Conflict, Bargaining, and Kinship Networks in Medieval Eastern Europe

Christian Raffensperger is associate professor of history at Wittenberg University.

• Introduction Chapter 1: The Importance of ConflictChapter 2: Conflict as Bargaining Chapter 3: Everyone Goes Home AliveChapter 4: The Kinship Web in Theory and Practice Chapter 5: Iaroslav Sviatopolchich’s Kinship Web in ActionChapter 6: Géza II in the Center of a European Kinship WebConclusion: Kinship, Religion, and “Nation”: Alternate Identity Issues in Medieval Eastern

Raffensperger goes back to original sources and engages in a lively conversation with preexisting research on Rus’ and other contemporary polities. . . . Although Conflict, Bargaining and Kinship Networks in Medieval Eastern Europe has a focus on Rus', it engages actively in the study of neighboring polities like Poland and Hungary, thus providing an overview of the region beyond national boundaries that, as the author notes, are more a modern imposition than a relevant concept for the time under study. Thanks to Raffensperger’s approach to doing history, Rus' becomes seamlessly integrated in the fabric of East European politics in the Middle Ages.