Feudalism and Manorialism
Feudalism is a way to govern a large state when the king is poor and not
very powerful, and when there aren't good roads so it is hard to communicate
with people who live far away at the other end of your kingdom. Society in
much of medieval Europe was organized into this system, which was based
on the allocation of land in return for services to the king. The king gave
grants of land or fiefs, to his most important noblemen (barons and bishops)
and in return each noble promised to supply the king with soldiers in time of
war.
The king divided his land into fiefs and gave them to other rich men or
women, who were called lords. In exchange, the lord had to swear fealty to the
king - they had to promise to come help the king whenever he asked them, and
to do whatever the king told them to do. Each lord held a large amount of land,
so they divided their fiefs into smaller fiefs, ruled by counts or countesses or
barons or baronesses. In exchange, the counts had to swear fealty to their duke
or duchess. Few kings had enough wealth to keep a standing army and
depended on their barons to provide knights and soldiers. Lords were also
the warriors of medieval society. As trained knights, they were bound by
oath to serve the great nobles who granted them their fiefs, and could be
called to battle at any time. Kings had to work hard however to keep the
barons under control. In many cases, especially in France and Germany, the
barons grew very powerful and governed their fiefs as independent states.
These counts still held pretty large amounts of
land, so they would divide their fiefs into farms, and
give the farms out to their own followers. In
exchange, the farmers had to swear fealty to the
counts. So the feudal system was like a pyramid with
the king on top, then a few dukes, then a lot of
counts, and then a lot of farmers at the bottom.
When the king wanted to get an army together, he
sent messengers to his dukes telling them to come
with a lot of men, and the dukes sent messages to
the counts, and the counts sent messages to each
village telling men to come serve in the army. But
often the lords would decide that they were as rich as
the king, and didn't have to do what he said. When
the king told them what to do, they would just ignore
him. Sometimes the king was so weak he just had to
let that happen. Other times, the king would fight a
war to try to force the duke to do what he wanted.
Manorialism is the other side of the feudal coin. You could say that the
economic base of feudalism was manorial agriculture. The reason for this is
to be found in the climate and the topography. Agricultural techniques were
quite different in northern Europe from Mediterranean lands. It is no surprise
that feudalism and manorialism never really developed in the south of
Europe. In the north you could sow grain both in fall and the spring. So the
work could be more evenly distributed during the course of the year.
Because the land was much more fertile in the north you could have larger
farms in the north than you could in the south.
In England the average farm contained 30 acres, but in Greece the farming
unit at the most consisted of 10 acres. Oats and rye could be grown up
north. This was important for cattle-raising and also the human diet. These
crops gave lower yields per acre than wheat and barley but they required
larger fields, which were available up north. In the south they had to depend
on the traditional olives and grapes.
The moldboard plow created
a revolution in agriculture. It
makes deep furrows and
thus provides the necessary
drainage for early use of the
land. The moldboard plow
was invented in Germany
probably long before the
invasions of the fourth and
fifth centuries. It came into
gradual use in the area between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers. In the
Romanized areas of southwestern Europe there were certain social obstacles
to the use of the moldboard plow. In these regions formerly a part of the
Roman Empire, Roman ideas of private property in land and slaves
prevented the development of private farming. Few individual farmers could
own the necessary number of draft animals to pull this heavy plow. It took
anywhere from four to eight oxen to pull a full-sized moldboard plow. There
was also the problem of turning several teams and a rather cumbersome
plow around when you got to the end of the field. This led to strip farming,
or long-acre farming in the north. Each strip was roughly one acre in size.
The Romans had always used square fields, which were somewhat smaller.
These sorts of tradition were hard to overcome. In south of Europe, there
was therefore no change in agriculture.
Manors usually had four parts to them: arable land, meadow land, waste
land, and the village. Each part had a specific purpose and none could be
dispensed with if the manor was to survive.
The arable land was utilized by the threefield rotation system which prevailed in most
of Europe. This meant that one third of the
arable land always remained fallow in order
not to exhaust the soil. There was plowing
the year round, except when the ground was
frozen or at harvest time. This made
maximum use of the most important tool the
serfs had, the moldboard plow. The value of
manor was determined for the most part by
the number of plows and teams of oxen it possessed. Each individual
pleasant strip was about one acre in size. It took about one day to plow a
single strip. Crops and peasant field assignment were scattered in 3 fields
throughout the manor. Plowing and planting was fixed by custom. There was
also uniform cropping. Thus no innovation was possible. It kept things the
way they were for almost one thousand years.
Meadow land was as important as arable land. It was necessary to feed the
draft animals. The idea of sowing and harvesting hay to feed the animals
had not yet occurred to them. There was thus a chronic shortage of winter
fodder. This meant that there was a constant danger of losing the cattle and
sheep. It was never successfully overcome.
The waste land was used for summer pasture for animals of the whole
manor, watched by children or lowly attendants. So-called wasteland also
provided wood for fuel and building materials for peasant huts. In addition it
provided an important part of the food supply: nuts, berries, honey, rabbits.
So, it should be obvious that the manors were relatively small clearings
among large stretches of forest and wastelands. The vast expanse of the
fertile European plain was never fully exploited and helps to account for the
backwardness of medieval economic life. Most of central and northern
Europe was blanketed with a vast forest of tall trees or unhealthy swamps.
The village itself was usually located in the center of
the arable land, somewhere near the most
convenient water supply: rivers, natural lakes or
drained swamps. The cottages where the serfs lived
were made of mud brick reinforced with straw and
had earthen floors and thatched roof. Usually they
consisted of single rooms not very large in floor
space or height. There were usually small adjoining
gardens where some vegetables and fruits were
grown. Little time and ground was wasted on flowers or decorative shrubs.
Chickens, dogs, and ducks maintained a precarious existence in the streets.
The vast majority of the European population lived on land far into the 19th
century. For most of that time they farmed the soil cooperatively. In a way
you could say that European peasants are no strangers to a form of primitive
socialism. Until a hundred years ago all food came from fields tilled by
peasants in this manner. Only in Poland and England was pattern of
cooperative village farming broken early. So northern Europe provided a
fundamental distinction from the grape-olive-grain farms of the
Mediterranean lands. This in fact means that agriculture was adjusted to the
geographic conditions that prevailed in northern Europe. This also meant
that northern Europe surpassed the Mediterranean countries in wealth and
power.
Feudalism