This volume centres upon the era conventionally labelled the 'Making of the kingdom', or the 'Anglo-Norman' era in Scottish history. It challenges current historiographical concentration on the 'feudalisation' of Scottish society as part of the wholesale importation of alien cultural traditions by a 'modernising' monarchy, instead offering a parallel analysis of the continuing vitality and centrality of Gaelic culture and traditions within the twelth- and early thirteenth-century kingdom.
Part I (1070-1157) explores the mutation of the Gaelic-Scandinavian kingship of Alba first into Scotia then into the hybridised medieval state. This process is set into the wider context of the expansion of Latin Christendom and of Frankish cultural norms, but the refashioning of Scottish society is viewed more specifically in parallel to the post-1066 reconstruction of England, and the projection of both insular Anglo-Saxon and continental 'Norman' traditions into Wales and Ireland.
Part II, focussing on the period 1157-1230, explores Scotland's role as both dominated and dominator. It examines the redefinition of relationships with England, Gaelic magnates within Scotland's traditional territorial heartland and with autonomous/independent mainland and insular powers. These interrelationships form the central theme of an exploration of the struggle for political domination of the northern mainland of Britain and the adjacent islands, the mechanisms through which that domination was projected and expressed, and the manner of its expression.