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Rating: 
Summary: Careful revision of the "invasion" myth.
Review: Goffart challenges the widely held perception that the "barbarians" (Goths, Lombards, Alans, etc.) were an invading horde that established themselves in Europe like marauding motorcycle gangs. Rather, their settlement in the West took place as an expediency of the Imperial system. What has commonly been viewed as grants (or capitulations) of land, involving major upheavals for the inhabitants, Goffart convincingly recasts as the transfer of units of taxation. In other words, barbarian warlords and their followers were not given land per se, but the right to the assessed tax proceeds from certain parcels. In a way, then, the Imperial government simply removed itself as the middleman between taxpayer and soldier. This, Goffart argues, entailed much less demographic and political turbulence than has commonly been thought, and explains (to a degree) the rather sparse and urban character of barbarian archaelogical evidence from this period. The legal and social roots of the later feudal system are also revealed. Extensive footnotes and appendices drill down into the details of late-Roman taxation and troop-billeting practices, supporting his conclusions. Very well done scholarship which has, judging from its citations, caused researchers in this field to stop and think.
Rating: 
Summary: If you think you understood the Dark Ages, think again
Review: Goffart takes issue not only with the common misperception of a violent and massive barbarian invasion of the Roman West, but also with the more prosaic picture which has been drawn in 19th and 20th century historical scholarship of the period--one in which the Goths, Burgundians, etc., were basically granted a third of all the useful lands in Gaul, Spain and Bavaria, causing a monumental upheaval in power and property. He feels this consensus springs from faulty assumptions and misinterpretations of the primary sources particularly those pertaining to Roman tax law. Instead of actual lands, he concludes that the barbarians were granted the proceeds from a third of the assessed properties that were taxed, and that little or no property changed hands as a result. The Empire, in effect, was dealing itself out of the military payroll game, letting the local (barbarian) militias collect their own damn pay. Although Goffart deduces this mostly from a close examination of the documentary evidence, he also feels it helps explain the anomalous paucity of barbarian archaeological finds from this period, and the usually urban nature of what little is found. There are several ramifications of this picture. Instead of painful disruption of Gallo-Roman property owners, we see instead a sort of book-keeping maneuver designed to minimize the impact of barbarian settlement. We see the opportunistic devolution of Roman taxation and bureaucracy, ingeniously devised to smoothly incorporate barbarian power, without reducing imperial revenues (the empire still received its customary third, the remaining third was for local govt). And, on a larger scale, Goffart believes that one can trace in all this the embryonic stages of early-Middle Ages seignurial arrangements. I can't begin to do his careful analysis justice, and urge you to read the book for yourself. I used the phrase "apparently hard-to-argue-with" because whenever I have encountered a reference to his work in seemingly authoritative sources (e.! g., Wolfram's learned but atrociously written "History of the Goths"), it is praised for its value (while, perhaps, puzzled over for its implications).
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