Decentralization Hidden in the Dark Ages

Summary

For longtime readers, this is a condensed version of the several posts I have made on this subject. I have also added a minor amount of new material. Examples of decentralized society in history are often hidden. They are hidden because those in decentralized societies never bothered to keep records. They are also hidden for the purposes of the current state. I have previously written about anarchy in the Southeast Asian Highlands as one example. Here, I will present the time of the Middle Ages as another. This time offered a system of private law. A law not based on the edicts of the king, but based on local tradition and culture. The king was not above the law, but equally subject to it. For law to be law, it must be both old and good. Each lord had a veto power over the king and over each other law (I will use the term “lord” for those landed free men. Even the serfs could not be denied their right without adjudication. Land was not held as a favor from the king; title was allodial. A man’s home truly was his castle. Although the term has fallen out of use in the academic community, for many this period is known as the Dark Ages – with all of the associated stereotypes: barbarians, boorish behavior, and the uncivilized society that came to Europe with the fall of the much more civilized Rome. The Dark Ages is a historical period used for the first part of the Middle Ages. The term emphasizes the cultural and economic deterioration that supposedly occurred in Europe following the decline of the Roman Empire. The label employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the "darkness" of the period with earlier and later periods of "light". How did people live absent a strong central power (Rome)? In what manners was governance achieved? How did such a society evolve over the centuries into the nation-states of Europe? From whose perspective were these ages “dark”? Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in his essay entitled “On the Impossibility of Limited Government and t...