The core idea is contrasting the Roman fiscal impersonal bureucracy, which was able to levy tax over a wide area, with the localised aristocratic one that followed, based on being an influential local family. entralised imperial taxation versus local estate-based taxation.
In the Roman system, the representative could show up and collect tax without having a family or local connection. Armies were employed by tax money (and taxed grain) gathered from this impersonal, wide-area bureaucracy, not by local lords. The value extracted in one part of the Empire could be spent (e.g. on military) in another
Example of an estate in 4th century Gaul –
- tenant farmers paid rent+produce+labour to a private owner
- Imperial taxman assessed it and gave them a tax-bill (in grain/money)
Christmas Day 800, Charlemagne was crowned as the Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III in St. Peter’s Basilica. He didn’t have the Roman tax ability. But he did have loyalty of people who had localised influence. This is the seed of feudalism.
Feudalism can mean –
- landlords squeezing peasants
- military service based on estates
- lord granting a fief of land to a vassal
- government via local aristocrats
Under the Carolingians…
- public office
- landholding
- military obligation
- personal fealty
…were separate things that often overlapped
The naïve conception is that feudalism was always a package of all these. The point of those two lists is to deconstruct the concept you have of ‘feudalism’, which is a label and is distorting like all labels are.
In Britain, the Roman administration collapsed quickly. In Italy, it outlived the Romans and continued under Odoacer and Theodoric. The Goths kept Roman law to some extent in the West. Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Empire (Constantinople) preserved a Roman-style fiscal state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century – Diocletian reörganised tax to be more reliable.
The Roman state calculated how much tax it needed and issued the bills down through the hierarchy. The Empire had to hire bureaucrats to make sure these locals didn’t understate their bills. If inflation made the salaries of the bureaucrats worthless, the tax draw fell apart. Later Empire tried to track people’s status, residence, occupation and inherited obligation. (Sounds like a Hukuo system.) It was easier to do this with farmers, who have less labour-mobility.
Odoacer deposes the (Western) Roman Emperor in 476 and takes over/inherits this tax system. Civil wars in Rome before Odoacer meant localised government; these local governments had picked a side in the civil war, and then swore to the Gothic Emperor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilperic_I in 6th century inherited the Roman taxation system but not its centralised way of settling assessment disputes. This is where feudalism comes in. The Roman Empire was replaced by smaller kingdoms. Early mediæval kings toured among their lords because that’s their basis of tax, not the capital.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
