Feudalism
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Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne; from a manuscript of a chanson de geste.
Feudalism refers to a general set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior
nobility of Europe during the Middle Ages, revolving around the three key concepts of lords,
vassals, and fiefs.
However, defining feudalism requires many qualifiers because there is no broadly accepted
agreement of what it means. In order to begin to understand feudalism, a working definition is
desirable. The definition described in this article is the most senior and classic definition and is
still subscribed to by many historians.
Other definitions of feudalism exist. Since at least the 1960s many medieval historians have
included a broader social aspect, adding the peasantry bonds of Manorialism, referred to as a
"feudal society". Still others since the 1970s have re-examined the evidence and concluded
feudalism is an unworkable term and should be removed entirely from scholarly and educational
discussion (see Revolt against the term feudalism), or at least only used with severe qualification
and warning. Use of the term outside of a European context is done only by analogy, sometimes
applied to one or two other societies: Japan of the shoguns, and, possibly, nineteenth-century
Ethiopia. Yet still others have taken this analogy of feudalism and expanded on it even further,
seeing it everywhere from ancient Egypt, India, to the American South in the nineteenth century.
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The word "feudalism" was invented in the seventeenth century, based on the Late Latin feudum,
which was borrowed from Germanic *fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which
meant fief or land held under certain obligations by feodati. Even though the word components
are from the Middle Ages, the concept of feudalism was not invented until the seventeenth
century, the modern era.
Contents
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1 What is feudalism?
o 1.1 Lords, vassals and fiefs
o 1.2 Examples of feudalism
2 History of the term "feudalism"
o 2.1 Invention of feudalism
o 2.2 "Feudalism" in history
 2.2.1 Enlightenment thinkers on feudalism
 2.2.2 Karl Marx on feudalism
o 2.3 Historians on feudalism
 2.3.1 Origins of English feudalism are
debated
 2.3.2 Ganshof and classic view of feudalism
 2.3.3 Marc Bloch and sociological view of
feudalism
 2.3.4 Revolt against the term feudalism
3 Notes on feudalism
o 3.1 Origins of feudalism
o 3.2 Decline of feudalism
o 3.3 Did feudalism exist?
o 3.4 Cautions on use of term Feudalism
o 3.5 Extrapolations of the meaning of feudalism
o 3.6 Other feudal-like systems
4 Notes
5 External link
6 Bibliography
7 See also
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What is feudalism?
see also Feudal society and Feudalism (examples)
Three elements existed and characterize the period: lords, vassals and fiefs. Feudalism is defined
by how these three elements fit together.
A lord was a noble who owned land. A vassal was a person who was loaned land by the lord.
The land was known as a fief. In exchange for the fief, the vassal would provide military service
to the lord. The obligations and relations between lord, vassal and fief form the basis of
feudalism.
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Lords, vassals and fiefs
Before a lord could grant land, or fief, to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was
done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony comprised of the
two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. In homage, the vassal would promise to fight for the
lord at his command. Oath of fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas, or faithfulness, which means
that the vassal will remain faithful to the lord. Once the commendation was complete, the lord
and vassal were now in a feudal relationship with agreed-upon mutual obligations to one another.
The lord foremost was obligated to grant a fief or its revenues to the vassal; the fief is the
primary reason the vassal chose to enter into the relationship. In addition, the lord sometimes had
to fulfill other obligations to the vassal and fief. One of those obligations was its maintenance.
Since the lord had not given the land away, only loaned it, it was still the lord's responsibility to
maintain the land, while the vassal had the right to collect revenues generated from it. Another
obligation that the lord had to fulfill was to protect the land and the vassal from harm.
The vassal, in turn, had two obligations to the lord. First and most importantly, he had to provide
"aid", or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the
revenues from the fief, the vassal was responsible to answer to calls to military service on behalf
of the lord. This security of military help was, in fact, the primary reason the lord entered into the
feudal relationship. The vassal also had to provide the lord with "counsel". If the lord faced a
major decision, such as whether or not to go to war, he would summon all his vassals and hold a
council.
The land-holding relationships of feudalism revolved around the fief. Depending on the power of
the granting lord, grants could range in size from a small farm to a much larger area of land. The
size of fiefs was described in irregular terms quite different from modern area terms; see
medieval land terms. The lord-vassal relationship was not restricted to members of the laity;
bishops and abbots, for example, were also capable of acting as lords.
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Examples of feudalism
see main article Feudalism examples
Examples of feudalism are helpful to understand fully feudalism and feudal society. Feudalism
was practiced in many different ways, depending on location and time period, and thus a highlevel encompassing conceptual definition does not always provide a reader with the intimate
understanding that historical examples can show.
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History of the term "feudalism"
In order to better understand what the term feudalism means, it is helpful to see how it was
defined and how it has been used since its seventeenth century creation.
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Invention of feudalism
The word feudalism was not a medieval term. It was invented by French and English lawyers in
the 17th century to describe certain traditional obligations between members of the warrior
aristocracy. The term first reached a popular and wide audience in Montesquieu's De L'Esprit des
Lois (The Spirit of the Laws) in 1748. Since then it has been redefined and used by many
different people in different ways.
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"Feudalism" in history
The term feudalism has been used by different political philosophers and thinkers throughout
history.
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Enlightenment thinkers on feudalism
Starting in the late 18th century during the French revolution, radicals wrote about feudalism to
tar the antiquated system of the Ancien Régime, or French monarchy. This was the Age of
Enlightenment when reason was king and radicals were painting the Middle Ages as the "Dark
Ages". Enlightenment authors generally mocked and ridiculed anything from the "Dark Ages"
including Feudalism, projecting its negative characteristics on the current French monarchy as a
means of political gain.
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Karl Marx on feudalism
Like the French revolutionaries, Karl Marx also used the term feudalism for political ends. In the
nineteenth century Marx described feudalism as the economic situation coming before the
inevitable rise of capitalism. For Marx, what defined feudalism was that the power of the ruling
class (the aristocracy) rested on their control of the farmable lands, leading to a class society
based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom. “The
hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial
capitalist.” (The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), chapter 2). This was the definition of feudalism
to Marx, a purely economic model.
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Historians on feudalism
The term feudalism is, among medieval historians, one of the most widely debated concepts.
There exist many definitions of feudalism and indeed some have revolted against it, saying the
term should not be used at all.
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Origins of English feudalism are debated
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century historians John Horace Round and Frederic
William Maitland, who focused on medieval Britain, arrived at different conclusions as to the
character of English society prior to the start of Norman rule in 1066, the former arguing for a
Norman import of feudalism and the latter contending that the fundamentals were already in
place in Britain — a debate which continues to this day.
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Ganshof and classic view of feudalism
A historian whose concept of feudalism remains highly influential in the 20th century is
François-Louis Ganshof, who belongs to a pre-Second World War generation. He defines
feudalism on very narrow legal and military perspective, arguing that feudal relationships existed
only within the medieval nobility itself. Ganshof articulted this concept in Francois-Lois
Ganshof, Feudalism (Trans. Philip Grierson; New York: Harper & Row, 1964). It is Ganshof's
classic definition of feudalism that is the most widely known today and also the easiest to
understand. Simply, when a lord granted a fief to a vassal, the vassal provided military service in
return.
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Marc Bloch and sociological view of feudalism
One of Ganshof's contemporaries, a French historian named Marc Bloch, is arguably the most
influential medieval historian of the twentieth century. He approached feudalism not so much
from a legal and military point of view but from a sociological one. He developed his ideas in his
book Feudal Society (Trans. L.A. Manyon; 2 volumes; Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1961; ISBN 0226059790). Marc Bloch did not conceive of feudalism as being limited solely to
nobility, but as a type of society. Like Ganshof, he recognized that there was a hierarchal
relationship between lords and vassals, but saw as well a similar relationship obtaining between
lords and peasants. This radical notion that peasants are part of the feudal relationship sets Bloch
apart from his peers. While the vassal performed military service in exchange for the fief, the
peasant performed physical labour in return for protection. Both are a form of feudal
relationship. According to Bloch, other elements of society can be seen in feudal terms; all the
aspects of life were centered on "lordship", and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church
structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature, a feudal economy. See Feudal society.
More recently there has been a revolt by some historians regarding the use of the term feudalism,
with some arguing that the term should not be used at all.
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Revolt against the term feudalism
In 1974, U.S. historian Elizabeth A.R. Brown, in "The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and
Historians of Medieval Europe" (American Historical Review 79), challenged the value of using
the word at all, rejecting the label as an anachronistic construct which imparted a false sense of
uniformity to the concept. She noted that with so many different, contradictory feudalism
definitions circulating that, in the absence of any accepted definition, feudalism is a construct
with no basis in medieval reality, an invention of modern historians read back "tyrannically" into
the historical record. Supporters of Brown have gone so far as to suggest that the term should be
expunged from history textbooks and lectures on medieval history entirely. In Fiefs and Vassals:
The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, Susan Reynolds expanded upon Brown's original thesis.
Although some of her contemporaries questioned Reynolds' methodology, her thesis has
received support from certain historians. Note that Reynolds does not object to the Marxist use
of 'feudalism'.
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Notes on feudalism
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Origins of feudalism
Vassalage agreements similar to what would later develop into legalized medieval feudalism
originated from the blending of ancient Roman and Germanic traditions. The Romans had a
custom of patronage whereby a stronger patron would provide protection to a weaker client in
exchange for gifts, political support and prestige. In the countryside of the later Empire, the
reforms of Diocletian and his successors attempted to put certain jobs, notably farming, on an
hereditary basis. As governmental authority declined and rural lawlessness (such as that of the
Bagaudae) increased, these farmers were increasingly forced to rely upon the protection of the
local landowner, and a nexus of interdependency was created: the landowners depended upon the
peasants for labour, and the peasants upon the landowners for protection.
Germans had a custom of equality among warriors, an elected leader who kept the majority of
the wealth (land) and who distributed it to members of the group in return for loyalty.
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Decline of feudalism
Feudalism had begun as a contract, the exchange of land tenure for military service. Over time,
as lords could no longer provide new lands to their vassals, nor enforce their right to reassign
lands which had become 'de facto' hereditary property, feudalism became less tenable as a
working relationship. By the thirteenth century Europe's economy was involved in a
transformation from a mostly agrarian system to one that was increasingly money-based and
mixed. Land ownership was still an important source of income, and still defined social status,
but even wealthy nobles wanted more liquid assets, whether for luxury goods or to provide for
wars. This corruption of the form is often referred to as "bastard feudalism". A noble vassal was
expected to deal with most local issues and could not always expect help from a distant king.
The nobles were independent and often unwilling to cooperate for a greater cause (military
service). By the end of the Middle Ages, the kings sought a way to become independent of
willful nobles, especially for military support. The kings first hired mercenaries and later created
standing national armies.
Historian J. J. Bagley noted that the fourteenth century "marked the end of the true feudal age
and began paving the way for strong monarchies, nation states, and national wars of the sixteenth
century. Much fourteenth century feudalism had become artificial and self-conscious. Already
men were finding it a little curious. It was acquiring an antiquarian interest and losing its
usefulness. It was ceasing to belong to the real world of practical living."
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Did feudalism exist?
The following are historic examples that call into question the traditional use of the term
feudalism.
Extant sources reveal that the early Carolingians had vassals, as did other leading men in the
kingdom. This relationship did become more and more standardized over the next two centuries,
but there were differences in function and practice in different locations. For example, in the
German kingdoms that replaced the kingdom of Eastern Francia, as well as in some Slavic
kingdoms, the feudal relationship was arguably more closely tied to the rise of Serfdom, a
system that tied peasants to the land (for more on this see the works of Leonard Blum on the
history of serfdom).
Moreover, the evolution of the Holy Roman Empire greatly affected the history of the feudal
relationship in central Europe. If one follows long-accepted feudalism models, one might believe
that there was a clear hierarchy from Emperor to lesser rulers, be they kings, dukes, princes, or
margraves. These models are patently untrue: the Holy Roman Emperor was elected by a group
of seven magnates, three of whom were princes of the church, who in theory could not swear
allegiance to any secular lord.
The French kingdoms also seem to provide clear proof that the models are accurate, until we take
into consideration the fact that, when Hrolf or Rollo the Ganger kneeled to pay homage to
Charles the Simple in return for the Duchy of Normandy, accounts tell us that he knocked the
king on his rump as he rose, demonstrating his view that the bond was only as strong as the lord - in this case, not strong at all.
The autonomy with which the Normans ruled their duchy supports the view that, despite any
legal "feudal" relationship, the Normans did as they pleased. In the case of their own leadership,
however, the Normans utilized the feudal relationship to bind their followers to them. It was the
influence of the Norman invaders which strengthened and to some extent institutionalized the
feudal relationship in England after the Norman Conquest.
Since we do not use the medieval term vassalage how are we to use the term feudalism? Though
it is sometimes used indiscriminately to encompass all reciprocal obligations of support and
loyalty in the place of unconditional tenure of position, jurisdiction or land, the term is restricted
by most historians to the exchange of specifically voluntary and personal undertakings, to the
exclusion of involuntary obligations attached to tenure of "unfree" land: the latter are considered
to be rather an aspect of Manorialism, an element of Feudal society but not of feudalism proper.
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Cautions on use of term Feudalism
"Feudalism" and related terms should be approached and used with considerable caution owing
to the range of meanings associated with the term. A cautious historian like Fernand Braudel sets
"feudalism" in quotes in applying it in wider social and economic contexts, such as "the
seventeenth century, when much of America was being 'feudalized' as the great haciendas
appeared." (in The Perspective of the World, 1984, p. 403).
Medieval societies never described themselves as "feudal". Though used in popular parlance to
represent all voluntary or customary bonds in medieval society, or a social order in which civil
and military power is exercised under private contractual arrangements, the term is best
considered appropriate only to the voluntary, personal undertakings binding lords and free men
to protection in return for support which characterised the administrative and military order.
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Extrapolations of the meaning of feudalism
One example of this exists in the People's Republic of China. The official view of history there
being based on Marxism, attempts to fit the Chinese in Marxist historical periods and hence
defines Chinese history from the Zhou Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty as part of the feudal period.
In order to do this, new concepts had to be invented such as bureaucratic feudalism which most
Western historians would consider a contradiction in terms.
As a result of this Marxist definition, feudal, as used in a Chinese context is very commonly used
as a pejorative term meaning old and unscientific, and this usage is also common among both
academic and popular writers from Mainland China, even those who are anti-Marxist. The use of
the term feudal to describe a period in Chinese history was common among Western historians
of China of the 1950s and 1960s, but became increasingly uncommon after the 1970s, and the
prevailing consensus among Western historians is that using the term feudal to describe Chinese
history confuses more than it clarifies as it assumes strong commonalities between Chinese and
European history that may not exist.
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Other feudal-like systems
Other feudal-like land tenure systems have existed, and continue to exist, in different parts of the
world.
See Feudalism (examples)
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Notes
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Note 1: Philip Daileader (2001). "Feudalism". The High Middle Ages. The Teaching
Company. ISBN 1565858271
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External link
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Paul Halsall, "Feudalism?" from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, history of the term.
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Bibliography
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Marc Bloch, Feudal Society. Tr. L.A. Manyon. Two volumes. Chicago : University of
Chicago Press, 1961 ISBN 0226059790
Francois-Lois Ganshof, Feudalism. Tr Philip Grierson. New York: Harper and Row,
1964.
Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel, The Feudal Transformation, 900-1200., Tr.
Caroline Higgitt. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1991.
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Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1994 ISBN 0198206488
Normon E. Cantor. Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great
Medievalists of the Twentieth century. Quill, 1991.
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See also
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Bastard feudalism
Overlord
Vassal
Pikeman
Chivalry
Knights
Majorat
Indian feudalism
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism"
Indian feudalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search
The term Indian feudalism is an attempt to classify Indian history according to a European
model. Historians have become very reluctant to classify other societies into European models
and today it is rare for Indian history to be described as feudal by academics; it still done in
popular usage, however, but only for pejorative reasons to express disfavour, typically by critics.
These include zamindar, jagir, desmukh, chowdhury. Most of these "systems" were abolished
after the Independence of India and the rest of the Subcontinent, but some still exist, officially or
in its remnants.
Feudalism?
The usefulness of feudalism as a term is at present under intense discussion among
historians of the middle ages, with the majority of experts now rejecting the term.
Feudalism was not a word used in the middle ages. It has had two quite distinct meanings
in recent usage. The first meaning - promoted by radicals during the French Revolution
and developped by Marxist historians - refers to a social system based on a society in
which peasant agriculture is the fundamental productive activity; in which slavery
is non-existent or marginal but peasants are tied to the land in some way; and in
which a small elite defined by military activity dominates.. This is probably the most
important meaning in modern popular usuage.
For most of the 20th-century, professional medievalists have given the term a quite
different meaning [see F. Ganshof, Feudalism for a classic summary]. For medieval
historians the term has come to mean a system of reciprocal personal relations among
members of the military elite, which lead ultimately to parliament and then Western
democracy. For modern historians, the older "Lord and peasant" model was subsumed in
the concept of manoralism. It is not clear if this near consensus among Medievalists ever
really made it on to the larger stage of common culture, or even to other departments
within a university (or even to non-medievalists within a history department)!
Building on work of Elizabeth Brown, the historian Susan Reynolds, in her Fiefs and
Vassals, systematically attacked the basis of the professional medievalists' version of
feudalism [although she did not tackle the older social and economic, or Marxist, model].
Reynolds argued that recent historians had been too ready to read back 11th- and 12thcentury legal texts (which do use feudal) terminology onto a much more variated 9th- and
10th century society and had ended up creating a "feudal world" which simply did note
exist, or which, at most, described small parts of France for short periods.
Most reviewers have found Reynold's arguments compelling. [See, for instance, the very
informative comments of Steven Lane: Review of Susan Reynolds, Fief and Vassals, [At
TMR]. As a result teachers can no longer teach "feudalism" without severe qualifications.
The texts here have traditionally been used to explain the "feudal system". They may be
better read and discussed, perhaps, as examples of how people created a variety a social
and personal bonds in a society with few stable and accessible legal or governmental
authorities. They do not represent a "system".