Fiscal Estates and Economy in the Middle Meuse Basin, 9th-11th Centuries

Abstract

The area between the river Meuse and Aachen was one of the most central regions of the Frankish Empire. The Pippinids had important properties in the region of Liège. Aachen was the sedes prima Franciae between 806 and 822. These cores of Carolingian power were associated with numerous fiscal estates that were a logistical backbone of imperial policy. The history of these fiscal estates in the early and high medieval periods is well studied, particularly concerning their institutional organization and transmission over time. The aim of the paper is to initiate an investigation of their contribution to the economic history of the region, an aspect that has been explored less systematically. This study combines institutional, economic, and spatial perspectives to analyse how fiscal estates might have participated in the economic trends of the middle Meuse area between the 9th and 11th centuries, as centers of production and consumption, as well as logistical nodes. The major finding of this inquiry is that after the Carolingian period, many fiscal estates were repurposed – in a sort of ‘creative destruction’ – and used as building blocks within different economic subsystems that were to last well into the high and later Middle Ages.