Europe · The successor kingdoms
Frisia
drawn on the map AD 783–787
Frisia is the broader coastal region inhabited by the Frisians, extending along the North Sea littoral of the modern Netherlands and northwestern Germany. After the Frankish conquest (completed by the mid-8th century), Frisia lost political independence and was administered as part of the Frankish and later German realms, though it retained distinctive law and a strong sense of local autonomy.
- Shown on the map
- AD 783–787
- Peak area
- 13k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Frisia is the broader coastal region inhabited by the Frisians, extending along the North Sea littoral of the modern Netherlands and northwestern Germany. After the Frankish conquest (completed by the mid-8th century), Frisia lost political independence and was administered as part of the Frankish and later German realms, though it retained distinctive law and a strong sense of local autonomy.
Throughout the medieval period, much of Frisia enjoyed a special status often described as "Frisian freedom" (see entry 15), lacking a resident feudal lord and governing itself through local assemblies. Frisia was Christianized through missionaries including Willibrord and Boniface (the latter martyred at Dokkum in 754). Later, the region was divided among various counties and lordships.
Note
This entry is a region rather than a single state and overlaps with entries 13 and 15.
Common questions
- What was Frisia?
- Frisia is the broader coastal region inhabited by the Frisians, extending along the North Sea littoral of the modern Netherlands and northwestern Germany. After the Frankish conquest (completed by the mid-8th century), Frisia lost political independence and was administered as part of the Frankish and later German realms, though it retained distinctive law and a strong sense of local autonomy.
- When is Frisia shown on the map?
- The border data draws Frisia AD 783–787. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was Frisia?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Frisia covered about 13,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica and the World History Encyclopedia, while flagging entries built on thin or contested evidence — Samo's Empire on a single Fredegar passage, Venice's 697 founding date as legendary, the Pacta conventa as a probable forgery. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Frisia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisia
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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