For me, a more likely explanation is the old chestnut Britain is an island. The article suggests that Saxons on the continent led atomised lives, except when some external threat forced them to bind together under war-chiefs. This is a very insightful point. On the continent, it is virtually impossible for any state (except perhaps switzerland) to secure its borders without recourse to huge standing armies. This has been true throughout European history. The amount of men and resources required to maintain these armies meant that European powers tended to be strongly centralised as the state needed to call on the resources of the entire nation.

In contrast, Britain’s island status means it has never needed to maintain a huge standing army. Historically, Britain only tends to maintain small land-forces during peace-time. This situation meant that Britain could remain decentralised and hetreogenuous without seriously imperilling its existence. Any continental power attempting to operate anything approaching the British system would more than likely be overwhelmed by its more well-endowed neighbours (Eg, The Netherlands during the 17th and 18th Century…a country that was far more decentralised and market-driven than the England of the time, it would have certainly been overlwhelmed by the expansionist French were it not for the Glorious Revolution and the assistance of England.)

My first reaction to the Norwegian fjord thesis was, “welll, now we can use DNA evidence and all the other neat tools available to archeology to validate or falsify this theory.” Until such research has been done I’m agnostic on it — but as Lex said it is consistent with some other information.

Tacitus has his biases, I’m sure, but again, his descriptions of the Germans seems consistent with other evidence.

Many non-Anglosphere types have wasted huge amounts of time and energy trying to figure out the consiracy that runs America and England. John O’Sullivan relates, in his new book, the story of Brezhnev wasting substantial resources of the USSR trying to figure out “who really runs America”. They just can’t accept that the answer might be “nobody”. If we can’t understand “Tacitism”, outsiders truly can’t understand us, with the rare exception of people like Montestquieu and Tocqueville. If the really understood the truth, they’d be more frightened.

Now this may be a little out of the main topic, so please do excuse me. I think that indeed Tacitus always appears to be a constrained historian, because of Tiberius I guess, and in later times, other Kings and dictators came to find him very subversive for he attempted to unveil real intentions in the words of dictators. They regarded him as a powerful subversive; for he continually finds examples like the independent and free germanic farmers, to subtly pass his republican principles on to the reader. So we must be careful when judging his writings.
And actually there is a certain way to read Tacitus, and it is precisely called “Tacitism”, and it is said that when you learn to read his writings that way, some or many of the contradictions or incoherencies in his writings suddenly make sense. There are also nations where Tacitus remains contemporary.

Now when I see a president of the United States trying to push a bill in congress by way of speaking out in public to build support from constituency to push the congressmen who oppose such bill, I know there is no Tacitus there my friends. In Spain, in France, and in most of the third world also, when prime ministers or presidents want a bill passed, public speaking is the last thing the resort to; unless we are talking about a referendum, they usually start secret contacts and negotiations with the opposition, while sometimes denying it in public, so when the bill gets to the house, there is almost no debate, but a quick vote instead, usually unanimous.
I have seen, I am not sure, that in England they also resort to speaking in public to deal with bills and other political situations, so I reckon Tacitus was not a very influential reading in England either, or at least they were never interested in learning “Tacitism”. I gather from all this that then Tacitus is incompatible with the English culture. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Go Bears. I have to go get some last minute snacks … .

I can’t remember where I saw the article essentially re-creating that battle and showing how thoroughly Arminius had prepared. The archaeologists actually found where a causeway had been demolished to just below the waterline, leading the Romans to follow a narrow path along the side of the marsh instead going through it to dry ground and safety. The route they took was held on the high side by Germans, who fought from behind breastworks prepared in advance. There was not enough room between the Germans and the swamp for the Romans to get into formation, and the people behind them, unaware of the fighting ahead, pressed into them as they tried to get organized.

Anyway, GO BEARS! Slaughter the Indianapolis team led by Manning!

Varus had fought as a Roman legionaire long before he fought the Roman legions.

I guess ever since they kind of developed a certain reputation.

Abradley, thanks again. I disagree about what Tacitus was doing. I don’t know enough about the excavated Hodde settlement to say what it might mean. But a group of buildings together in one location does not sound like enough to outweigh a lot of countervailing thinking about the folkways of the Germanic peoples. Maitland took Tacitus seriously, based on his understanding of the earliest law in England, he saw continuities. So did Marc Blcch. So did Stubbs. So does Macfarlane. Until I have very good reason to dismiss Tacitus as a purveyor of imaginary tales, I’ll side with the weight of authority which I respect.

But I’m also quite interested in the study of the evolution of a large French society in North America — Quebec. And that French-Canadian civilization did follow the nuclear-family model quite closely. It was largely agricultural, patriarchal and property was passed on within the immediate family. And like the Scandinavian examples in the post, as the families grew larger, the younger sons would head north to settle new lands and set up household there.

But despite all that, the French-Canadians have maintained a distinctly pacifistic and communitarian (socialist?) outlook. It could be that they’re simply the exception that tests the rule, but their example bears looking at, I think.

The explanation of ideology : family structures and social systems / Emmanuel Todd ; translated by David Garrioch.

The causes of progress : culture, authority, and change / Emmanuel Todd ; translated by Richard Boulind.

Todd is also French and relates the political system to family structure. He does it for all the world but starts with the differences within France and then the difference between France and England. He points out that England has the most liberal family structure in the world and the most liberal politics.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:06 am Post subject: Reply with quote
abradley wrote:
Then Tacitus (Eyewitness?) was wrong:

Quote:
Tacitus, coming from the great city-world of Rome, was struck by the jealous independence of each farmer and his family in their settlements. ‘They live apart,’ he wrote, ‘each by himself, as woodside, plain or fresh spring attracts him.’
……………………………………
JDR_Dragoon wrote:
Allow me to quote myself from my own paper (published here in this forum):

The Roman written sources we have preserved seems at best more preoccupied with pressing the germans into preconceived notions about how barbarians ought to behave. Here they are perennially described as uncivilized and ferociously warlike brutes. At worst the written sources simple don´t care, and it is apparent that apart from a rather narrow geographical and ethnographical litterary genre, the Roman writers didn´t concern themselves overly much with the conditions of the germanic societies in northern Europe. Even in these particular cases when they actually do care , we still aren´t very well served. The greek writer Strabo for instance dedicates all of a ½ book to Northern Europe in it´s entirety. This out of a total volume of 17 books. Apart from the well known case of Tacitus and his Germania, this seems to also be the case for the rest of our preserved antique geographical and etnographical litterature. The geographical perceptions of what exactly northern Europe looked like and what the different geographical locations were named seems to vary widely depending upon our source. Indeed, most of this information seems to derive from one principal original source, namely the expeditions conducted into Germany around the time of the birth of Christ. Most of them also seems preoccupied with the naming and geographical relation of different tribes to each other, rather than pure cartography, which suggests that the Romans thought of their surrounding worlds as conglomerations of people, rather than lines on a map.

When Tacitus is sounding “jealous of the independence” of the germanic farmer, it is because he is transferring a notion of what life was originally like under the early phases of the Roman republic. In essence, what Tacitus means, is that the germans (like the early Romans) had supposedly preserved their political freedom by sticking to a “simple” life. As such, it says more about Tacitus evaluation of the Roman empire of his own day (descended into corrupt “monarchy” as it had supposedly done with Augustus), yet tacitus can´t write this openly (well he could, but then he would likely not live to enjoy it). So instead he uses the germanic barbarians as a literary mirror, in which the loss of political freedom by the Romans is highlighted.

Besides, Tacitus statement is belied by the presence of such large farming communities as Hodde in present day Jutland (Denmark, discovered and excavated in the 1970-80s.), where 27 large farm complexes were present when the village was at it´s biggest.

As I say, the fjord business may be, as your commenter claims, bullshit. I lack the expertise to say. I report, you decide.

I do however disagree as to the value of the observations of Tacitus. I do not think he was making up facts.

Nonetheless, the highly “particularistic” Saxon family structure is much better founded, whatever its remote sources. It is also the case that the Danes, who came later, had remarkable equality between the sexes, and this influenced law and custom in England where the Danish settlement struck the deepest roots. David Hackett Fischer talks about this. And the Danes were (I believe) descended from people who settled there from Norway, displacing less warlike predecessors. So there was a re-infusion of highly particularist family organization onto the Saxons base population.

Demolins, as I am hacking my throught it, makes a point that is consistent with Macfarlane, Tocqueville and others that the family life of England was quite a bit different from that of the Continent. And this had a major impact on economic development.

I’m a little doubtful about the whole fjord thing, though. The Saxons came from a pretty flat, often swampy region at the mouth of the Elbe. Also, if this family structure had been derived from Scandinavia, I would have expected to see it stronger in Scotland, where the Norse influence was much greater. I don’t dispute that the Saxons had a more “particular” family structure, but I think it is a mistake to locate its origins in the fjords. You don’t really see an extended family or clan structure (whether Roman gens or Celtic tribes, clans, and septs) in any of the Germanic countries. My guess is that it was in place long before they got to Norway.