David Bates (historian)

David Bates is a historian of Britain and France during the period from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. He has written many books and articles during his career, including ''Normandy before 1066'' (1982), ''Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–1087'' (1998), ''The Normans and Empire'' (2013), ''William the Conqueror'' (2016) in the Yale English Monarchs series (translated into French as ''Guillaume le Conquérant'' (2019)) and ''La Tapisserie de Bayeux'' (co-authored with Xavier Barral i Altet) (2019).

Education and career

* King Edward VI Grammar School, Nuneaton (1955–1963)
*University of Exeter (BA, 1966, and PhD, 1970)
* Archivist at the Imperial War Museum in London (1969–1971)
* Fellow of the University of Wales, University College, Cardiff (now the University of Cardiff) (1971–73). He remained there as lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, and professor until 1994.
* Edwards Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow (1994–2003)
* Director of the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London (2003–08)
* Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia (2008–2010). He is now Emeritus Professor there.
*Visiting Professorship at the University of Caen Normandie from 2009 to 2012
* The University of Caen Normandie awarded him an honorary doctorate (Docteur Honoris Causa) in 2000.

During this peripatetic career, he has held several positions that have involved responsibilities for the general development of his subject, such as Head of History and Welsh History in Cardiff, Head of the Department of Medieval History, Head of the School of History and Archaeology, and Head of History in Glasgow, and Director of the Centre of East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia. His time at the Institute of Historical Research, among other things, required that he animate public debate about History's role in British education and in public life and that he participate in delegations and projects that took him to Japan, Russia, Israel, and the United States.

Publications

Books

The most important of his books are:
* ''Normandy before 1066'' (London and New York, Longmans, 1982)
* ''A Bibliography of Domesday Book'' (Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1986)
* ''William the Conqueror'' (George Philip, 1989; reprinted, Tempus, 2001,2004)
* ''Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–1087'' (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998)
* ''The Normans and Empire'' (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013)
* ''William the Conqueror'' (London and New Haven, Yale University Press, 2016). Translated into French as ''Guillaume le Conquérant'' (Paris, Flammarion, 2019)
*''La Tapisserie de Bayeux'' (Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2019). Co-authored with Xavier Barral i Altet).

''The Normans and Empire'' argues for a new analytical framework for the expansion of the Normans in Western Europe and for the experience of the British Isles. ''William the Conqueror'' (''Guillaume le Conquérant'') proposes a radical revision of the life of William the Conqueror.

All of his books are based on extensive researches in the archives and libraries in France and Normandy that have uncovered a lot of new or inadequately known material, some of it published in ''Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I''. He retains an interest in the interpretation of charters as literary sources and is currently working on further innovative approaches to the history of northern Europe during the period from the tenth to the thirteenth century. A Festschrift has been published in his honour:

*''Normandy and its Neighbours, 900-1250: Essays for David Bates'', ed. David Crouch and Kathleen Thompson (Turnhout, Brepols, 2011).

Selected articles and publications

* ‘The Character and Career of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, 1049/50-1097’, ''Speculum'', 50 (1975), 1-20.
* ‘The Land Pleas of William I’s Reign: Penenden Heath Revisited’, ''Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research'', 51 (1978), 1–19.
* ‘The Earliest Norman Writs’, ''English Historical Review'', 100 (1985), 266–84.
* ‘Normandy and England after 1066’, ''English Historical Review'', 104 (1989), 851–80.
* ''Bishop Remigius of Lincoln 1067-1092 '' (Lincoln:  The Honywood Press, 1992).
* ‘Les chartes de confirmation et pancartes normandes du règne de Guillaume le Conquérant’, in ''Pancartes monastiques des XI^e et XII^e'' ''siècles'', ed. M. Parisse, P. Pégeot and B.-M. Tock (Turnhout, 1998), 95–109.
* ‘West Francia: The Northern Principalities, 900-1024’, in ''The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3, c.900-c.1024'', ed. T. Reuter (, 1999), 398–419.
* ‘England and the “Feudal Revolution”’, in ''Il Feudalesimo nell’Alto Medioevo: Settimane di Studi del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo'', 47 (2000), 611-49.
* ‘The Conqueror’s Adolescence’, in ''Anglo-Norman Studies: Proceedings of the Battle Conference (2002)'', 25 (2003), 1–18.
* ‘A Charter of William the Conqueror and Two of His Sons’, in ''Tabularia'' (http://www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/revue/tabularia) (2005).
* ‘The Representation of Queens and Queenship in Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, in ''Frankland: The Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Dame Jinty Nelson'', ed. Paul Fouracre and David Ganz (, 2008), 285–303.
* ‘Autour de l’année 1047 : un acte de Guillaume, comte d’Arques, pour Fécamp (18 juillet 1047)’, in ''De part et d’autre de la Normandie médiévale : Recueil d’études en hommage à François Neveux'', ed. Pierre Bouet, Catherine Bougy, Bernard Garnier and Christophe Maneuvrier (Caen, 2009), 43-52 (with Pierre Bauduin)
* ‘Frank Barlow 1911-2009’, ''Proceedings of the British Academy'', clxxi (2011), 3-24.
* ‘Anger, emotion and a biography of William the Conqueror’, in ''Gender and Historiography: Studies in the History of the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford'', ed. Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds and Susan M. Johns (London, 2012), 21–33.
* ‘Robert of Torigni and the ''Historia Anglorum''’, in ''The English and their Legacy, 900-1200: Essays in Honour of Ann Williams'', ed. David Roffe (, 2012), 175–84.
* ‘The Abbey and the Norman Conquest: An Unusual Case?’, in ''Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest'', ed. Tom Licence (Woodbridge, 2014), 5-21.
* ‘Guillaume le Conquérant et les abbés anglais’, in Pierre Bauduin, Grégory Combalbert, Adrien Dubois, Bernard Garnier, and Christophe Maneuvrier (eds.), ''Sur les pas de Lanfranc, du Bec à Caen: Recueil d’études en homage à Véronique Gazeau'', Cahiers des Annales de Normandie, no. 37 (Caen, 2018), 335–42.
* ‘Migration, Conquest, and Identity: England’s History in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in ''Le Migrazioni nell’alto Medioevo: Settimane di Studio della Fondazione Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo'', lxvi (2019), i, 305–35.
*‘William the Conqueror and Wessex’, in Alexander Langlands and Ryan Lavelle (eds.), The Land of the English Kin: Essays in Honour of Professor Barbara Yorke (Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2020), 517–37.

Conference proceedings

Bates has always been committed to encouraging collaboration between scholars from different countries. While at the Institute of Historical Research he organised five annual Anglo-American conferences from 2004 to 2008 and several other major conferences. He was Director of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies from 2010 to 2012.

In addition to the three volumes of ''Anglo-Norman Studies'' based on the Battle conferences he directed, he has edited or co-edited the following conference proceedings:-

* (with Anne Curry) ''England and Normandy in the Middle Ages'' (London, The Hambledon Press 1994)
*(with Elizabeth Hallam) ''Domesday Book'' (Tempus, 2001)
* (with Julia Crick

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