How did complex societies without taxes work? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

I was reading about Frisian freedom and I wonder how did they manage to solve public problems and I wonder if it is the only example of complex society without compulsory taxation in history.

I'm afraid the premise of your question, which accepts that the so-called 'Frisian Freedom' was a complex society without taxation, is incorrect.

This isn't your fault, Wikipedia has a lot of incorrect information when it comes to Frisian history. I fear one or several of their contributors had a stash of late 19th century works on the shelf and decided to add those (well intended, but by modern standards often thoroughly inadequate) books to the project. Frankly, it's a mess and sadly this article isn't an exception.

For example, the section called 'Sparks of Liberty' seems to be completely apocryphal. It conflates various Late Medieval and Early Modern myths and fabrications to, somehow, establish the beginning of the Frisian Freedom in the 9th century CE, which is ludicrous. To be clear, the entire article is thoroughly confusing when it comes to (contemporary) terminology. For example, in the Early Medieval Period 'Frisia' was a broad geographical term used for the entire Low Countries (hence the Church of the Frisians in Rome mentioned in the article is in fact the Dutch national church) not for what some Wikipedia articles seem to call 'Magna Frisia' or the 'Frisian Kingdom' — which are 19th century terms, not contemporary and misleading, for they convey the idea of an administrative and advanced political structure for which no historical evidence has been yet found. The same goes for the use of ´Frisians´ to refer to a seemingly self-aware and established people or nation, which is a-historical. The name Frisia/Frisians derives from the Frisii and Frisiavones mentioned by Classical Roman authors like Tacitus, but there is no continuity between these tribes (100 CE) and the later inhabitants now known as Frisians, who in all likelihood were 6th and 7th century immigrants from Jutland peninsula and/or Northernmost Germany; like the Germanic settlers of Britain. It is the Franks, not the Frisians themselves, who started to use the term 'Frisians'. The idea of a Frisian nation, that is a distinct people, is a 19th century one it wasn't a belief that was held in medieval times. The same goes for the 'Frisian Freedom', it's a 19th century term, which sought to romanticize the past in a time of growing centralization of the Dutch state. Many early historians imagined it as a kind of anarchist society composed of free farmers, 'governed' by a voluntary democratic government that met at a sacred tree.

That romanticized picture has been largely debunked: There is barely any evidence that the much fabled 'Upstalsboom' was anything more than a local grove in East Frisia where incidental judiciary proceedings (a thing) took place. It certainly wasn't an Early Medieval Parliament and the supposed absence of feudalism in Frisia during the High Medieval Period has also been thoroughly disproved. Now it is true that for extensive periods of time, the Frisians lands had no high noble (a prince, a duke, a count) between them and the Holy Roman Emperor; but the society was still very much feudal: the more powerful landed gentry effectively took over the position of duke/count in the form of an oligarchy of (constantly feuding) families with one of the heads of these families typically being elected to be the liaison with the imperial court. When the Wikipedia-article speaks of 'Frisians' or 'Free men of Frisia', it's actually referring to these powerful noble families, not, as a casual reader might assume, the general populace, most of whom were serfs or freemen without any political influence subject to all the typically feudal and manorial institutions.

So, in short "Frisia" during this time was not an autonomous country or a country within a country and despite being called 'Frisian freedom', there was serfdom in Frisia and taxes were levied by all who could enforce it; it was a less centralized structure compared to the typical duchies and counties, but much more alike than different in the end.