what was feudalism?
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I’ll try to give a simpler but possibly more useful approach.
It’s the opposite of how we live today. Today the more money you make the more you’re taxed (with some exceptions in some countries _cough_ America).
This means that those who are well off are contributing a larger amount of their money to things like healthcare, education, welfare for poor people, etc.
Feudalism was the opposite. In feudalism the rich paid no taxes, and the poor paid all the taxes. That’s not a joke. That’s actually what they thought was a good idea. They believed that nobility and especially the crown were to be given taxes, not paying them.
And not only did the poorest pay all the taxes and the rich paid none, but the poor were not even free people. They were indentured servitudes, which is not that far off from literal slavery at various points in history.
The entire European continent ran on this power structure for god knows how long. It took the Enlightenment age and the industrial revolution to crush this catastrophic idea, but unfortunately it persisted, most notably in Russia.
If you ever wondered why Russia is still a miserable country, this is one of the reasons. They had this entire power structure right up until the Soviet revolution. It’s also the primary reason for the Soviet revolution. Tzar Nickolas was a dogshit monarch.
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