The concept of the Reconquista still haunts historians of medieval Iberia. Scholars have increasingly challenged the notion that these fragmentary conquests, accomplished by a variety of Christian-ruled polities in lands that had been under Muslim rule for centuries, deserve either the epithet of Reconquista or the dominant position they hold in both historiography and Spanish nationalist memory. Nevertheless, the term and concept persist in monographs, classrooms, and popular discourse.
Thomas Barton's new book Victory's Shadow: Conquest and Governance in Medieval Catalonia offers a refreshing antidote to the traditional Reconquista narrative. His rich and careful account, based on years of archival research, traces how the count-kings of the federative monarchy known as the Crown of Aragon conquered the Muslim-ruled Ebro Valley--and the administrative and political maneuvers required to accomplish their conquests and govern their new territories. His narrative begins with the counts of Barcelona, who became the rulers of the neighboring kingdom of Aragon after securing their claim through a marriage alliance. Barton portrays the counts of Barcelona, and subsequently the count-kings of Aragon, as expansionist rulers often either in conflict or, at best, uneasy alliance with the Christian lords and kings in and around their domain, as they worked to establish their authority over lands newly incorporated into Christian-dominated social and political structures. With the exception of a brief discussion of the relevant historiographical context (9), Barton largely avoids the term Reconquista--a choice that allows him to set forth a nuanced history of conquest and consolidation free of the constellations of assumptions and associations commonly linked to the term.
The first section, "Interaction and Conquest," in three chapters explores the efforts made by Aragon, Urgell, and Barcelona to establish influence and pursue conquests in the Ebro River Valley during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Constant communication and interaction between Christian- and Muslim-ruled territories shaped the political and economic landscape of both. Despite complaints from religious leaders on both sides, including fervent campaigns orchestrated by Christian ecclesiastics to restore lost dioceses, Barton contends that "interfaith collaboration remained common and continued to define the shared sociopolitical environment of the frontier" (21). At the same time, competition and rivalry between Aragon, Urgell, and Barcelona characterized campaigns of conquest in Lleida and Tortosa. These rivalries at times undermined attempts to secure new territories, while cooperation made conquests possible but also created obligations that would affect governance in the territories. The unification of Barcelona and Aragon made possible the eventual conquests that the rulers of the Crown of Aragon, particularly Ramon Berenguer IV, would accomplish in the twelfth century.
The three chapters which comprise the second part, "The Implications of Victory," trace how the monarchs of the Crown of Aragon negotiated between competing goals of governance. On the one hand, the count-kings sought to establish centralized royal administrative authority, and maintain direct control over particularly profitable or strategic portions of conquered territories. On the other hand, they relied on the support of powerful lords to effectively consolidate control while pursuing further conquests--and then needed to reward them accordingly. Ramon Berenguer IV largely managed to fulfill his obligations to the lords who had supported him during the Ebro River Valley campaigns without sacrificing his own governmental authority in the newly conquered territories. However, increasing administrative decentralization in Tortosa and Lleida left more and more of these territories "under the control of a relatively concentrated oligarchy of lay and religious lords" (131). Ramon Berenguer's successors, Alfons I and Pere I, attempted to follow the same constellation of administrative policies, but proved less successful than their father and grandfather in maintaining strategic control over particular territories. Efforts to secure further conquests undercut their ability to effectively consolidate their previous gains. As the count-kings turned to creditors to finance new enterprises, territories that Ramon Berenguer had deliberately retained under his direct control were used as pledges. Subsequently, they fell into the hands of some of the kingdom's most powerful lay and ecclesiastical lords, who could therefore expand their domains and their independent jurisdictional authority at the expense of the Crown. However, policies that proved largely unsuccessful in the short term nevertheless laid the groundwork for ideas about royal sovereignty--and related policies that promoted centralized royal jurisdictional authority and taxation rights--that would ultimately come to fruition in the thirteenth century, during the reign of Jaume I.
The final pair of chapters, which together form the section "New Catalonia after Valencia," discuss how Jaume I "built upon the achievements and failures of his predecessors in unprecedented ways" (213), as revealed through both his most and least successful policies. Territorial advances, which culminated in the conquest of the Balearic Islands between 1229 and 1235 and that of Valencia in 1238, positioned Jaume as the leader of a growing power in both the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula. Jaume also sought to increase centralization and royal authority in the domains of New Catalonia. However, Lleida and Tortosa remained indelibly marked by their complex individual histories of conquest and settlement, histories which had left open numerous questions about the balance between seigniorial and royal authority, as well as the boundaries between Aragon and Catalonia. Power and direct governance, Barton argues, constantly cycled between the count-kings, the military orders, and the barons. Even at moments in which count-kings successfully pursued the expansion of royal authority and jurisdiction, lords fought to defend their own claims, and often achieved their goals--for example, lords managed to fight off royal efforts to secure the right of appeal. Royal overlordship continued to coexist uneasily with seigniorial jurisdiction in New Catalonia. Only in the thirteenth century did the Crown manage to achieve some modicum of centralization and authority in the territories conquered a century before--and they did so only "gradually and inconsistently" (292).
One of the book's few limitations is that with the exception of the first chapter, it remains largely focused on the particularly Christian context and experience of conquest and governance, with relatively little discussion of the implications these conquests had for the Jewish and Mulsim subjects of the Crown of Aragon. Jewish communities existed on both sides of the frontier before and after the twelfth-century and later conquests. In the wake of the conquests of places like Tortosa, Lleida, and Valencia, the count-kings of Aragon offered incentives to encourage Jews already residing there to stay, and Jews from his other domains to resettle and pursue economic opportunities in newly conquered territories. Substantial Muslim communities transitioned from living under the rule of their own coreligionists to that of Christians, who maneuvered between the need to encourage Muslim peasants to remain on and continue to work their land and the desire to Christianize newly conquered territories. The experiences of Jews and Muslims therefore represent an essential part of the larger story of conquest and consolidation. However, Barton fully acknowledges that these topics are deeply relevant and valuable, albeit outside the ambit of the current work. He suggests that readers consider Victory's Shadow as part of a "loosely interconnected trilogy" (10) alongside his excellent first monograph Contested Treasure: Jews and Authority in the Crown of Aragon, and a forthcoming monograph entitled From the Hands of the Infidels: The Christianization of Islamic Landscapes in Europe.
Victory's Shadow offers a compelling alternative to triumphalist narratives of conquest, by placing much of the focus instead on what happens after conquest--governance and consolidation. Barton portrays royal efforts to govern as subject to constant complications and conflict, as well as particular local and temporal circumstances, and beset by challenges that persisted well after conquest and reflected the difficulties inherent in consolidating territorial gains.