Interactive Kingdoms Timeline

Kingdoms Timeline

The dissolution of the later Roman empire in the West was primarily a result of the development of numerous kingdoms in its former provinces. With the exception of the various Angle, Saxon, Jutish, and Welsh realms that emerged in the former imperial provinces of Britain, these various kingdoms gradually were assimilated into larger polities over the course of the lengthy period from c. 500–c.800, now denoted by historians as Late Antiquity. Visigothic Spain was absorbed into the Islamic Caliphate, while the lands between the Pyrenees Mountains and the Weser River were conquered by the Franks, and were incorporated into the Carolingian empire.

The division of the Carolingian empire in the mid-ninth century led once more to the appearance of numerous successor kingdoms, notably in West Francia, Lotharingia, Burgundy, East Francia, and Northern Italy. The treaty of Verdun negotiated by Charlemagne’s grandsons, Louis the German, Lothar I, and Charles the Bald, in 843 sometimes is denoted by historians as the ‘birth certificate’ of modern Europe because the kingdoms west and east of the Rhine river ultimately evolved into the modern states of France and Germany. However, this process was very slow. The French kingdom did not emerge in its ultimate form until the thirteenth century, and numerous principalities such as those in Anjou, Aquitaine, and Normandy retained de factoindependence for several centuries.

By contrast with the process of political devolution in the West, the former eastern Carolingian kingdom emerged as the dominant political power in medieval Europe from the tenth through the mid-thirteenth century. The kings of East Francia and subsequently Germany ruled the entire region between the Rhine and Elbe rivers. They also exercised regular, although not permanent, hegemony in northern Italy and in the Slavic lands beyond the Elbe in Bohemia, Polabia (the region between the Elbe and Oder rivers), and Poland. From 1033 onward, the kings of Germany also ruled the kingdom of Burgundy. However, after the mid-thirteenth century royal power significantly weakened in the German kingdom, and many dozens of local magnates gained de factoindependence, which they maintained up through the early nineteenth century.

In the period following the establishment of the German kingdom and empire during the tenth century, a number of other polities developed along its eastern frontiers that eventually emerged as kingdoms in their own right over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These include Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland. To the north of Germany, the Scandinavian realms of Norway and Sweden, which had a long pre-history as disparate competing lordships, also emerged in the period after the year 1000 as fully fledged kingdoms. By contrast, Denmark, which effectively confronted both the Carolingian and German empires, was organized as a well-established kingdom by the early ninth century.

During the ninth century, Vikings destroyed most of the independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England leaving only Wessex under English rule. It was this kingdom during the reign of Alfred the Great (died 899) and his successors that ultimately united most of England, including both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian-dominated districts. However, during the eleventh century, England became part of a number of larger political unions, following the conquest of the island by the Danish king Cnut in 1016, its conquest in 1066 by Duke William of Normandy, and then its acquisition in 1154 by Henry II, who already ruled as duke of Normandy, count of Maine, count of Brittany, count of Anjou, and duke of Aquitaine. This conglomeration of territories often is denoted by historians as the Angevin empire. By contrast with the English and Scandinavian regions of Britain, the Welsh principalities maintained their independence from Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, and Anglo-Normans until the conquest of the region by King Edward I in 1282–1283.

The Muslim conquest of Spain in 711­–715, left just the small kingdom of Asturias in Christian hands. The gradual expansion of Christian rule over the course of the next half a millennium led to the development of several independent kingdoms including Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and Portugal, as well as the county of Barcelona that includes most of what is today Catalonia. The final Muslim realm in Iberia, the kingdom of Grenada, was conquered by the joint forces of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in 1492.

The later Middle Ages is often described by historians as the period in which national kingdoms fully emerged. It is certainly the case that both the French and English kingdoms had the territorial dimensions in this period that they would retain well into the early modern era, as did the kingdom of Sweden. The kingdoms of Aragon and Castile in Iberia also were well defined, but emerged from the medieval era unified into a single realm, which for a time also included the Kingdom of Portugal. Denmark and Norway also were united into a single kingdom, as were Poland and Lithuania. Bohemia and Hungary were absorbed into the newly emerging Habsburg empire, while the German kingdom, as noted above, dissolved into scores of principalities, duchies, counties, and imperial cities.