Rodolphe Keller; Laury Sarti, Pillages, tributs, captifs. Prédation et sociétés de l’Antiquité tardive au haut Moyen Âge (Histoire ancienne et médiévale 153), Paris 2020

NB: The book is available online through the website of OpenEdition. Numbers in brackets refer to the paragraph numbers of each separate contribution as shown on this website.

Predation and its consequences stand at the heart of this edited volume, based on a conference held in Frankfurt am Main in 2012. Laury Sarti, working at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, and Rodolphe Keller, employed at the Université Paris-Est, edited this trilingual volume to illustrate that plundering was a significant element of warfare during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

Keller’s introduction navigates the reader through the historiography dealing with raiding and plunder (3 – 10). Georges Duby’s Guerriers et Paysans and Timothy Reuter’s well-known Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire sparked a historiographical trend that regarded predation as a social phenomenon which this volume seeks to join (7 – 9). The editor argues in favour of the use of the concept of predation to encapsulate various predatory acts such as taking prisoners, looting or exacting tributes since these all have in common that resources are appropriated through the use of force (10). Central issues raised by Keller are the symbolic dimension of predation and its relation to the material aspect (15), on the legitimacy of predation (16), on the benefactors of its profits (17), the relation between predation and power (18–19), and the vocabulary used to describe predatory acts (20).

Benoît Rossignol forms the chronological starting point with a study of predation in the Roman Empire. The author labels the empire’s position towards predation as paradoxical, since it sought to prevent predation within and to profit from predation outside its borders (1). It was the emperor’s task to protect the realm to guarantee tranquilitas and securitas (12). At the same time, the Roman Emperor also had to meet his army’s demand for plunder, otherwise, his position would become vulnerable (25). Booty could serve as political leverage and a symbol of power for ambitious generals (27). An emperor’s attitude towards the division of plunder could also provide the Roman historiographers with the means to distinguish between a tyrannic or a benevolent emperor (30). Similarly, while individual raids did not have to be detrimental for the Romans, the sack of a city could also be a symbolic blow that also effected the Roman aristocracy (15).

Guy Halsall’s thought-provoking study questions the efficacy of looting (5). He concludes that loot gained from small-scale predatory raiding alone could not have fuelled the political economy of early medieval Europe (9). He then offers two alternative driving forces for raiding.  First, one engaged in raiding to provoke a battle. If such a response by the aggrieved party is lacking, the raids could question the legitimacy of a lord unable to protect his lands from predatory enterprises. These situations needed to be resolved in battle, characterised by Halsall as the best way to acquire wealth through warfare (15), or by paying off the plunderers with tribute (18–19). Second, it might have been that the moral rewards of raiding, by establishing dominance over the raided party, might have been more significant than material gain(24). Warfare and raiding were occasions where the warriors could be noticed by their superiors and gain titles or land as a reward for their exemplary conduct, which could provide more and longer-lasting economic benefit than the loot gained through predation (27).

Guido Berndt discusses the interactions between the Ostrogoths and the Roman emperors through which the Goths sought to acquire resources (3).  It depended on the political and socioeconomic contexts if these interactions were predatory in nature (21). Ostrogothic warriors could integrate themselves into the Roman system to gain rewards for military service, or gather income through violence (4). The leader of the group, who used the division of plunder to demonstrate his power (7), was responsible for a satisfactory influx of plundered resources and for the availability of nearby markets to sell part of them (5), otherwise, the warriors serving under him might leave (8). Whenever the emperor refused to pay tribute, violent acts could have forced them to give in (16).

Marilia Lykaki focuses on the role of predation in the Byzantine economy between the seventh and tenth centuries(4 – 5). Loot collected in warfare served as a demonstration of Byzantine power and it could boost the morale of the people during triumphs (7) or that of the army when dividing the loot (10 – 13). Slave-raiding by the Byzantines, Bulgarians and the Arabs all served the same aim: to sell people into slavery, ransom them to their families, or hold them captive whilst awaiting prisoner exchanges (18 – 19). They could be ransomed individually (26), liberated during prisoner exchanges (27, 34), be sold into slavery (33), or be killed to break the morale of the enemy or it could be decided to let only those prisoners with a hefty promise of ransom live (28). Potentially, prisoners could also transmit skills, labour and culture and ideas, when they were employed or forced by their captors to share their knowledge (35) or be integrated into Byzantine society (36). Lykaki emphasizes the contextual dependencies of the Middle-Byzantine attitude toward material and human booty which, she hints, would change more fundamentally during the later Byzantine period when plunder became essential for the army’s existence (36 – 37).

The late Miriam Czock approached the subject from a legal-historical perspective. She aimed to fill in a research gap in which predation from a legal-historical perspective only was regarded as a breach of army discipline (2). She analysed the lex Alamannorum and the lex Baiuvariorum and sought to address who was legally responsible for the accumulation and division of booty and what socio-economic function predation had in these normative texts (3 – 4). Plundering is not explicitly regarded as something inherently illegitimate in the legal texts analysed by Czock (17).  Legal discourse concerning the accumulation of plunder was tightly connected to the maintenance of unity and discipline in the army (16).

Matthias Hardt concentrates on the plundering on the lordly and royal level by analysing the treasures of the Burgundian kings and the Avars. Hardt seeks to shed light on the exchanges of material wealth between gentile kings and the equestrian nomad societies of the first millennium CE (1). Treasures were part of gift-exchanges and also symbolic capital to enforce rule (11). For example, Charlemagne used the Avar treasure to showcase his largitas/largitio, to the people of Rome and Pope Leo III during his reception in Rome before his imperial coronation (14 – 16). To represent himself successfully as an emperor Hardt argues that Charlemagne required the gold, which was in short supply in Francia, originating from the Avar treasure (17 – 19).    

Sébastien Rossignol’s article sheds light on the conflictual ties between the Franks and the Glomacze/DolomiciSlavs which were mostly characterised by conflict in which Frankish military expeditions, hostage-taking and demands for tributes played a role (2). Rossignol argues that the Franks were usually the instigators of aggression between the two. They aimed to secure payment of tributes by the Slavic tribe (28). This policy changed when the Saxon dukes became dominant, as the territory of the Glomacze lay on the route that the Hungarians took for their plundering raids into Saxony, forcing Henry I to build fortifications and integrating the territory into the German realm (29).

Lucie Malbos’ chapter provides insight into the dynamics of predation in Scandinavia and how this behaviour was viewed by the Scandinavians themselves as a counterpoint to the negative paradigm encountered in sources from the Latin west (1 – 2). This change of perspective works well to show that, in Scandinavian society, raiding represented anhonourable activity to acquire prestige and riches that were essential to advance (6). Secondly, the author argues that theVikings were not only carrying out predatory behaviour against the rest of Europe but also amongst themselves (16). Malbos demonstrates that, behind the perceived unity of the Scandinavian world in western historiographical texts, lay a more complex reality (18).

 The collection is rounded off by Laury Sarti’s reflections on the methods, legitimation and importance of predation for the period studied. Predatory activities not only possessed profit potential but could also question the legitimacy of the lord unable to protect his lands from raiding (9 – 13). Booty and prisoners could serve as visible witnesses of military superiority, legitimacy and prestige. Sarti states that the perceived meaning of loot was primarily symbolic, while the practical utility came second (22). She rounds off her conclusion that predation seems to have been a legitimate enterprise in the eyes of early medieval people (23), strongly dependant on the context of each individual case study (24), and with some suggestions for future research (28).

In all, forthcoming studies will benefit from this collection of essays. Both experts and newcomers on the regions discussed who want to gain an overview of the role of predation in these areas could benefit from this book.