I haven’t written on r/AskHistorians in a while, forgive me if my tone sounds dry.

First, I should caution against generalizations. I can see you are being careful in how you word ‘broad consensus’ about Germanic barbarians ultimately seeking integration to the Roman empire. I appreciate that. But for everyone else reading, the idea that all the Germanic tribes were destined to become Romanized (in one form or another) is a perspective borne often by Roman sources themselves writing after the fact, or even by sources writing in a completely different time period. This happens more than you know. It is certainly the case that many tribes probably intended to join the Roman Empire, at one point or another, but this intention depended on circumstances. For example, Athanaric, king of a tribe of Tervingi Goths, was legendary for (supposedly) refusing to acquiesce to Roman power, even to set foot on Roman soil. There this anecdote from Ammianus where Valens is forced to meet Athanaric in the middle of the Danube, the shame!, because the Gothic king refused to step foot on Roman soil (Amm. Marc., 27.5.7). But, once the Huns came knocking on the their eastern frontiers, Athanaric’s Goths fractured into groups: one group Athanaric retained control over and he (presumably) marched west with, while the other group, under the leadership of Fritigern and Alavivus, marched south to cross into the Roman Empire. This set forth one of the famous 4th century crises that resulted in the death of the Roman Emperor, Valens, at (H)Adrianople. This is just an example of how complicated history is and it’s often easy, from our point of view, to look back at events and say that X was ultimately seeking integration into Y because surely life in Y was better than life in the land of X. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not. Certainly it becomes true when faced with an ultimatum: in the case of the Tervingi Goths, it seemed to be death and near-certain slavery at the hands of the Huns or a chance at not-slavery at the hands of the Romans. They chose, I think I would have too, the latter.

For the Huns, I recommend reading three books: the revered Maenchen-Helfen’s, “The World of the Huns”, 1973; Kim’s “The Huns”, 2013, and Lebedynsky’s new book: “Huns D’Europe, Huns D’Asie”, 2018. You ask several questions; I will attempt to answer each separately.

Were the Huns seeking integration?

As with other tribes, it’s complicated. But, the political entity we understand as ‘the Hunnic Empire’, spanning from the reign of the Hunnic King Uldin down to Ernach, did not desire integration into Rome. This can be seen, of course, by the fact that even after the shattering of the Hunnic state following the death of Attila at the battle of Nedao (a very interesting topic of its own), neither side of the conflict (neither the rebelling faction nor the loyalist Hunnic forces) chose to, en-masse, join the Romans. Following their defeat at Nedao, the Huns lost more than half of their geographical sphere of influence (and even more over the following decade) but still remained intact under the dual-kingship of Attila’s sons, Dengizich and Ernach. That said, many smaller tribal groups (Germanic and Hunnic alike) did join the Romans following Nedao, something noted, confusingly, by Jordanes in Getica, (263-264). In the years following Nedao, first the Rugi state fell to Odoacer, its peoples displaced all over, but many of whom were pushed into Italy with the arrival of the Lombards. The Heruls then shattered in two, half joining the Gepids and half to the Romans. But the Hunnic state did not ever join the Roman Sphere. It is likely that the Huns eventually integrated into the Bulgar kingdom (Kim 2013), but in what capacity their political independence was maintain (if at all) is entirely lost to history (for now).

Hunnic Magister Militum

Hilariously, Attila was a magister militum of the western Roman Empire! Bet you didn’t know that, eh? Now, this title only guaranteed Attila the pay that comes with the rank of magister militum but not the responsibilities. He was not actually a roman general. Now, I think your question was more aimed at the Huns establishing for themselves a magister militum-like title and military structure. That’s… really complicated. Long story short, there is not enough evidence to answer that question. We just don’t know precisely how the Hunnic army/armies were organized to comprehensively compare the two systems. But we do know that Attila did something naughty and effectively made himself the… supreme commander of the Hunnic field armies (he murdered his co-king and blood-brother, Bleda). His control was so overarching that to refuse him would have come with dire consequences (death). Attila, on more than one occasion, demanded the Romans hand over political rivals and even Hunnic princes (but who these princes were related to is unknown; if I were to guess, they would have been his nephews, sons of Bleda). Kim (2013) notes that the Akatiri Huns, a group situated in the eastern portion of the Hunnic sphere, were both powerful and quarrelsome since Attila murdered Bleda – so much so that Attila had to send his eldest son, Ellac, to live among them full-time. Still, the Akatiri heeded his call. This is all to say that Attila was very much in control (whether directly or indirectly) over his militaries.

Fiefdoms

Ah ya… another contentious issue. Kim argues vehemently that they did have fiefs. He might be right but there is not enough evidence to actually say so. As a result, to claim the Huns had fiefdoms is sort of pointless. We just don’t know exactly how each portion of land was held and to what extent any landowner had control over that land. That is to say, we don’t know if Attila owned all his lands and leased the rights to govern each portion in trust or if each prince/general/noble actually owned their own lands/peoples and offered them to Attila. We have no idea, but you can infer some evidence from other steppe cultures. For a good overview of Hunnic society, see Lebedynsky, 2018, 127.

Were they trying to create a long-term tributary system?

We also don’t know with any high level of certainty. I think most scholars would say the Huns were definitely exploiting the Romans with the intention of creating or maintaining a completely independent state situated along-side the Roman one. Some scholars would argue that the Huns were basically gangsters, extorting the Romans of gold to maintain their own coherence. This model would suggest the Huns needed the Romans around to pay them. But other scholars argue that the Huns just benefited by the money fed to them by the Romans and it allowed their political system to centralize in a way not seen previously. Honestly, there are a lot of theories beyond just these two. Personally, as I argue in one of my papers, the Huns had a long history of dual-kingship before their arrival in Europe and that tradition is what held together the Hunnic system after its defeat at Nedao. Thus, the Huns benefited from the money fed them by the Romans but that money was not strictly necessary, since they had a royal succession protocol in which they trusted.

Now the next question that I think you’re hinting at is, “what did the Huns envision for themselves?” Did the Huns just want to co-exist with the Romans or did they really want global domination? I think our old boy, Maenchen-Helfen has the answers: “With his few troops, the Roman commander in Thrace could not drive the Huns back. He made peace propositions to Uldin (King of the Huns), who replied by pointing to the rising sun and declaring that it would be easy for him, if he so desired, to subjugate every region of the earth enlightened by that luminary;” (1973, 65). So poetic. Obviously, the Huns didn’t have the capacity to conquer the Romans, or they would have. But had they had the means, I’m sure they would have done it with wild grins.

Hope this helps.