Switzerland in middle ages

[Elvain]

Hello.

Anybody here knows more about Switzerland in midle ages?
here is a map I made to ba able to fit generaly to all periods between 800-1400
http://img428.imageshack.us/img428/6198/switzerland3eu.png (http://imageshack.us)

I have a question: what to make a capital of Schwytz?
Is Zürich better capital for Thurgau than Zug?

any suggestions welcome.

Note:
for early periods "counties" of Bern, Aargau and Valais would probably be just one province called Bern - with County of Burgundy making province "Upper Burgundy"
and the same with Thurgau, Schwytz and Chur, being together a province of Swabia with capital in Chur (but for this "province" I don't know the best name - Chur maybe?)

PS: I don't want to go to deeper division of cantons as they are too small and numerous for map of Europe (as this is just detail of map of all Europe)
but if anyone would know about better division, please tell me

[Kuno of Gersenau]

Nice work Elvain but I would change some things:

-The Province Bern is a bit misplaced, in fact you have just a rather small part of the Canton in your Province. Bern expands more to the East and South than in your Map.
- I would suggest you to leave out the Aargau, in fact it was never a canton in Middle Age, same as Thurgau, it was just divided between the other Cantons.
Take Luzerne to Schwytz and Call it "Waldstätte" or "Central Switzerland". Western and Southern Part of Aargau to Berne and the Rest probably to Basel or Zurich.
-Thurgau I would call Zürich, because most of this part belongs to the Canton and Zürich was with Berne the most powerfull of the Swiss towns.
- I would Call the Province Chur "Graubünden" (in English Grison I think.) or Raetia.
- The Western Parts of Bern, North of The lake Geneva, came after 1500 to berne and belonged before to Savoy, but I think you could also leave it as it is.

PS: here (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Old_Swiss_Confederation.jpg) Is a quite good map from Wikipedia, which shows the developement and the borders of the cantons. (well, borders are a bit bad marked, but visible ;))

PPS: For what use do you need this map? :wink:

[Elvain]

thanks, so I will probably divide "Thurgau" into Thurgau (NE) with St. Gallen as capital and Zürich (SW). I originaly had 2 "counties" in this area, ST. Gallen and Zürich, but then merged them to just one Thurgau
and Bern will replace my "Aargau" and make Vaud or Fribourg instead of the former "Bern"

the map is great I'll give you the final version of the map to confirm, ok?

thanks a lot. Another region solved :hello:

[Traveller]

So... What's this for, Elvain? :rolleyes:

[Elvain]

I just want to make a map of european historical lands throughout middleages as historicaly accurate as possible.

What I need are maps of all lands that have in middle ages some legal independency or at least political autonomy... (that's why Bohemia is so big on my map because it had no legal subdivisions except governmental districts)
I could upload the finnished perts of the map to let you imagine it

I have small problem with imperial cities in the HRE, if to use them as independent "regions" or as parts of counties where they lie. At the moment the most important are considered as independent, while the other are parts of counties.

I would be glad if this map could be used as source for games like KOH
I want to draw an universal map, and then digitalize it and make versions for certain periods. What is nice is that in catholic Europe the borders of regions don't change much, they just merge or split, but the boundaries are always the same

Switzerland is just one nice example.
It was first part of Swabia and Upper Burgundy, hen both regions were splitting into smaller counties which were splitting into even smaller cantons, but the borders of counties/cantons still lied mostly on borders of the big "duchies" (Swabia and Upper Burgundy) So I have one Region (Swabia/Upper Burgundy) which is divided into sub-regions(County of Burgundy/Bern/"Schwytz") which are divided into counties (Bern/Aargau, Thurgau, Valais)

the best example is France
Region=Aquitaine
sub-regions=Guyenne, Gascoigne, Poitou
counties:
in Guyenne=Angouleme, La Marche, Saintonge, Périgord, Limousin, ...
in Gascony=Béarn, Armagnac, ...
Poitou=Poitou, Thuoars, ...
or region=Picardy
sub-regions=Artois, Picardy
counties in Artios: Lillois, Arras, Boulogne
in Picardy: Vexin, Valois, Vermandois, Amiens etc.

the goal is to have all the regions on one map

[Traveller]

I could upload the finnished perts of the map to let you imagine it
That would be nice! And good luck, Elvain! This is a pretty hard work and I hope many people will evaluate it! :go: *looking sneaky at BSS and SF with some hope* :rolleyes:

[Elvain]

i think it's rather for possible future projects (KoH 2? I still dream, but not believe, maybe some Paradox project?) and maybe even my project. I don't know and if nothing I could offer it to some institution making historical atlases

but at the moment I have only France, HRE seems very well to me as well as Bohemia and Poland + almost done is medieval Armenia + Georgia + Azerbayjan
I also have made nice progress in north Maghrib, Egypt and Spain, collected several nice maps for Scotland and England(but England and Hungary is hard piece of cake - shires are governmental districts as well as hungarian "districts" + both are too small)
the biggest problems are: Asia Minor (combination of byzantine themes, seljuk conquest, crusader dominions and turkish "states" in 14th century), Mesopotamia (there were only quite large provinces of caliphate + there is ack of sources, Lybia (lack of sources) and the mess in Balkans (the situation here was very diferent - borders didn't move by legal transactions, divisions and merging but by conquest (such as in Anatolia)
with little more sources Scandinavia will be verey nicely done, the same with Russia

[Traveller]

i think it's more for possible future projects (KoH 2?...
Exactly! *looks again to the previous direction*
And yeah - you'll have a lot of trouble with the Balkans, IMHO. Constant change of borders and names. Hell, even the Macedonia region is once to the south of present day FYRoM and later near Adrianople! Btw do you have something at hand, which is "ready"?

[Elvain]

Yes, I have France, Bohemian, Moravia and Silesia done (at home). And I would consider HRE as done aswell (leaving the imperial cities as parts of counties, not being independent). the only problem of HRE is Switzerland and in Italy the only problem is north of Appulia. Also Poland has to be drawn and is done

and yes, the Balkans is total mess. Serbia and Greece (south of Thesalonica) is rether clear, but the area of todays Bulgaria, FYRoMacedonia and Bulgaria is a total mess.
I have at least 3 regions that could be called Macedonia (area of byzantine theme Macedonia, area around Sofia and area around Thesalonica)
I'm affraid that this part of Europe can't be done even close to accurancy. Bulgaria must be divided at least to west (Sofia) and east (Turnovo/Preslav)
aprosimate names are Dobrudzha, Thrace, Strymon, Turnovo, Sofia(how to call that damned region), Macedonia(the only way I can call area of FYROM), Saloniki, Northern Epirus/Dyrrhachion, Vidin/Bdin, I also thought about "provnces" of Pliska and Preslav between Strymon, Thrace, Dobrudzha, Danube and Turnovo, but those are just imaginary (I don't have any source to back existency of such "provinces", just that there were borders coming around them in varoius eras separating them from regions that are around)

[Traveller]

Yes, I have France, Bohemian, Moravia and Silesia done (at home). And I would consider HRE as done aswell (leaving the imperial cities as parts of counties, not being independent). the only problem of HRE is Switzerland and in Italy the only problem is north of Appulia. Also Poland has to be drawn and is done

and yes, the Balkans is total mess. Serbia and Greece (south of Thesalonica) is rether clear, but the area of todays Bulgaria, FYRoMacedonia and Bulgaria is a total mess.
I have at least 3 regions that could be called Macedonia (area of byzantine theme Macedonia, area around Sofia and area around Thesalonica)
I'm affraid that this part of Europe can't be done even close to accurancy. Bulgaria must be divided at least to west (Sofia) and east (Turnovo/Preslav)
aprosimate names are Dobrudzha, Thrace, Strymon, Turnovo, Sofia(how to call that damned region), Macedonia(the only way I can call area of FYROM), Saloniki, Northern Epirus/Dyrrhachion, Vidin/Bdin, I also thought about "provnces" of Pliska and Preslav between Strymon, Thrace, Dobrudzha, Danube and Turnovo, but those are just imaginary (I don't have any source to back existency of such "provinces", just that there were borders coming around them in varoius eras separating them from regions that are around)
Wow, I have always been interested in what was my region in the past, but I never knew I was actually living in a previous Macedonia! Why would you place exactly Sofia as part of Macedonia? The only connection I can remember right now is of komit Nikola, who was a governor (komit) in Sofia and he was also the father of the four komitopuls, which later moved the Bulgarian capital in Macedonia - mainly Ohrid and some others. And, afaik, while under Byzantine rule, whole of todays Macedonia + Sofia region + Bdin region was one theme - Paristrion or something. It would be interesting to hear about the Sofia Macedonia!
Btw I guess you wouldn't want to name Sofia in those times, because the name Sofia was put in use only somewhere around the middle of the XIV century. Until then it was called with the Slavic name Sredec, although I think it was also sometimes called Triadica.
As for Pliska and Preslav - personally I would justify their separation as regions, but mostly if it's in the early middle ages. I think I've mentioned in the list with Bulgar titles, which I posted in the history thread, that during the first Bulgarian state and especially after Omurtag's reforms the country was divided not only to different komitats (10 I think), but also to "inner" and "outer", whereas the inner region was the capital region (thus its governors, nobles etc. were inner-governor and so on). And Pliska and Veliki Preslav were capitals of Bulgaria for some time and therefore in this time they should be separate. But after that - I don't know...

[Elvain]

well, by areas around sofia I meant between Sofia and Ochrid

btw in the map I think I'll prefere latin/greek names of cities so I think that possible name of Sofia will be Serdica but at the moment I'm not sure

[Mircoslavux]

[hej,
what about not existing Slovakia??? :nono:
Or Hungary...???

[Elvain]

[hej,
what about not existing Slovakia??? :nono:
Or Hungary...???
Slovakia was part of Hungary in middle ages as we both know ...

There will be "counties" of Nitra, Pressburg, Spiš (Zips in German) and Košice. I don't know how to deal with quite small regions like Liptov, but they will probably be somehow represented
and Slovakia will definitely be a province, the problem is that two main centres (Nitra and Pressburg are both too close to each other. So maybe Nitra will be a capital of a sub-province with counties of Nitra and Trenčín, while Pressburg will be a capital of the rest...

if you have some map of hungarian provinces in middle ages, I will be pleased to see them, I haven't found much sources for this
another problem (as mentioned in some of posts above) is that all this provinces are way too small and (except some Sovakian regions like Spiš or Nitra) they were just political/governmental "districts" AFAIK... but unfortunately I don't know much about the history of governing of Slovakia :sad:

btw, the finished parts of the map could be scanned and uploaded this evening or tomorrow morning

[Mircoslavux]

some of them maps are on vikipendia...so try to look there...

[Elvain]

So here is France (http://img365.imageshack.us/my.php?image=francesla7mq.jpg)

regions:
Bretagne
1 - Léon
2 - Cornouaille
3 - Penthievre
4 - Rohan
5 - Vannes
6 - Rais
7 - Nantes
8 - Rennes
Anjou
1 - Anjou
2 - Tourainne
3 - Vendome
4 - Maine
Normandie
sub-regions: Normandy, Perche
1 - Perche
2 - Alencon
3 - Mortain
4 - Avranches
5 - Coutances
6 - Bayeux
7 - Lisieux
8 - Evreux
9 - Rouen
10 - Caux
11 - Eu
Artois et Picardie
sub-refions: Artois, Picardy
1 - Ponthieu (belongs to Picardy, not Artois)
2 - Boulogne
3 - Guines
4 - Saint Pol
5 - Arras
6 - Amiens
7 - Beauvais
8 - Valois
9 - Soissons
10 - Vermandois
Champagne
1 - Laon
2 - Roucy
3 - Porcien
4 - Rethel
5 - Reims
6 - Chalons
7 - Langres
8 - Champagne
Ille-de-France
sub-regions: Ille de France, Gatinais
1 - Sens
2 - Courtennay
3 - Gatinais
4 - Beauce=Orleanois
5 - Paris
Blois et Berry
sub-regions: Blois, Berry
1 - Vexin
2 - Dreux
3 - Chartres
4 - Blois
5 - Chateauroux
Berry (forgot borderline between Chateauroux and Berry...)
6 - Bourbon
7 - Bourges
8 - Sancerre
Bourgogne
1 - Auxerre
2 - Nivernais
3 - Bourgogne
4 - Beaujeu
5 - Chalon
France-Comté/county of Burgundy
1 - Franche-Comté
Savoie
1 - Savoie
2 - Geneve
Dauphiné (or Lower Burgundy)
sub-regions: Dauphiny, Lyonais
1 - Lyonnais
2 - Forez
3 - Albon
4 - Viviers
5 - Valence
6 - Orange
7 - Vennaisin
8 - Forcalouier
9 - Dauphiné
Provence
1 - Nice
2 - Provence
Languedoc
sub-regions: Languedoc, Tolouse
1 - Nimes
2 - Uzés
3 - Melgueil
4 - Narbonne
5 - Beziers
6 - Rouergue
7 - Albigeois
8 - Carcassonne
9 - Foix
10 - Tolouse
11 - Quercy
Auvergne
1 - Gevaudan
2 - Velay
3 - Auvergne
Aquitaine
sub-regions: Poitou, Guyenne, Gascony
1 - Montaigu
2 - Thouars
3 - Poitou
4 - Lusignan
5 - La Marche
6 - Limousin
7 - Périgord
8 - Angouleme
9 - Aunis
10 - Saintonge
11 - Bordeaux
12 - Buch
13 - Bazardais
14 - Agenais
15 - Auch
16 - Cominges
17 - Couserans
18 - Bigorre
19 - Armagnac
20 - Tursan
21 - Bayonne
22 - Béarn

total of 15 regions
23 sub-regions
110 counties

[Saturn345]

And Germany?

[Elvain]

Germany is here (http://forum.sunflowers.de/showthread.php?p=128935#post128935)