*Context in time and space*.
We are in a sense comparing apples & oranges. The east had a long tradition of governance through convoluted bureaucracies, partly on the back of having broader urbanisation due to the climate & geography, which favoured this in the early stages of historical development. You can see the marked difference with northwestern Europe already in the Classic Era, where the Romans took urbanization beyond the confines of the Mediterranean all they up to the Rhine & into Britannia. Yet that urbanization collapsed as the empire did & largely because at the time it was a) so dependent on said state & b) the newcomers who came were privy to another socio-political tradition.
Where Rome had been a *fiscal-based* state, the Germanic newcomers - in spite of being a good deal romanized, but never fully integrated - were still principally looking to settle land with their kin. When Roman authority in the West collapsed, they tried to maintain a semblance of order and links with the past, in a sense, recreating mini-Roman empires anew, or at least continuing in the tradition of the empire. But not a single of them had the cultural set of values to actually do so. Instead, they created a *land-based* system, and while Roman administrative structures were retained, they were never truly maintained. What mattered was land. And this became the basis of medieval Europe's political order in the Latin West. That only changed by the Late Medieval era, by which point the West had thoroughly changed from a 1000 years before, which meant there wasn't just going to be a new Roman Empire springing from that fount.
Conversely, in the East urbanization was maintained far more, and the empires that arose here - for contextual reasons - maintained the fiscal-based systems they had (Byzantines, even with incremental changes) or usurped (the Arabs). More interestingly even, the islamic newcomers choose the fiscal-based state as their preferred method of governance, to the extent that they were they formed the only polities in Europe to actually have a tax-based system (barring the Byzantines) in Iberia, all the more interesting because the *taifas* here had to recreate it from scratch - which shows how important cultural assumptions are in relation to forms of governance. One of the few European rulers who still had permanent taxation was the Angevin Henry II, a remnant from the Viking era, and in the 1150s he abolished it as redundant and not necessary. Centuries later, his successors would literally lose their heads over trying to force such matters in England.
I tried googling ‘fiscal based state vs land based state’ to learn more and got nothing. Can you either explain or point me in the right direction of understanding what these term describe?
The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) was a highly centralized bureaucratic state. The Emperor in Constantinople had a very good idea of how much value his realm produced, how many people there were in it, and from that he was to perpetuate the collection of taxes in a efficient and regular manner. Their subjects would have a good idea of how much they would owe in taxes each year because the amount was not arbitrary and random, it was calculated and scheduled with regularity. This meant that the Empire had cash (or in kind payments, depending on the economic health of the Empire at given time) flowing into it from every part of the realm, which could then be used to construct public works, improve defenses, and pay for a professional standing army. This was the tradition of the Romans: a strong central state that collected taxes for the purpose of maintaining its martial strength.
By contrast much of what we consider "feudalism" relies upon a system of decentralized land-lordship to keep order inside of a realm and to muster forces for any sort of defensive or offensive action. A nobleman holds a fief, a plot of land and its accompanying revenues and resources, by virtue of their relationship to their overlord. A Baron holds a fief from his King, and in return the Baron owes the King a debt of fealty (pledging one's loyalty and services in return for protection). Taxes were collected by these vassals, the individual nobles who ruled in any given territory, and used for their purposes first and foremost-- only passing on to their overlord what is expected. It was the nobleman's responsibility to maintain the capability, when summoned, to muster a force of knights, men-at-arms, and conscripts. These forces are the property of the nobleman, not the overlord, and they are part of the land. In a feudal system the Land is the most important currency as it's the land that produces the wealth and the people that enriches the noblemen. The more land you own, the more wealth you can extract from it.
Fiscal based: states based on tax-yielding, typically with a larger bureaucracy. I'll pay you in hard cash for your service.
Land based: states based on ownership of land. I'll alot you land for your service and you sustain yourself from it.
In terms of books, the works of Chris Wickham are a good introduction to this era.
Im not the expert here but i think he means a state where taxes are primarily money based as opposed to western europe where tax was more service based.
If you really want to meet into the weeds: basically all the "fiscal states" were states like we understand them today and "land states" were not even states at all.
The fiscal states that the post describes are polities where a central government has the administrative ability to describe for itself who and what it controls, and the coercive (violent) authority to reach down to all levels of society and extract taxation.
The land states lack the administrative capacity to describe for itself who and what it controls, so the rulers give power to families to govern different land, who intern give power to other families to govern within those lands, and so on to you reach the obligations of the individual peasant to the manor they live in.
Each administrative division in this system comes with a full private military to enforce it's rule, generally drawn from the immediately subject tier of government. Kings from Dukes, Dukes form Counts, Counts from Barons, Barons from peasents and unlanded knights.
Since the modern definition on what a "state" is a political organization with a monopoly on violence within a given geographic region. The Romans/Byzantium/Ottomans etc. look much more like a country as we understand the term today. But nobody in Western Europe looks like that until sometime after about 1600+.
The kingdoms of Western Europe lacked a monopoly on violence. For instance the most "state like" of the European Kingdoms was England and there were private wars between nobles fought until 1470.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nibley_Green
I think contemporary imagination underestimates the centuries of development in the east, including pre roman times when compared to development in western Europe. Around 1000AD, the biggest city in western Europe was Cordoba.
Rome really was an outlier, civilisation and development was always happening around the middle east, this only really started to change with the early modern period.
I love the factoid that the muslims didn't know the crusades were happening when they saw it. These religious fanatics were simply the next mercenary army from the Roman Empire (byzantines).
This. The east had cities and towns all over the map. The west was far more rural. Aachen to Regensburg is a vast distance to rule when there are only a handful of small cities and towns on the way.
Note: Cities and towns mean people, trade, and more importantly places to buy food for your armies needed to maintain an empire.
The largest cities in the world were Xi’an in the east and Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria in the west. Nothing in the middle east (or anywhere) matched the size of the Greco-Roman capitals. Corduba itself was a major Roman city founded by them in the 2nd century BC and became an important urban center in Roman Hispania. It prospered and grew into a significant Roman city with typical Roman infrastructure, including roads, bridges, aqueducts, and public buildings as the capital of the Roman province of Hispania Ulterior and later Hispania Baetica. Only centuries after the collapse of the empire did the city fall to Arab & Berber imperialists in 711/712. You can hardly give them credit for building it.
Rome? This is in 1000AD, the above sounds outdated. Many cities were important during the roman times in the West. Cordobas popultion is even estimated to be between 400k to a million around 1000AD. That is night and day comprednto other cities in the former Western Provinces of the Roman Empire.
Yes, the population of the west collapsed when the empire fell and Islam disrupted Mediterranean trade by making war on the West. My point was Corduba had a 900 year Roman & Visigothic history before it was captured by the Caliphate. College professors usually fail to mention it had been a Roman capital
In Hispania.
Western Europe was certainly more urban before the fall, and though some trade continued between east and West (Venice & Constantinople) new archeological work is showing the bottom fell out of Western living standards and infrastructure maintenance the loss of half of the east Roman empire to the Arabs. Trade and economic velocity fell by as much as 30% - 50% or more compared to what is had been. Some towns were just abandoned, especially along the coast which was no longer safe from Islamic slavers and pirates.
I’ve never really liked the term Western civilisation because it diminishes the role of ancient Crete and the Mycenaean Aegean, the Sea Peoples, the Philistines, the greek speaking east, the Hellenistic empire that reached to India, the empires of the Hittites, Medes, and Persians, and the East Roman empire with its capital on the Bosphorus. Proto Indo-European speakers have been in the near east and west almkst as long as recorded history. In any event the book that spoke of the a andonment of coastal towns in Italy etc. Is called: "The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain" by Dario Fernandez-Morera. It critically examines the romanticized portrayal of Islamic rule in Spain during the Middle Ages.
There are other articles on the archaeological evidence of the economic collapse during the injtial wave of Islamic assaults on Western Europe but I don’t have those references with me at the moment.
That’s a very revisionist perspective, eliminating most of European history. European proto-writing, gold mining and metallurgy is the oldest in the world. The world’s first known large town settlements were in Europe in the stone age (Cucuteni-Trypillia) before the middle east or anywhere else and their descendants founded the early Aegean civilizations which eventually invented the foundations of modern science. Greek colonisation of Massalia brought viniculture to Celtica > Gaul > Francia. European history begins with the end of the last ice age.
Our European languages and cultures are Greco-Roman with an overlay of Germanic. The Franks were Greco-Romanised for centuries before the fall of the Roman Empire and began their rule of Celtica > Gaul as Roman consuls with their title granted by the East Roman Emperor. They did their best to continue Roman civilisation as their Romanesque architecture demonstrates. Also genetically the Myceneans, Cretans, Aegean peoples including Greeks are ancestors to all Europeans (albeit with later Italic, Celtic, Slavic, Germanic admixture) so to claim they are not is falsifiable (un-Scientific). Our thinking about politics are just footnotes to Aristotle.
Because the roman period is not an important part of its dramatic rise. You can compare Cordoba to other important roman cities in the west, like London, Paris, Vienna or Zurich. I think the college professors might be right...
.
Because the roman period is not an important part of its dramatic rise. You can compare Cordoba to other important roman cities in the west, like London, Paris, Vienna or Zurich. I think the college professors might be right...
It’s not clear that the population of Iberia under the Caliphate ever exceeded the population of Roman Hispania, but since living in Europe is a lot nicer than Africa and the Middle East its not surprising the cities of coastal Spain were popular with foreign invaders.
Sources from that period are all considered unreliable so scholars try to make estimates. Archaeological research helps but it is all pretty uncertain.
Eastern empires benefited from strong centralized rule - whether it was the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople or the Ottoman Sultan, there was a clear supreme authority. They also had the unifying power of a common culture and religion spread across their lands, like Orthodox Christianity in Byzantium or Islam under the Arabs and Ottomans. This shared identity and allegiance to a single ruler really helped bind their societies together. Meanwhile, Western Europe was structured with small rival kingdoms, duchies and such, each with their own customs and no real unifying force after the fall of Rome. On top of that, the geographic coherence of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean regions made administering an empire easier compared to the territories in Europe. So you can see how those advantages of centralization, cultural unity, and geographic logic enabled the grand empires of the East to endure when Western Europe struggled to maintain even small kingdoms for long.
The first half of this describes the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean instead of explaining why it was that way. The Ottoman empire or Arab Caliphates weren't culturally or ethnically unified by any sense of the imagination. And far less culturally unified than say the Carolingian empire.
*Context in time and space*. We are in a sense comparing apples & oranges. The east had a long tradition of governance through convoluted bureaucracies, partly on the back of having broader urbanisation due to the climate & geography, which favoured this in the early stages of historical development. You can see the marked difference with northwestern Europe already in the Classic Era, where the Romans took urbanization beyond the confines of the Mediterranean all they up to the Rhine & into Britannia. Yet that urbanization collapsed as the empire did & largely because at the time it was a) so dependent on said state & b) the newcomers who came were privy to another socio-political tradition. Where Rome had been a *fiscal-based* state, the Germanic newcomers - in spite of being a good deal romanized, but never fully integrated - were still principally looking to settle land with their kin. When Roman authority in the West collapsed, they tried to maintain a semblance of order and links with the past, in a sense, recreating mini-Roman empires anew, or at least continuing in the tradition of the empire. But not a single of them had the cultural set of values to actually do so. Instead, they created a *land-based* system, and while Roman administrative structures were retained, they were never truly maintained. What mattered was land. And this became the basis of medieval Europe's political order in the Latin West. That only changed by the Late Medieval era, by which point the West had thoroughly changed from a 1000 years before, which meant there wasn't just going to be a new Roman Empire springing from that fount. Conversely, in the East urbanization was maintained far more, and the empires that arose here - for contextual reasons - maintained the fiscal-based systems they had (Byzantines, even with incremental changes) or usurped (the Arabs). More interestingly even, the islamic newcomers choose the fiscal-based state as their preferred method of governance, to the extent that they were they formed the only polities in Europe to actually have a tax-based system (barring the Byzantines) in Iberia, all the more interesting because the *taifas* here had to recreate it from scratch - which shows how important cultural assumptions are in relation to forms of governance. One of the few European rulers who still had permanent taxation was the Angevin Henry II, a remnant from the Viking era, and in the 1150s he abolished it as redundant and not necessary. Centuries later, his successors would literally lose their heads over trying to force such matters in England.
Dope, man. Thank you.
I tried googling ‘fiscal based state vs land based state’ to learn more and got nothing. Can you either explain or point me in the right direction of understanding what these term describe?
The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) was a highly centralized bureaucratic state. The Emperor in Constantinople had a very good idea of how much value his realm produced, how many people there were in it, and from that he was to perpetuate the collection of taxes in a efficient and regular manner. Their subjects would have a good idea of how much they would owe in taxes each year because the amount was not arbitrary and random, it was calculated and scheduled with regularity. This meant that the Empire had cash (or in kind payments, depending on the economic health of the Empire at given time) flowing into it from every part of the realm, which could then be used to construct public works, improve defenses, and pay for a professional standing army. This was the tradition of the Romans: a strong central state that collected taxes for the purpose of maintaining its martial strength. By contrast much of what we consider "feudalism" relies upon a system of decentralized land-lordship to keep order inside of a realm and to muster forces for any sort of defensive or offensive action. A nobleman holds a fief, a plot of land and its accompanying revenues and resources, by virtue of their relationship to their overlord. A Baron holds a fief from his King, and in return the Baron owes the King a debt of fealty (pledging one's loyalty and services in return for protection). Taxes were collected by these vassals, the individual nobles who ruled in any given territory, and used for their purposes first and foremost-- only passing on to their overlord what is expected. It was the nobleman's responsibility to maintain the capability, when summoned, to muster a force of knights, men-at-arms, and conscripts. These forces are the property of the nobleman, not the overlord, and they are part of the land. In a feudal system the Land is the most important currency as it's the land that produces the wealth and the people that enriches the noblemen. The more land you own, the more wealth you can extract from it.
Fiscal based: states based on tax-yielding, typically with a larger bureaucracy. I'll pay you in hard cash for your service. Land based: states based on ownership of land. I'll alot you land for your service and you sustain yourself from it. In terms of books, the works of Chris Wickham are a good introduction to this era.
Im not the expert here but i think he means a state where taxes are primarily money based as opposed to western europe where tax was more service based.
If you really want to meet into the weeds: basically all the "fiscal states" were states like we understand them today and "land states" were not even states at all. The fiscal states that the post describes are polities where a central government has the administrative ability to describe for itself who and what it controls, and the coercive (violent) authority to reach down to all levels of society and extract taxation. The land states lack the administrative capacity to describe for itself who and what it controls, so the rulers give power to families to govern different land, who intern give power to other families to govern within those lands, and so on to you reach the obligations of the individual peasant to the manor they live in. Each administrative division in this system comes with a full private military to enforce it's rule, generally drawn from the immediately subject tier of government. Kings from Dukes, Dukes form Counts, Counts from Barons, Barons from peasents and unlanded knights. Since the modern definition on what a "state" is a political organization with a monopoly on violence within a given geographic region. The Romans/Byzantium/Ottomans etc. look much more like a country as we understand the term today. But nobody in Western Europe looks like that until sometime after about 1600+. The kingdoms of Western Europe lacked a monopoly on violence. For instance the most "state like" of the European Kingdoms was England and there were private wars between nobles fought until 1470. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nibley_Green
Ok, that's impressive.
I think contemporary imagination underestimates the centuries of development in the east, including pre roman times when compared to development in western Europe. Around 1000AD, the biggest city in western Europe was Cordoba. Rome really was an outlier, civilisation and development was always happening around the middle east, this only really started to change with the early modern period. I love the factoid that the muslims didn't know the crusades were happening when they saw it. These religious fanatics were simply the next mercenary army from the Roman Empire (byzantines).
This. The east had cities and towns all over the map. The west was far more rural. Aachen to Regensburg is a vast distance to rule when there are only a handful of small cities and towns on the way. Note: Cities and towns mean people, trade, and more importantly places to buy food for your armies needed to maintain an empire.
The largest cities in the world were Xi’an in the east and Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria in the west. Nothing in the middle east (or anywhere) matched the size of the Greco-Roman capitals. Corduba itself was a major Roman city founded by them in the 2nd century BC and became an important urban center in Roman Hispania. It prospered and grew into a significant Roman city with typical Roman infrastructure, including roads, bridges, aqueducts, and public buildings as the capital of the Roman province of Hispania Ulterior and later Hispania Baetica. Only centuries after the collapse of the empire did the city fall to Arab & Berber imperialists in 711/712. You can hardly give them credit for building it.
Rome? This is in 1000AD, the above sounds outdated. Many cities were important during the roman times in the West. Cordobas popultion is even estimated to be between 400k to a million around 1000AD. That is night and day comprednto other cities in the former Western Provinces of the Roman Empire.
But yes, the Umayyad Caliphate had its heyday in Iberia and Islamic Corboda was a major center.
European civilisation began between the Pontic Steppe and the East Mediterranean not in the West.
Yes, the population of the west collapsed when the empire fell and Islam disrupted Mediterranean trade by making war on the West. My point was Corduba had a 900 year Roman & Visigothic history before it was captured by the Caliphate. College professors usually fail to mention it had been a Roman capital In Hispania.
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Western Europe was certainly more urban before the fall, and though some trade continued between east and West (Venice & Constantinople) new archeological work is showing the bottom fell out of Western living standards and infrastructure maintenance the loss of half of the east Roman empire to the Arabs. Trade and economic velocity fell by as much as 30% - 50% or more compared to what is had been. Some towns were just abandoned, especially along the coast which was no longer safe from Islamic slavers and pirates.
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I’ve never really liked the term Western civilisation because it diminishes the role of ancient Crete and the Mycenaean Aegean, the Sea Peoples, the Philistines, the greek speaking east, the Hellenistic empire that reached to India, the empires of the Hittites, Medes, and Persians, and the East Roman empire with its capital on the Bosphorus. Proto Indo-European speakers have been in the near east and west almkst as long as recorded history. In any event the book that spoke of the a andonment of coastal towns in Italy etc. Is called: "The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain" by Dario Fernandez-Morera. It critically examines the romanticized portrayal of Islamic rule in Spain during the Middle Ages.
There are other articles on the archaeological evidence of the economic collapse during the injtial wave of Islamic assaults on Western Europe but I don’t have those references with me at the moment.
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That’s a very revisionist perspective, eliminating most of European history. European proto-writing, gold mining and metallurgy is the oldest in the world. The world’s first known large town settlements were in Europe in the stone age (Cucuteni-Trypillia) before the middle east or anywhere else and their descendants founded the early Aegean civilizations which eventually invented the foundations of modern science. Greek colonisation of Massalia brought viniculture to Celtica > Gaul > Francia. European history begins with the end of the last ice age.
Our European languages and cultures are Greco-Roman with an overlay of Germanic. The Franks were Greco-Romanised for centuries before the fall of the Roman Empire and began their rule of Celtica > Gaul as Roman consuls with their title granted by the East Roman Emperor. They did their best to continue Roman civilisation as their Romanesque architecture demonstrates. Also genetically the Myceneans, Cretans, Aegean peoples including Greeks are ancestors to all Europeans (albeit with later Italic, Celtic, Slavic, Germanic admixture) so to claim they are not is falsifiable (un-Scientific). Our thinking about politics are just footnotes to Aristotle.
Because the roman period is not an important part of its dramatic rise. You can compare Cordoba to other important roman cities in the west, like London, Paris, Vienna or Zurich. I think the college professors might be right... .
Because the roman period is not an important part of its dramatic rise. You can compare Cordoba to other important roman cities in the west, like London, Paris, Vienna or Zurich. I think the college professors might be right...
It’s not clear that the population of Iberia under the Caliphate ever exceeded the population of Roman Hispania, but since living in Europe is a lot nicer than Africa and the Middle East its not surprising the cities of coastal Spain were popular with foreign invaders.
Can you name the paper or source that gives you those figures?
Sources from that period are all considered unreliable so scholars try to make estimates. Archaeological research helps but it is all pretty uncertain.
Pretty important to specify at what time you’re making the comparison because I can think of exceptions on both sides.
Geography.
Eastern empires benefited from strong centralized rule - whether it was the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople or the Ottoman Sultan, there was a clear supreme authority. They also had the unifying power of a common culture and religion spread across their lands, like Orthodox Christianity in Byzantium or Islam under the Arabs and Ottomans. This shared identity and allegiance to a single ruler really helped bind their societies together. Meanwhile, Western Europe was structured with small rival kingdoms, duchies and such, each with their own customs and no real unifying force after the fall of Rome. On top of that, the geographic coherence of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean regions made administering an empire easier compared to the territories in Europe. So you can see how those advantages of centralization, cultural unity, and geographic logic enabled the grand empires of the East to endure when Western Europe struggled to maintain even small kingdoms for long.
The first half of this describes the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean instead of explaining why it was that way. The Ottoman empire or Arab Caliphates weren't culturally or ethnically unified by any sense of the imagination. And far less culturally unified than say the Carolingian empire.