even on a more surface level, the research topics will impact their understanding of a source
as they unintentionally only search for what supports their arguments.
As this essay has demonstrated, the disagreements of historians on the topic of the
Norman Conquest, and more specifically, the issue of defining and applying 'feudalism' to
England in the period, stem from a variety of sources, often intermingling with one another.
The choice of primary sources and the changing nature of the study of history are two of the
academic reasons for disagreements between historians, with time always a significant
contributing nature to evolving arguments. Social factors, such as the growth of movements
and fluctuations in politics, particularly since the Second World War, impact the unconscious
influences on a historian's interpretation of the past, even so far back as the medieval.
Bibliography Brown, Elizabeth, ‘The Tyranny of a construct: feudalism and historians of Medieval Europe’, American Historical Review , 79. 4 (1974), pp. 1063-88 Chibnall, Marjorie, The Debate on the Norman Conquest (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999) Daniell, Christopher, From Norman Conquest to Magna Carta: England 1066-1215 (London: Routledge, 2003) Douglas, David C., William the Conqueror: the Norman Impact on England (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964) Garnett, George, The Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) Holt, J.C., ‘1086’, Domesday Studies , Ed. J. C. Holt (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), pp. 41- 64 Reynolds, Susan, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) Schofield, Phillipp, Peasants and Historians: Debating the Medieval English Peasantry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016) Stenton, F.M., The First Century of English Feudalism, 1066-1166: Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961)
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