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The Welsh borderlands were a distinctive territory where two peoples came together throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. It was here that men skilled at law drew up the Dunsate Agreement, to solve the impending problems with cattle theft. This book explores what sets the Dunsate Agreement apart from other Anglo-Saxon law codes grappling with cattle theft, highlighting that creators of this document, and the community that it concerns, included both Anglo-Saxons and Welsh. It argues that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents the military culture of the Welsh borderlands in a distinctive way which aligns its inhabitants with outlaws. The book articulates a discernible culture in the Welsh borderlands prior to 1066. Bede's The Historia Ecclesiastica has long been interpreted as a narrative of Anglo/British strife. His rancour towards the pagan Mercians provides substantial information about the life of Penda of Mercia, whose entire reign over this borderlands kingdom was defined by consistent political and military unity with Welsh rulers. Expanding on the mixed culture, the book examines the various Latin and Old English Lives of the popular Anglo-Saxon saint, Guthlac of Crowland. Vernacular literary tradition reveals a group of Old English riddles that link the 'dark Welsh' to agricultural labour through the cattle they herd, and who have long been understood to show the Welsh as slaves. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is frequently cited as a paradigm of Anglo/Welsh antagonism. The book reveals that the impact of the Norman Conquest on the Anglo-Welsh border region was much greater than previously realised.
1 •• Introduction: the Dunsæte Agreement and daily life in the Welsh borderlands Sometime in late Anglo-Saxon England, a territory called the Dunsæte was having problems with cattle theft. Men skilled at law from within this community sat down together and drew up a document outlining an agreement that addressed the situation. They thought about what ought to happen in a variety of circumstances. If a man sees the tracks of his stolen cattle leave his own property and cross into his neighbour’s land, who is responsible for following the trail and trying to
included the ethnic Kachins living in the Shan States as well as other local groups such as the Shans, Lisus and others. The cases reflected the everyday lives of the people and the most common cross-border suspected crimes. From cattle theft to blood feuds, consuls helped negotiate for a settlement that suited British interests. Some cases were politically sensitive involving questions of sovereignty, territoriality and legal authority between China and Britain. In this chapter, I show how consuls worked in the Frontier Meetings as legal mediators and how they promoted
, we hope to have opened up new pastures for research. This shift away from traditional narratives (especially in the context of cattle) was initially made by David Gilmartin in his remarkable study of cattle theft, to which this work is greatly indebted. Gilmartin’s work showed clearly how something as seemingly innocuous as theft of cattle could reveal, upon further examination, extremely interesting
over to the DC, or chief, and the Tribal Police. 20 While there was usually no lack of co-operation from the DC in such circumstances, the response of an African chief was often more fickle. Cases of cattle theft offer perhaps the best illustration of the difficulties that ‘split’ jurisdiction created for effective policing. The common pattern in such cases was for cattle to be stolen from a European
policies by masking or “whitewashing” cultural differences’. 31 While it is often tempting to think of hybridity as equivalent to inclusivity, one need look no further than the Old English charms against cattle theft to recognize that such is far from the case. One feature shared among all extant metrical cattle theft charms is a reference to Christ on the cross, a detail that is especially important since in the early medieval tradition ‘the cross has the power to reveal what has been illicitly hidden (as God had made
winter pastures and summer highland pastures meet, would be a natural location of such early drove roads. Moreover, textual evidence for this practice along the Welsh borderlands during the Anglo-Saxon period may exist in the form of the Dunsæte Agreement discussed in the Introduction.96 While earlier I considered what this text might tell us about the laws of the Welsh borderlands, the content of the Dunsæte Agreement – namely, its focus on cattle theft— and its location on the lower River Wye along the Welsh borderlands also shed light on the cattle trade in the
up to their territorial limits was a point of pride for Pakistani officials, who noted, ‘as a matter of fact it was remarked by U.N.O. Observers [United Nations personnel monitoring the situation in Jammu and Kashmir] that our boundary line was marked by the furrows of our ploughs’. Cattle theft remained a point of contention between security forces on the two sides. Pakistani police officials were
, organised on lines which took advantage of pastoral areas with little fencing and, until 1871, no branding requirement. 30 The policing and prosecution of these offences were fraught with difficulties of proof and hindered by local resistance to such controls. In 1873 the failure of the jury to convict in a cattle theft trial at Roma led to the government’s withdrawing the Western District court
going between villages and many shots of day-to-day livestock management. There is also complex episode of divination involving stones, a great deal of daily gossip, and much else besides. As in normal life in reality, there are many loose ends, that is, events and situations that are not resolved, at least not within the films. However, running through all five films and holding them together is a recurrent storyline concerning one of the laibon 's sons, Rerenko, who has been unjustly imprisoned in Nairobi, supposedly for cattle theft. Here he