Le recours aux armes

In spite of recent progress, the treatment given to violent acts of arms in the study of political medieval cultures in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa seems still rather weak. It is especially uneven, varying considerably as it regards the type of violence observed. What this volume asked from its contributors was that their papers shed a new light on the question putting so as to completely challenge the points of view hitherto adopted: rather than considering the reliance on armed force as some kind of accident that came to menace the balance of the political game, sometimes to the extent that it totally overcomes this game, they were invited to see the use of armed force as the consequence of a rational choice, one that was completely integrated into the strategy of people who were in positions of power. Their papers talk about assassinations, riots and wars: beyond the scale and duration of these acts of violence, the goal of the collective response remains the articulation between armed violence and political cultures.