Tracing feudalism’s origins to religious-racial war legitimated the social order externally

Evidence

To say “our ancestors the Gauls” was, basically, to formulate a proposition that meant something in the theory of constitutional law and in the problems raised by public right. Detailed accounts of the Battle of Poitiers also had a very specific meaning to the extent that it was precisely not the war between the Franks and the Gauls, but the war between the Franks and the Gauls and invaders of a different race and religion that allowed the origins of feudalism to be traced back to something other than an internal conflict between Franks and Gauls. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 141

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the Islamophobia toolkit: the Battle of Poitiers as racial- religious ‘external’ origin is exactly the kind of founding myth that later readings of French-Muslim relations will excavate. — connects to: Nobility’s conquest doctrine split France into two peoples before race-thinking emerged; The Third Estate inverted the Frankish conquest thesis against noble privilege; The perception of war between races predates class struggle and religious racism — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 104 (+5 more)

Related

• Boulainvilliers read Frankish conquest as the origin of feudalism rather than Roman sovereignty (similarity 0.81)
• The perception of war between races predates class struggle and religious racism (similarity 0.80)
• The Third Estate inverted the Frankish conquest thesis against noble privilege (similarity 0.80)
• Nobility’s conquest doctrine split France into two peoples before race-thinking emerged (similarity 0.80)
• Histories of conquest functioned as groundings of public right alongside natural law (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule #expands (0.78) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571