Arthur's dykes

[Anton]

When do the local aristocracy resume an active military leadership role?  I'd think in the military zone they had probably never relinquished it.

In the civil zone did the local aristos follow the general trend to do so across the Later Empire?

Presumably the basic building block is the traditional boundary of the tribal civates and mixed in or adjacent to that is the former imperial land civil and military.

[Imperial Dave]

That's what I think too. The militarized north was too well established and so "unit" leaders morphed into warband leaders by evolution. The western areas were probably similar. The lowland areas would see local magnates first off organising and supporting military units new and old followed by assumption of power in some civitates and merging with warband leaders in others

[Anton]

I think it's not a bad guess at all.  Somewhere in all this there's Dark's Martinian revolution that, if I read Koch right, seems to find its eventual champion in Powys.

[Imperial Dave]

And Powys always seems to be at odds with other groupings especially the west

[Jim Webster]

Very true....shrinking horizons, no imperial overlordship or control. In those circumstances the relationship between landowner/local populace becomes ever more symbiotic with the military stationed In the area

yes, granting land (and peasants to work it) is an acceptable way of supporting a military force.
When you think about it, the end of imperial overlordship merely shortened the supply chain. Rather than have  the peasantry pay over more than half their income to bureaucracy which would, effectively, have to be funded out of tax income, and this left a residue to spend on the army.
With the end of the Empire you could cut out the bureaucracy, because with the shrinking horizon, the land owner could provide with military force, taking no more from the peasants than the bureaucracy did.
Given that the landowner would doubtless have evaded tax before, pushing the burden down onto the defenceless peasants, he would be no worse off.

[Imperial Dave]

been rereading The Ruin of Roman Britain by James Gerrard and he proposes something along those lines ie under Imperial control Britain is geared toward agricultural surplus to support the army and general taxation. With the central authority removed, it is postulated that Britain doesnt need the surplus and so reduces its output and/or efficiency and moves to mixed agricultural and domestic animal output.

[Jim Webster]

been rereading The Ruin of Roman Britain by James Gerrard and he proposes something along those lines ie under Imperial control Britain is geared toward agricultural surplus to support the army and general taxation. With the central authority removed, it is postulated that Britain doesnt need the surplus and so reduces its output and/or efficiency and moves to mixed agricultural and domestic animal output.

I suspect that once the 'pull' from the Army stopped, and there wasn't the market for all the grain, agriculture would soon switch to something more mixed and with more domestic livestock

Returning land to grass and grazing it would improve fertility, soil structure, etc etc
Those actually farming the land would probably see an improvement in their diet
The smaller areas that the country was now being governed in would be more self-sufficient, in that now everybody had grain, wool, meat, and leather and you weren't having to 'import' them

It wasn't a 'less' efficient system, it was just a system geared for different ends in a different world, and so would produce efficiently to meet those ends

[aligern]

Re foederati/laeti  and land law, it has been proposed that tge origin if the Salic law is the Roman agreement with the Franks and that its inheritance rules are designed to always have a soldier on the estate who could provide the milutary duties. That makes sense as the last thing Rome wanted was to have the units depopulated as a few  men became wealthy and took on the lands of less successful managers.
There was a question raised as to why the 'Goths' in Septimania kept their Gothic attribution.It was suggested that military service and land rights were key. If you were a Goth you could claim rights under Gothic law and crucially land title.
We should not underestimate the desire of societies to not just live in the  world according to Thomas Hobbes. Certainly Gildas is representing a traditional and legalistic outlook, albeit one which in reality has to accommodate to new realities of power. Even oarvenu military leaders hanker over legitimacy and security of tenure. Saxon mini kingdoms attempt this through being in a line of heredity from Wotan.
Roy

[Jim Webster]

Yes, I think that as power gradually shifted from 'Roman State' to 'Successor State' we would see constant attempts of the new players in the game to provide themselves with legitimacy. To win that legitimacy they may well have been willing to compromise. So if you are a Saxon looking for land to settle your followers, you are happy enough to sign up to an agreement that gives you the land, provided (effectively) you fight to protect it as well as protect the other landowners who, if they won't fight alongside you, will at least provide you with rations etc.
Not only that but whilst you might not live in a town, the town is to your advantage. When your peasants harvest your crops, you and your followers can sell your surplus there as well as buy little luxuries.
Whilst Leaders were supposed to be gift givers to their followers (much as Emperors had to provide regular donatives to keep their forces loyal) the same followers would handle cash and buy things they wanted which their lord wouldn't provide.

[Imperial Dave]

We can visualise the shift from Roman to Post Roman to 'Saxon' in the lowlands centred around the land and thus the land-holding. We must remember that it took 200 odd years for the Lowland to become English is outlook and expression of culture....which is an awful long time

[Jim Webster]

We can visualise the shift from Roman to Post Roman to 'Saxon' in the lowlands centred around the land and thus the land-holding. We must remember that it took 200 odd years for the Lowland to become English is outlook and expression of culture....which is an awful long time

I suspect some of it could have been that the first 'saxons' were also trying to be a bit 'Roman'.

Theoderic himself was said to have observed, "the poor Roman imitates the Goth, the rich Goth the Roman."
I see no reason why we didn't seem a similar process in Britain as in Italy

I suspect that eventually the 'Roman' that they were copying faded away and they would end up copying the Frankish and Gothic aristocracies

[Imperial Dave]

Especially in Kent which had strong links with the Franks

[Jim Webster]

Especially in Kent which had strong links with the Franks

Yes, and from 600AD onwards, Rome

[aligern]

On the continent the 'Roman' model of the elite survived in three ways.
Firstly the Church. Bishops were upper class Romans placed by their locally powerful families and often they ran the towns when imperial bureaucracy faded. The church found the barbarians mostly heretical , but generally respectful .

Secondly in independent  cities or those with an arrangement with the Frankish, Burgundian or Visigothic rulers survived well into the sixth century. One assumes that several  Spanish cities who invited in East Roman garrisons from 552 were not incorporated into 'Visigothic' Spain except by a submission arrangement.

Thirdly  Living on their large estates surrounded by their clients . The Arvernians who turned up to support AlaricII  at Vouille in 507 and then did a deal with the victors were Gallo Romans living a Roman or at least post Roman life. Mummolus, for example who was active as a general in an army of the Franco Burgundian state against the Lombards was quite possibly a Roman and possibly led some 'Roman' troops.

In Britain those models were not maintained because the Angles et al. did not arrive with a large army of 10-20,000 men and dominate a whole province. The arrived in small groups and Anglicised that area before encroaching gradually on the next ( building dykes at each bite and hold.) . When they advanced the Roman elite fell back before them, leaving no model of Roman culture. Cities on the continent shrank, in Britain they were abandoned. Christians on the continent faced Christianised barbarians and sought to incorporate them.
in Britain the Church turned away from the aggressively pagan Germans and their sky gods.  Of course I accept that Roman influence had penetrated the Germanic world and the penetration of  Roman symbolism is more apparent in some of the tiny new Germanic states. I would also point to the long  resistance of the continental Saxons to Roman religion.

In Britain , Romanness was ground out between two stones, on the one hand the Germans with a culture that did not value Roman religion or lifestyle , on the other a Celtic society that   claimed a Roman inheritance, but was actually something new as it fought its way to an identity. Aurelius Ambrosianus was indeed the last Roman.

😉 Roy

[Imperial Dave]

nice summary of the contemporary continental 'Roman' world Roy. I think it helps to draw similarities and differences to that in Britain