| This thesis investigates the government of a new polity, the post-Roman Burgundian kingdom. My intention is to explore how the Burgundian kings governed their state and interacted with the native Gallo-Roman population they came to rule during the fifth and sixth centuries. The Burgundians contributed to the destruction of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, but that as they took possession of more and more land in Gaul, the Burgundians preserved what they could of the Roman way of life. While the Burgundian kings began as little more than Germanic warlords, they transformed themselves into Roman emperors. |
