Book Notes: Barbarians and Romans: A.D. 418-584: The Techniques of Accommodation (by Walter Goffart)

I read this book because it was recommended in the bibliography presented in Guy Hasall's Worlds of Arthur.  

Goffart had studied Late Roman and Early Medieval tax law and the basic query of this book is that despite the "fall" of the Western Empire and its division into the "barbarian" kingdoms of the Lombards, Visigoths, Franks etc., a clear continuity in taxation runs through this transition, and the Roman origins remain evident and in place. 

Goffart almost exhaustively breaks down the idea of massive, multiple waves of coordinated and organized invasions of "Germanic" peoples overrunning and carving up the Western Empire.  Rather, these invasions are uncoordinated and quite separate from each other. Many of these people had previously existed, often for a long time, adjacent to the Empire on its frontier - they interacted with and knew who Romans were and, perhaps more importantly, what life in the Empire had to offer.  Due to pressures from other tribes or other factors, occasionally "large enough to matter" masses of barbarians would successfully cross the (fortified) frontier penetrate into the mainly civilian lands beyond. Maybe there would be some fighting, but in many occasions the Empire deemed it easier to take in the invaders as military auxiliaries.  

To this Goffart is focused on the process of how the empire legalistically handled this "accommodation."  The answer was to basically assign a portion of a given landowner's tax liability to a given barbarian or barbarians.  Because that tax income would usually be used for defense of the empire, and because the accommodated barbarians provide military service, one can see how this somewhat cleverly does very little to upset the status quo for the Empire.  Tax liability is not increased but the same level of defense is still provided.  One can see how early medieval feudal structures might grow out of this.

I do not recommend this book for casual reading. Goffart is very much doing the academic historian's labor of assembling and presenting his probative evidence.  The first, second, sixth (discussion of the granting of hospitalitas) , and final chapters are probably most instructive, with the middle five focusing on specific case studies for 5th century Italy, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Lombards, respectively. 

The granting of hospitalitas in chapter 6 and indeed the whole book is at the heart of the "accommodation."  Older Roman military law required hospitalitas in a billeting of troops sense.  Goffart argues that earlier historians have mistaken the granting of hospitalitas to barbarians as either the outright reallocation of land from Roman owners to new barbarian owners, or the creation of a sort of early feudal lord-serf relationship. This interpretation of course fits very neatly into a "conquering invaders" narrative.  Goffart's more nuanced view is that above tax reallocation in exchange for service, which is considerably less dramatic, and, more importantly, does much to keep the source of authority with the Empire (the tax allocation is given in exchange for service - the implication is that it can be taken away), albeit over time these tax allotments will devolve and reconsolidate into the early medieval states.