Chapter IV - Agrarian Institutions of the Germanic Kingdoms from the fifth to the ninth century

Summary

Those Germanic states which were set up on the soil of the “Western Empire after its dissolution were of decisive importance in the economic development of medieval Europe. Modern scholarship gives us a conception of the conditions under which they were established appreciably different from that which so long prevailed. A flourishing Roman civilization was not swept away by wild hordes of barbarians. The new Germanic states were not the swift consequence of a mighty clash of arms, in which the Romans lost land and liberty, followed by the further spreading of the primitive civilization of their Teutonic conquerors. ‘The West Roman Empire passed away without commotion’, as a recent student of the problem has put it.

Long before dissolution came at the end of the fifth century peaceful penetration by the Germans had been going on; and that penetration was not simply military. Primarily it was economic. So early as the end of the fourth century the Bishop of Cyrene in Africa had the impression that there was hardly a family left without a Goth or Scythian as waiter or butler, cook or bailiff. Germans had not only risen to the highest ranks as soldiers or officials; great masses of them had found economic employment. Naturally there were crowds of German prisoners, reduced to slavery, scattered over all the Empire. But among the veterans, who were settled in the frontier provinces and furnished with land, there were just as many Germans.