Boulainvilliers read Frankish conquest as the origin of feudalism rather than Roman sovereignty

Evidence

This portrait of the great blond ferocity of the Germans makes it possible to explain, first of all, how, when these Frankish warriors came to Gaul, they simply could not and would not be assimilated into the Gallo-Romans and, more specifically, why they completely refused to submit to this imperial right. They were much too free, by which I mean too proud, too arrogant, and so on, not to prevent their warlord from becoming a sovereign in the Roman sense of the word. Their freedom made them far too intent on conquest and domination not to seize the land of Gaul for themselves on an individual basis. The Frankish victory therefore did not make their warlord the owner of the land of Gaul, but each of his warriors benefited, directly and in his own right, from the victory and conquest. Each warrior claimed for himself a piece of the land of Gaul. These are the distant beginnings of feudalism; I will omit the details of Boulainvilliers’s analysis, as they are so complicated. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 4365

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Boulainvilliers’s historical thesis: German freedom, not Roman imperial right, grounds the claim to land and ultimately feudalism.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s module on how colonial/national origin narratives construct legitimacy and hierarchy, paralleling race-thinking readings ahead.