Re: Walter Goffart on Continuity of Roman Taxation Systems

"Paul J Gans" <gans@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:hcqr2s$bea$7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Curt Emanuel <cemanuel@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Pete Barrett" <petebarrett@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4af0872a.5558500@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 3 Nov 2009 03:48:25 +0000 (UTC), Paul J Gans <gans@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


No, just enlarge on it a bit. Do you mean one man's service to
another (fealty) or do you mean property tenure, or the social
hierarchy, etc., etc., etc. Or are you referring to knighthood?

And what development in France are you talking about?

I haven't read the article, but from Curt Emanuel's description,
Goffart seems to be talking mainly about the taxation and land
valuation systems. In that case, that's what's relevant - if similar
systems developed in non-Roman areas, then that would weigh against
the idea that those systems developed in Merovingian and Carolingian
France from Roman practice in Gaul.


Not necessarily - if the Merovingians or Carolingians controlled non-Roman
lands then their applying common administrative systems to those non-Roman
lands shouldn't come as a surprise. You might be able to draw some
conclusions from resistance, or even lowered efficiency indicating
unfamiliarity with a practice but as far as I know we don't have that.

Pretty tough to _prove_ that something didn't happen anyway. I prefer to
look at any issue from the POV of "Is there sufficient evidence to indicate
that something _did_ happen." IMO Goffart's pretty weak on the evidence in
this article. I think his thesis is questionable on that basis alone - at
least based on what I know of the period in question. Of course there may be
some evidence I'm not aware of.

I tend to agree with you, but with a caveat. When there is little
or no evidence, the best that one can do is to try to decide how
a society got from there to here.

Actually, I think it's better to say you don't know how it came about. The Hide was used in much the same way in England but I haven't (yet) read anything saying that's based on Roman taxation systems.

I don't want to get on too much of a kick about this. Goffart likes to throw out creative ideas and the world's better for it - it makes people think. At the same time, people used to look at the Early Medieval Period as a time where people ran around killing each other with abandon while having forgotten all aspects of civilization - because people came up with theories without taking a hard look at the evidence (or without bothering to look for the evidence).


In other words, we know (roughly) the system used by the Carolingians.
Where did it come from? The Romans are perhaps the best bet. But
I agree that this is not proof.

IMO, without any evidence of continuity the best bet is the Carolingians were smart enough to figure it out on their own, just like the English of the same period were. Though I would be interested in seeing if there's evidence that England picked it up from Gaul. There are just a couple of books out there that really focus on Gaul-England interactions and I haven't read them yet.

--
Curt Emanuel
cemanuel@xxxxxxxx

.

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