Killing “Empire”: Goldilocks and the Three Byzantine Kommerkiarioi
- Autores: Federico Montinaro
- Localización: Journal of European Economic History, ISSN 0391-5115, Vol. 46, Nº. 2, 2017, págs. 165-172
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
The much-debated middle Byzantine officials called kommerkiarioiplay a central role in John Haldon’s reconstruction of the vicissitudes of “the Empire that would not die”. They are in reality the main subject of chapter 7 and are ubiquitous throughout the book, and crucially in its conclusions, from which a quote in particular deserves to be reported in extenso: “[The empire] was endowed with remarkably flexible and effective fiscal arrangements and mechanisms for the appropriation and redistribution of essential military resources in men and provisions. The best example is the ways in which the efforts of the kommerkiarioiand their network of warehouses and the infrastructure that supported them were redirected to bail the government out in the period ca. 673-732
