The Two Hundred Years War

The Two Hundred Years War by Dr Michael Livingston offers a new and radically original account of the longest military conflict in European history, challenging the conventional periodisation of the ‘Hundred Years War’ to consider a much longer period of Anglo-French conflict.

Michael Livingston argues that the English lens through which the war has been viewed has led historians to define it in terms of English interests, most famously, the claim of the English Plantagenet king Edward III to be the rightful king of France. He suggests that the events collectively labelled as the ‘Hundred Years War’ are best seen as a sequence of steps in France’s struggle to define itself as a nation. For much of the period, France’s primary rival was indeed England. However, it was by no means the only combatant. Burgundy also stood in its way, as did Brittany, Flanders, Navarre, and other rival powers.

Viewing France as the primary engine driving the war leads Livingston to consider a much longer timespan, starting with the Anglo-French ‘Pirate War’ of 1292, which swiftly escalated into a fight over England’s feudal possessions in Gascony, and ending with the marriage of Charles VIII of France to Anne of Brittany, by which Brittany was subsumed into the French realm.