Starting off our webinar was Jackson Armstrong from the University of Aberdeen who shared insights into the peace-making process among lesser landowners in late medieval Northern England and the Scottish Marches.

To avoid or end escalation of their conflicts, these actors relied heavily on courts of arbitration. Analyzing awards produced by these institutions, Jackson identified a collectively agreed upon manipulation of the past when making peace: some arbitrations not only required parties to establish friendship for the future, but also for the past. Thus, one example from 1465 called upon the parties 'to be full frends from this daie bakkwarde’. Other documents demanded exculpating oaths from the parties involved, not just to disavow responsibility but to actually deny that any violent conflict had occurred in the first place. We can, Jackson argued convincingly, regard these activities as attempts to rewrite agreed recollections – to shape an ideal, communal version of the past which no longer included the reason which had led to the arbitrated conflict and, thus, also no reason for renewing this violence in the future. Such efforts of agreeing upon an alternative past would have required oathtakers and witnesses to hold a shared view of memory in which recollection itself was valued not for factual accuracy but for its exemplary purpose and desired outcome. Armstrong’s paper, therefore, invites us to think about medieval concepts of time and of recollection. Constructing a shared narrative of events to reach a peaceful agreement and to use collective memory as a tool of reconciliation required groups to see the past in ways unfamiliar to us.[....]

On 25.06.2021, a group of medievalists discussed the question ‘What happens when history is evoked in conflicts’? Specifically: Did such discourse take place? – How did it happen? – Why did it happen? in medieval cases and sources, ranging from the Scottish Marches to Sardinia, and from lawsuits to references to burial mounds. What functions did such historical discourse have? Was it, for instance, a call for change or a call for preservation in a conflict? And who used the memory of a sometimes distant past in the heat of a clash? The historical argument in conflicts was not only an interpretation of the past. Various actors within such conflicts gave meaning to events and relations in the past, and made use of the historical discourse for specific ends.

It was a very thought-provoking online meeting, which we want to share here. Indeed, the goal of this blog series is to present summaries of the contributions by medievalists and to continue the discussion with early modernists and modernists. Some highlights by way of introduction.[....]

Right now, we are posting short summaries of the contributions to the 25.06.2021 webinar on Twitter, with the hashtag #historyinconflict.

We will be posting longer versions of these tweets here from the end of August 2021.[....]