incursions by Swiss troops in 1992 and 1975. And in 1968 the Swiss army accidentally shelled Liechtenstein's only ski resort, Malbun, resulting in a compensation claim being paid for some damaged chairs belonging to an outdoor restaurant. Currently Liechtenstein has no standing army and the last time its troops operated outside the national borders was when they sent 80 men to support Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. When the war ended after just seven weeks, 81 men marched back into Liechtenstein: they had picked up a friend while they'd been away. The Liechtenstein army had been guarding the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy where, although Italy had sided with Prussia, there was no action and little to do. Accordingly in some versions of the tale the extra man was an Italian soldier who'd made friends with the Liechtensteiners and decided to accompany them back to Liechtenstein, in others he's just an Austrian liason officer.

Paul wrote:

Thus as you said nordmann...and even 3 centuries before Charlemagne, aproximatively in 500 already a "heartland" Europe

People, and dynasties, come and go but the geography stays the same.

One intriguing modern analysis of late Neolithic and early Bronze Age archaeology from the region suggests that there may well have been a pretty sophisticated and integrated political and social culture centered in the same region - a millennium or more even before Honorius did his maths.

One crucial topographical aspect when regarding that general region as a viable candidate for political and economic hegemony is of course the excellent protected access to the ocean which the river and estuary possibilities open for those running large fleets within an organised extensive maritime trade system. The very powerful (and now generally accepted) notion of a Bronze Age "Celtic" maritime trading network along the Atlantic seaboard demands hypothesis regarding where this trade may have established hubs or nodes of operation. Based on goods distribution as deduced from the evidence the "European Heartland" was already in full swing, even then.

Columbanus got a mention from me not so much because he was Irish as because his letters, two of which survive, are the first recorded use of the term "European Union" in history. Had he been British he would undoubtedly have been dismissed as a "remoaner".

Of course you are right again nordmann about that topography. Protected access to the sea by a river, a delta of a river or in this case the channel is very good for trade and long distance commerce. And commerce is exchange, also of ideas, so they learn more than the inland ones...and yes they have two sources of fooding, and from the land and from the sea.

As the Menapii
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menapii



My mother was particurly proud about them. I think she thought it were her forebears...
And yes that one of the Carausian revolt was also a Menapien of humble birth...
http://www.gutenberg.us/articles/carausian_revolt

But perhaps a much older "heartland"? ...
The Doggerbank? Nowadays rich fishing grounds...
But formerly a land mass when the British Isles were part of mainland Europe...but nowadays with the climate change again more parts under water, but we have still the sea and the Chunnel as link with our European neighbours...



Even H.G. Wells made a story about it...one big heartland including

Maritime archaeology...
We discussed that subject yet overhere nordmann and you knew something about it. Are there new discoveries in the meantime?
I found:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-20/searching-for-doggerland-archaeology-palaeontology-scandinavia/11707174
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/02/doggerland/

Kind regards, Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

I have one of the close inner circle working in Liechtenstein...seems a bit boring...

Oh I don't know, they still get invaded from time to time - most often by neutral Switzerland, which for a European country is quite unusual, neh?

Thanks MM for the story of the Swiss "invasions" 

Re: "a bit boring"...the one of the inner circle I mentioned is still a younster (hmm already in the thirties...but nowadays with an expected age of 100 years (at least I wish it for me too) one seems to be younster to one's forties.

And this! youngster needs the turmoil and opportunities of big cities and surroundings, while in Liechtenstein...

Kind regards, Paul.

I think we can discount Doggerland as a potential "heartland" of Europe in the sense we have been using the term. It was a long time disappearing - between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago - but will have essentially vanished as habitable land long before agriculture or sophisticated mineral extraction arrived in Europe, the two essential ingredients to kick-start the social development of which we speak. That is not to say that its inhabitants might not have contributed in their own way to any prevalent culture in the context of their own time - but best guesses about who they were and what they were up to point to a subsistence and semi-nomadic life which is not conducive to establishing cultural power bases driving anything of social value which can be deduced from artefacts.

The possibility of a now forgotten "Celtic" heartland in the area under discussion is however a much more likely prospect, and we even have artefacts enough at this stage to promote this possibility to a probability, I reckon. We had a thread here long ago discussing the evidence - much of which by its nature must be circumstantial - supporting a thriving maritime trade and culture operating in the North Sea during the late Bronze Age at least, and even further afield when one factors Irish, French and Spanish evidence into the equation.

Excavations conducted in the late 20th century in the Hartz mountains of Northern Germany, whose iron mining industry famously blossomed in the 6th century CE, found that many of these early mining tunnels were actually much older than this - the Hartz geology yielded plentiful copper and even some tin and it was probably these metals that brought Bronze Age people there in the first place, obviously mining amounts well in excess of what the local population would have required.

When you can identify huge surpluses then you are pretty sure you are looking at an important source of trading material and a trade network equally developed to exploit this to the full. Confirmation of this was found in bronze artefacts as far afield as Ireland and North Africa whose alloy content could be traced back to these mountains and roughly this period. It doesn't take much of a mental leap to surmise that this sophisticated maritime trade mirrored an equally profitable fluvial and overland equivalent, and once you make that assumption then you would be mad not to also surmise that there was a sophisticated and powerful culture developing around it - half a millennium before the Romans apparently even knew that the area existed at all.

https://www.greatormemines.info/research/ You may find this interesting, particularly "Where did the copper go?". The mines on Y Gogarth date to c. 1800 BCE. I wonder - was this the source of the wealth that funded the Mold cope?

Fascinating stuff, thanks GG. That's my weekend reading sorted.

Interesting how dating the different start periods for intensive copper mining from region to region during the Beaker period shows a somewhat erratic sequence compared to simple assumptions of western migrations bringing a strictly western direction for such innovation too. With copper, which obviously has to be found first regardless of how competent the people living above it may be, the advance through Europe was a kind of two steps forward one step back in geographical terms, with even some three and four step advances mixed in along the way. One of these sees it suddenly hop over to southern Ireland where it really takes off, and only then some time later starts to appear in Britain. The author puts this down to Irish "exploration". However I imagine the truth is a rather more organic process - certainly involving expertise acquired in one area later being applied in another but not conclusively associated with concerted organised effort, colonisation, migration, or any of the usual lazy assumptions in this regard.

What it does reinforce however is the growing certainty that as far back as the early Bronze Age the western European seaboard was the location of some really sophisticated maritime activity. It wasn't just the expertise that was highly mobile it was also the surplus ore, and that takes a bit of engineering and organisation just on its own.

PS: Mold Cope is best known in archaeological circles as THE definitive proof of what happens when excavations are conducted by "amateurs". Less than one percent of the finds, it is estimated, ever made it into the records, let alone the museums. It is presumed that a lot of wedding rings handed down through local families from the early 19th century owe their origin to the 'alf inched gold looted from the "dig".

nordmann wrote:

The possibility of a now forgotten "Celtic" heartland in the area under discussion is however a much more likely prospect, and we even have artefacts enough at this stage to promote this possibility to a probability, I reckon. We had a thread here long ago discussing the evidence - much of which by its nature must be circumstantial - supporting a thriving maritime trade and culture operating in the North Sea during the late Bronze Age at least, and even further afield when one factors Irish, French and Spanish evidence into the equation.

 
Thank you nordmann for bringing me back to reality...
Of course Doggerland wasn't a candidate for long distance trade?...
as was the Celtic heartland...

Were you referring in the above quote to this documentary...?
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t1594-must-farm-part-of-the-european-bronze-age-network

Kind regards, Paul.

No, that particular documentary - like much of the media treatment of the Must Farm excavations - was not one of my favourites. I was referring to previous discussions here regarding the nature of Bronze Age maritime trade itself.

But now that you draw attention to it; the documentary, like the majority of references to that period in history in Europe, illustrates the problem with serious analysis of just what this trade infrastructure must have looked like as well as therefore what this actually means in relation to how we should visualise Bronze Age society itself. On the one hand we are traditionally presented with apparent evidence of a society that was politically and socially extremely fractured and disparately distributed, with small communities here and there each focused almost exclusively on their immediate environment with regard to how they must have identified themselves, how they scraped a living, and therefore where they stood in relation to human social development. It is a picture that encourages one to regard them as comparatively primitive.

But then on the other hand we keep finding evidence from the same research which all but proves that the same people benefited from interacting extensively with a greater world and at levels that can only have been supported by a complex and well organised trading network which itself alone must have required large amounts of diplomacy, international cooperation and sophisticated levels of organisation to achieve.

The two views just don't sit well together, and I feel there is a lot of residual bias which still afflicts historians and perhaps gives rise to this cognitive dissonance, probably going as far back as Roman times when the people of these societies were rather unfairly dismissed as "barbarians" by a people justifying their own expansionist and aggressive policies towards acquiring their land and resources for themselves. It's probably about time we corrected the lens a bit and started appreciating just what levels of sophistication, social cohesion, and actual civilisation these people really enjoyed - and maybe a reassessment and focus on maritime trade of the period might be just the place to start. They were either still limited in skill and vision to pottering about in dug-out canoes forever wondering what lay beyond the nearest hillock, or alternatively they were running efficient trading fleets over vast distances with all the global infrastructure this entails. It can't be both.

nordmann wrote:

No, that particular documentary - like much of the media treatment of the Must Farm excavations - was not one of my favourites. I was referring to previous discussions here regarding the nature of Bronze Age maritime trade itself.

But now that you draw attention to it; the documentary, like the majority of references to that period in history in Europe, illustrates the problem with serious analysis of just what this trade infrastructure must have looked like as well as therefore what this actually means in relation to how we should visualise Bronze Age society itself. On the one hand we are traditionally presented with apparent evidence of a society that was politically and socially extremely fractured and disparately distributed, with small communities here and there each focused almost exclusively on their immediate environment with regard to how they must have identified themselves, how they scraped a living, and therefore where they stood in relation to human social development. It is a picture that encourages one to regard them as comparatively primitive.

But then on the other hand we keep finding evidence from the same research which all but proves that the same people benefited from interacting extensively with a greater world and at levels that can only have been supported by a complex and well organised trading network which itself alone must have required large amounts of diplomacy, international cooperation and sophisticated levels of organisation to achieve.

The two views just don't sit well together, and I feel there is a lot of residual bias which still afflicts historians and perhaps gives rise to this cognitive dissonance, probably going as far back as Roman times when the people of these societies were rather unfairly dismissed as "barbarians" by a people justifying their own expansionist and aggressive policies towards acquiring their land and resources for themselves. It's probably about time we corrected the lens a bit and started appreciating just what levels of sophistication, social cohesion, and actual civilisation these people really enjoyed - and maybe a reassessment and focus on maritime trade of the period might be just the place to start. They were either still limited in skill and vision to pottering about in dug-out canoes forever wondering what lay beyond the nearest hillock, or alternatively they were running efficient trading fleets over vast distances with all the global infrastructure this entails. It can't be both.

Thanks nordmann for pointing to these two views and their contradiction, even among historians. I learned from it. Perhaps is it time that "they" come out with theories and  proves to what of the two views historical reality mostly nears.

And as usual I admire your superb use of the English language. Kind regards, Paul.