Well I understand the historians don’t have one unified definition but despite reading and looking it up the Web I still feel like I don’t get it. So that’s why I’m asking for a more “simplified” explanation.
Also if it isn’t a problem….is there a modern version of feudalism?
In: 0
Feudalism is a controversial term used to describe the economic and political system of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. What is generally refers to is how kings in this period would give out pieces of land, called fiefs, to lords would rule over it their stead in exchange for military service. This system was developed because the economic and political decline of the Western Roman Empire meant that it was no longer possible to anyone to afford paid standing armies. Fiefs came with peasant farmers, called serfs, attached to it who legally could not leave it and had to work the farmland. They would give their lords part of their harvest and pay them other fees and then, in exchange, the lord would protect them militarily.
However, I can’t define feudalism without noting that term is controversial for many reasons.
First, it was only coined in the 19th century and no one in the actual Middle Ages ever used it. (If you’re wondering what medieval people called their economic system, lots of luck; no such term has yet been found. This might have been because, excepting some radicals like [John Ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ball_(priest)), it’s rare to find anyone questioning how social stratification had developed; it was instead taken as having been ordained by God.)
Second, everything I described above was how the system was supposed to work, not how it actually did. In theory, kings were supposed to be able to revoke fiefs for disloyalty, but in practice, it was quite difficult to do that and make it stick. Also, lords often were not as good as protecting their peasants as they should have been. The main ways of waging war in the Middle Ages were siege warfare and launching raids on defenseless peasants villages in order to harm the landowners by proxy. In one infamous example, Edward the Black Prince embarked on a raid in the South of France in the fall of 1355. The two main military powers of the regions, the counts of Armagnac and Foix, were supposed to have defended the peasants of the region, but neither actually did so and it’s unclear exactly why, though the long-running feud between their families and/or their weakening faith in the French king may have been part of it.
Third, medieval society was not static and the way its political and economic system worked in 500 was not how it worked in 750 or 1066 or 1347. There were instead constant shifts (though not always huge ones) and for this reason, it’s increasingly questioned whether such a term is appropriate to describe the entire period from the 5th until the 15th centuries. The definition I supplied in my first paragraph seems to have applied most to the period from about 1000 to 1250, a period often known as the High Middle Ages, but only in certain places (most specifically, northern France and England after the Norman conquest in 1066).
Fourth, the system I described in the first paragraph was also not entirely true of every medieval kingdom. Scandinavia and the Scottish Highlands both never had serfdom of any type, serfdom also varied considerably in places where it did exist and was abolished in different places at different times, and some medieval kings had more direct power over the vassals than others. For instance, the English kings after the Norman conquest had far more power over their lords than, say, the Capetian kings of France and the Capetians in turn had more control their lords than the post-Investiture Controversy Holy Roman Emperors.
Fifth, if we decide to simplify feudalism to a system where most of the land is owned with a tiny warrior-landowner elite with 80-90% of the population being farmers who didn’t own squat… Well, then was neither invented in the Middle Ages nor confined to Western Europe. Instead, such a general system was found throughout Eurasia from the beginning of civilization and that system continued to be the norm until the 19th and 20th centuries when most economies began to became industrial rather than agrarian (that is, based on agriculture).
Well I understand the historians don’t have one unified definition but despite reading and looking it up the Web I still feel like I don’t get it. So that’s why I’m asking for a more “simplified” explanation.
Also if it isn’t a problem….is there a modern version of feudalism?
In: 0
Feudalism is a controversial term used to describe the economic and political system of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. What is generally refers to is how kings in this period would give out pieces of land, called fiefs, to lords would rule over it their stead in exchange for military service. This system was developed because the economic and political decline of the Western Roman Empire meant that it was no longer possible to anyone to afford paid standing armies. Fiefs came with peasant farmers, called serfs, attached to it who legally could not leave it and had to work the farmland. They would give their lords part of their harvest and pay them other fees and then, in exchange, the lord would protect them militarily.
However, I can’t define feudalism without noting that term is controversial for many reasons.
First, it was only coined in the 19th century and no one in the actual Middle Ages ever used it. (If you’re wondering what medieval people called their economic system, lots of luck; no such term has yet been found. This might have been because, excepting some radicals like [John Ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ball_(priest)), it’s rare to find anyone questioning how social stratification had developed; it was instead taken as having been ordained by God.)
Second, everything I described above was how the system was supposed to work, not how it actually did. In theory, kings were supposed to be able to revoke fiefs for disloyalty, but in practice, it was quite difficult to do that and make it stick. Also, lords often were not as good as protecting their peasants as they should have been. The main ways of waging war in the Middle Ages were siege warfare and launching raids on defenseless peasants villages in order to harm the landowners by proxy. In one infamous example, Edward the Black Prince embarked on a raid in the South of France in the fall of 1355. The two main military powers of the regions, the counts of Armagnac and Foix, were supposed to have defended the peasants of the region, but neither actually did so and it’s unclear exactly why, though the long-running feud between their families and/or their weakening faith in the French king may have been part of it.
Third, medieval society was not static and the way its political and economic system worked in 500 was not how it worked in 750 or 1066 or 1347. There were instead constant shifts (though not always huge ones) and for this reason, it’s increasingly questioned whether such a term is appropriate to describe the entire period from the 5th until the 15th centuries. The definition I supplied in my first paragraph seems to have applied most to the period from about 1000 to 1250, a period often known as the High Middle Ages, but only in certain places (most specifically, northern France and England after the Norman conquest in 1066).
Fourth, the system I described in the first paragraph was also not entirely true of every medieval kingdom. Scandinavia and the Scottish Highlands both never had serfdom of any type, serfdom also varied considerably in places where it did exist and was abolished in different places at different times, and some medieval kings had more direct power over the vassals than others. For instance, the English kings after the Norman conquest had far more power over their lords than, say, the Capetian kings of France and the Capetians in turn had more control their lords than the post-Investiture Controversy Holy Roman Emperors.
Fifth, if we decide to simplify feudalism to a system where most of the land is owned with a tiny warrior-landowner elite with 80-90% of the population being farmers who didn’t own squat… Well, then was neither invented in the Middle Ages nor confined to Western Europe. Instead, such a general system was found throughout Eurasia from the beginning of civilization and that system continued to be the norm until the 19th and 20th centuries when most economies began to became industrial rather than agrarian (that is, based on agriculture).
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