Ordering, measuring, and counting: Carolingian rule, cultural capital and the economic performance in Western Europe (750-900)

This paper looks at the place of counting and literacy in the manorial system which is frequently seen as a key factor in the economic success of Carolingian Francia. It tries to understand through whom, why, and how measuring and calculating became important as tools of government and management, under Carolingian rule, from 750 to 900. This enquiry belongs in a wider theoretical context which assigns institutions, and the practical know-how these generate, an important place among those factors making for economic growth. Usually, growth is linked with the idea of external demand and the commercialization of society. Quantitatively, the Carolingian economy was sustained by strong public demand which went along with the Franks’ military expansion and the reinforcement of the state, linked to the material foundations on which the first Carolingian kings wanted to build a Christian empire. These aims were translated into the ideal of eunomia that underpinned the “political economy”. They convey simultaneously an ideal of “good oikonomy” associated with moral concerns, as well as with practical skills. A comparative approach with tenth century Anglo-Saxon England shows how the state, to become more powerful, relied on norms, values and representation favouring control and standardisation of social and economic life, like tools and methods to frame the peasants and their productive activities, and a general view of the social order. “Mentalities of accountability” were in fact well rooted in the Carolingian ninth century as in the Anglo-Saxon tenth century (or later in the European eleventh century).