Feudalism as a word is loaded with meaning.
It has dominated academic and popular conceptions of the Middle Ages, and continues to be taught in schools. The topic of feudalism is certainly popular on /r/AskHistorians which has seen fascinating and fruitful debate, sometimes in unexpected places. Sometimes it has led to tired repetition and moaning (from both sides) that 'feudalism was not a contemporary concept / can you please define what you mean by feudalism' or that we 'aren't explaining why feudalism doesn't exist'.
One of the troublesome things about using the word feudalism is definition. So, we must begin by testing your patience with a little bit of an introduction.
'Feudalism' is a broad term which has been presented by historians, most familiar being Marc Bloch and F.L. Ganshof, as complete models of medieval society covering law, culture and economics. Often 'feudalism' in the public mind, and for historians, is associated with knights, nobles, kings, castles, fiefs, lords, and vassals. Others might conceive of it in a socio-economic sense (the Marxist idea of appropriation of the means of production, in this case land, and tensions between classes). For many people it just means the medieval period (c.450-c.1450), often with its partner, 'The Dark Ages'. Commonly feudalism is used as an all encompassing concept, completely descriptive, such that when someone says 'It was a feudal society,' or 'They had feudal ties,' or 'He ruled as a feudal lord', the audience is supposed to understand implicitly what that means.
Feudalism is an intellectual construct created by legal antiquarians of the late sixteenth-century, developed and imposed by economists, intellectuals and historians onto the medieval period. The word itself first appeared in French, English, and German in the nineteenth-century. At the height of its popularity, feudalism purported to model the socio-political, legal, economic, and cultural world of the Middle Ages between the late Carolingians (c.850) and the later Middle Ages (c.1485).
The call for 'feudalism' to be 'deposed' was instigated in the 1970s by Elizabeth Brown in her groundbreaking paper ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and the Historians of Medieval Europe’. In 1994, a major assault was launched on the cornerstones of feudalism (ie Susan Reynolds’ Fiefs and Vassals) which revisited the sources with a critical eye. Her argument was that scholars, including great medieval historians, read the evidence expecting to find feudalism and then forced evidence to fit the received model of feudalism. Of course, the 'evidence' is often a matter of debate itself. The critiques made by historians like Reynolds have been met variously with denial, applause and caution. But Reynolds' critiques have been tested different ways in the past 20 years and many medievalists have found her ideas persuasive and well-founded. But it is still hotly debated. This AMA was created, in part, to discuss recent scholarship and explore how it changes well established theories about medieval political and social worlds....and maybe shed a little more light on an often confusing subject.
This AMA does have one rule which is really a product of the history of feudalism itself : as mentioned above, feudalism means many different things to different people. To some it might mean the hierarchical structure epitomized by the neat and tidy ‘feudal pyramid’, or it might mean a specific aspect of ties between classes or the socio-economic conflicts, or to some it might be an amalgamation of popular culture sources like Game of Thrones, D&D, Lord of the Rings, or King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Therefore if you are going to reference 'feudalism' in your question (or other associated terms like vassal, fief, or service) we ask that you attempt to explain what you mean when you use those terms. We can't actually discuss feudalism if we don't understand what you mean by it! Historians have been guilty of using the word indiscriminately, but there are three general groups which loosely describe how historians use the term ‘feudalism’:
The legal rules, rights, and obligations that governed the holding of fiefs (feuda in medieval Latin), especially in the Middle Ages;
A social economy in which landed lords dominated a subject peasantry from whom they demanded rents, labor services, and various other dues, and over whom they exercised justice;
A form of socio-political organization dominated by a military class, who were connected to each other by ties of lordship and subordination (“vassalage”) and who in turn dominated a subject peasantry;
A good grounding in this is Frederic Cheyette's essay, 'Feudalism: the history of an idea', (Unpublished, 2005).
As for AMA questions, we're keeping it to Western European society 700-1450 CE. Topics include: the historiography and theory of feudalism; representation of feudalism during the Middles Ages in modern media; historical and medieval concepts of overlordship and lordship (monarchical, noble/aristocratic, tenurial, or serfdom and slavery); rural, town, and city hierarchy and community; socio-political bonds (acts of homage, oaths of fidelity, ‘vassalage’, and 'chivalry'); law (land and other property, violence, and private warfare); economic relations; and alternatives to ‘feudalism’.
Things we explicitly are not dealing with:
'daily life of so-and-so' questions (these are impossible to cover in an AMA)
no specific battle, fighting techniques or medieval arms and armour questions - that is a separate AMA is coming in August!
That said, this AMA is still very wide ranging and, of course, not even the boldest scholar would claim to be able to discuss the entirety of the medieval social and political world. So while these topics are on the table it should be recognised that we might not be able to answer all of them, especially if questions fall well outside of our training or research interests.
Your AMA medievalists:
/u/TheGreenReaper7 : holds an MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from University College London. His chief research outputs have been on the 'ritual of homage', regarded in Classical feudal historiography as the ‘great validating act of the whole feudal model’ (quote from Paul Hyams, 'Homage and Feudalism', 2002).
/u/idjet : A post-grad (desiring some privacy) who studies medieval heresy and inquisition, with particular interest in the intersection of religion, politics, and economics in western Europe from the Carolingians to 1350 CE.
EDIT Both being in Europe /u/TheGreenReaper7 and/u/idjet are tired and going to sleep! They'll check in on new questions and comments in the morning.
According to very traditional definition of feudalism The Lord grants a fief to a vassal who will then serve The Lord in some way. So is this not really what happened? Or is it simply more complicated than that.
How do you feel about the use of "feudalism" and its corollary "ideas" in other regional historic fields?
I know that in areas perceived to have a "medieval" period, like China and Japan, the words fief, feudal, and feudalism pop up quite frequently in academic discourse.
For example, in post-Han Dynasty Chinese history, there is constant reference to aristocracies in the language of western "feudalism", possessing "fiefs" in a perceived reciprocal relationship to the sovereign.
Although I can't attest to whether concepts of chinese "feudalism" have undergone the rigorour analysis of what Susan Reynolds did with Fiefs and Vassals, given her takedown of the model, it would lend me to question its use in East Asia as well.
But perhaps the words have been scrutinized and found sufficient? But if so, does that merely reinforce the flawed perceptions of European "feudalism?"
Reynolds has admitted she may have overstated her case but if so she was happy to have generated debate. http://books.google.com/books?id=___Q9caeqdoC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&ots=_aJMtXOdpu&focus=viewport&dq=reynolds+fiefs+vassals+overstatement&output=html_text
So a question as an academic who is an outsider to this field (and so forgive me if I am mischaracterizing things): Do you think the terms of this debate have been needlessly polarized? Was it necessary/useful for one side to declare feudalism a fiction (with all the consequences for historians other fields, Marxist historiography, etc.)? Do you think institutional pressures (tenure, publishing) promoted hyperbole and polarization in this debate?
Now I am a layman, but it seems to me you are splitting hairs. Have their ever been a system (during the indicated timeline) where you didn't have "feudalism" in all the given general groups? Say you have a system of lords and how they governed fiefs, but they didn't have "feudal" economy? Or where they didn't dominate a pleasant class?
Because if you always (or almost always) have the three of them together, then I can't really see the issue with calling it feudalism. You would then have subfields like feudalistic economy, where you are mostly concerned with the economics of the situation, feudalistic justice and theory of law, etc.
If not feudalism, then what?
This seems to be an argument about semantics. Can you give me several reasons why "feudalism" as a term, and not the history if historiography, cannot describe in broad brush the Lord-vassal governance structure of the hhigh Middle Ages?
When I envision feudalism, what most stands out to me is the idea that there is a king who is the highest power in an area. The King has the legal authority to rule over lords in this area, constrained by certain obligations to these lords, who control their own lands and have certain obligations in turn to the king. The two biggest of these obligations is raising troops and sending taxes. Then commoners live on the land the lords own, and directly pay their taxes and become troops for this lord. Now, I understand that in a period from 700 - 1450 a lot must have changed, but was this EVER an accurate picture of any structure of the European Middle Ages? If so, where and when? If not, what is inaccurate about this picture?
What were the contemporary reactions to Brown/Reynolds' arguments? I only studied one paper on the High Middle Ages during my undergraduate degree, but I felt that there was an unspoken agreement between the students and the tutors to not delve into the issue if we can help it. So although I know plenty of historical examples for why 'feudalism' is a terrible concept to use, I know very little about its development in historiography after the 1970s - how long did it take for other historians to be convinced? Were there any attempts to argue against them?
Thanks :)
Are familiar with or have you heard of the video game Crusader Kings 2? If so, what are your thoughts on how it presents feudalism? I am using the "a form of socio-political organization" definition.
Can you explain how feudalism in each of the three different groups evolved from the practices of Romans and "Barbarians" at the fall of the western Roman Empire to when ever you would call the height of feudalism? Do feudal practices reflect more influence from one or the other, or can we tell given the sources?
Thank you
My general issue with all this is a general naysayery associated with the term in historical texts. While there are claims both in this thread and in discussions that I've had with Idjet in the past that it is not semantics, in quite frankly does feel that way.
I do feel there is value in readjusting our views on what 'feudalism' as a term means in the sense that it is not an all-encompassing systematic description, as some older authors might have made it out to be. That said, when speaking in lay terms about 'feudal' relationships between the various estates, as well as how power is assigned, maintained, and brokered, I feel the term still has a lot of value as a descriptor. u/tomjen has made a very good analogy in regards to defining 'democracy', and I feel it is applicable here as well. I think the idea that the word/term 'feudalism' is inseperable from earlier, very set definitions, is pretty ludicrous, since the majority of people interacting with it on this subreddit and in the media are going to be coming from the very basic understandings that still largely hold up, even if they don't do so in quite a hard way. Ultimately, navigating accuracy to describe the governmental system of an entire continent is pretty difficult. It's the same reason that systems in Mesoamerica, Japan, and elsewhere are often described as 'feudal' or 'feudal-like', because we are looking for things people understand as a starting point, even if it is a casual understanding. Comparing the governmental system of Romania to England with one term is probably not the height of accuracy, but starting with similarities and common knowledge is better than throwing the baby out with the bath-water.
I mentioned naysayery above; it is pretty common to have /u/idjet enter into threads on this subreddit related to Medieval history and jump on any use of the term 'feudalism', which in my humble opinion misses the forest for the trees. I've had it out with him before on this account, and he is certainly not alone in the medieval historian field to do this, on this subreddit, or elsewhere. This is hardly restricted to this particular question either. Tedious debates on the minutia of terminology has always been a part of academia. However, when it comes to answering questions on a forum like this, I think we can do better.
Don't know if this is an appropriate question for this AMA, but given the historical debate surrounding the topic and the variety of meanings that the term feudalism has, how would you suggest high school teachers teach feudalism? The standards are often exceedingly vague, teachers are hard pressed for time, and our textbooks often include the standard pyramid model.
If a lord was responsible for justice over his subjects, and they had certain duties to him, how would a subject go about issues where the lord was one of the parties in the dispute? Was this handled by a higher authority? Did this change during the period? Was the case handled differently if the subject believed the lord had harmed him?
I'd like to ask about medieval representations of the lord-tenant relationship. One of the interesting things about recent scholarship on manuscripts is discussing how they depict certain idealized forms of medieval social norms; in particular I'm thinking of Michael Camilie's discussion of the Luttrell Psalter and how its miniatures are not a naturalistic representation of "what life on a manor is like" so much as a kind of idealized depiction of a harmonious manor created for the statisfaction of the manorial landholder Godfrey Luttrell. So my question is this: Do we see parallel tendencies in the historiography of literature, trying to tease apart medieval literary depictions of the landholder-tenant relationship to better understand how the are idealized images of this relationship?
Did the "neat and tidy" pyramid ever exist, in any time or place?
If I cannot use the term "feudalism" to describe the general structure of, say, Medival England, then what can I use?
How would you approach teaching medieval social structure in an introductory level course? Better yet, how should schools approach this topic to avoid propogating such misconceptions while still giving their pupils a good overview of medieval societies?
To what degree did the rise of capitalism subvert the economic feudalism of Western Europe? How did capitalism change the relationship and the structure of control in Western European society as the Renaissance got underway?
Is the term 'manorialism' different from 'feudalism', and if so, in what way?
I am an undergraduate history major specializing in medieval history myself, and have done a lot of reading on this particular topic. You would obviously have your finger more on the pulse of current scholarship than I would, however. One kind of "compromise" I came across in my readings was referring to "feudalisms" in the plural rather than "feudalism" in the singular. This is meant to denote a plurality in different varieties of socioeconomic structures that would all fall under the umbrella of feudalism as an overarching idea that is ultimately useful, but that also allows respect for specificity and historical context.
What is the general scholarly consensus (and yours personally, if you wouldn't mind sharing it) to this approach? Is it being too conciliatory to the idea of feudalism in the first place, which is well known to be an ahistorical invention systematically applied to the past? Or is the feudalisms methodology merely being realistic to the longevity and fixed nature of the idea of feudalism in the public consciousness? My own mentor has said that although many historians dislike it as a category (as they do the use and periodization of such broad terms as "medieval," "Middle Ages," and especially "Dark Ages"), the terms are so fixed in public and scholarly consciousness that they are here to stay. Even if all medievalists were to eliminate the word "feudalism(s)" from their syllabi and professional work, they would still be fielding questions about the term from students and laypeople who had picked up the term in secondary school or public history programs.
In the reading I've done in favor of the use of "feudalisms", the pluralization forces historians to grapple with the term, but also allows them to challenge and qualify it with more specificities than the use of the singular would. If I mention "feudalisms" in conversation with someone without extensive study of the medieval period, they immediately pick up on the word change and ask "wait, there were more than one? I thought it was just one thing that existed everywhere and at every time," which, I will admit, does allow me to explain more of the complexities than if I had just used "feudalism." Another argument I've heard in favor of the change, and that I find especially compelling, is that it allows engagement with socioeconomic systems beyond the Latin Christian West, in that it provides categorical analysis with room for inconsistencies and differences. I remember the scholar I was reading being particularly interested in feudalisms in medieval Japan. However, this also runs the risk of histories that are so macrohistorical and thematically comparative (especially in something as illusory and ahistorical as "feudalsim") that they are no longer useful.
I apologize for the lengthiness of this question, but as you can tell it's something I've grappled with extensively as even an amateur historian.
TL;DR: What is the scholarly consensus (and your personal views) on the pluralization of "feudalism" to "feudalisms," are there any distinctive camps (for example, to English historians lean more one way and Americans and continentals another?), and does this issue seem to be resolvable in the near future? Does a compromise like "feudalisms" seem the most promising, or are more historians leaning towards total abolishment?
Thanks so much for doing this AMA! As a medievalist it's definitely encouraging to see a greater engagement and interest with the medieval period.
For the third general idea of feudalism, I am curious as to how the Church's role is seen. In this definition, is it just as a simple as the Church had formidable armies too?
So, it's quite obvious that you simply can't generalize the society of an entire continent for over seven centuries. Many different cultures, backgrounds, mindsets, and beliefs mingled in Europe during the medieval era, causing a multitude of different lifestyles to come about.. That much can be gathered just from common sense. We see hundreds of different regional traditions and ways of life in Europe in the modern world, where everybody is connected by means of easy communication. So, it can be assumed medieval Europe was just as culturally diverse in antiquity as it is today.
From what I gather, feudalism was used, but not always in the precise manner that historians have described it, and not always with as much importance as historians have come to tag it with.
So, if feudalism was not as important in all of Western Europe, what are some profound examples of a different economic and social structure that most people wouldn't know about?
PS: I want to let you scholars know how much I appreciate the answers you've given. I love to see old ways of thinking challenged. History is always changing, and there's always so much more to it than just the bare facts.
If you don't mind, I was interested in information regarding how often new fiefs may have been granted. I assume that 99% of fiefs were passed from father to son, or brother, nephew etc. and weren't distributed by a sovereign lord. How true is that?
It seemed to me that an important aspect of the construction of feudalism was the concept of serfdom. How widespread was serfdom during this period? And in what ways did it differ across the continent? How much did serfdom shape the economic systems at the time?
2 basic questions:
Within Western Europe, were there significant geographic or cultural differences in the caste system aspect of feudalism? I.e., the notion that a person was born into (generally) the laboring, soldiering or ruling caste. Were birth castes more or less flexible by location or culture? Did social mobility occur in some areas but not others?
Can you sum up the main differences between the caste/feudal systems of Western Europe, Japan, and what is now India?
This is interesting to me because whereas Japan and Western Europe seemingly had as deeply-rooted a feudal/caste system as India, Japan and Western Europe have more successfully moved on, and (in my eyes) India remains highly caste-based despite a veneer of democracy. Further, the Southern states of the USA always had, and still retain (even post-slavery and post-official-Jim-Crow) a more-caste-based view of personal worth and value than the Northern/Western portions. I'm curious about the medieval roots, if any, of such phenomena.
I keep reading instances across the time period in question of a lord calling up his vassals to fight. It really does seem that feudalism, at least in this limited sense, did exist and was not a myth, though I certainly agree there was a tremendous amount of variance from time and place.
Thoughts?
You may enjoy the good debates and vettings of the subject on /r/badhistory.
Also, do you think the political organization of most Western and Eastern European fiefs and kingdoms was sufficiently complex and the same across the board to say that there was some kind of codified system of fealty making it distinct from other areas or times?
I'm not sure if this is the most appropriate place to ask this, but I'll try...
With its usefulness being questioned, how should we approach the term "feudalism" when used by today social scientists? From Marx and Weber to Zizek and Habermas there are lots of use of "feudalism" which means could extremely vary but implies something that any audience understand. What to do with this situation? Should the term be avoided or used with caution?
I'm given to understand that it was fairly common to owe duties to multiple people in exchange for fiefs. How often did these duties conflict? How would someone handle things if you hold two fiefs from two different lords who were not on speaking terms, or worse actively going to war with one another?
I'm not sure this is an appropriate question because it calls for a comparison of Feudalism and contemporary Liberal Democracy, but here it goes anyway. The story is often that there is a hard demarcation between Liberal Democratic practices and Feudal practices. How clear a demarcation is there, and what features of Liberal Democracies are either continuations of Feudal practices or would have been familiar to Feudal societies? And probably more on topic, is this a comparison that even makes sense?
Does the above description apply to feudal Japan as well? Or is this focused in on feudalism in Europe?
Given that it might be very difficult or impossible to simplify the nature of society into a word or phrase and also that societies differed across Western Europe, are there examples of how particular, small sections of the Medieval World functioned across the entire period ~900-1400 CE? As a layperson reading this thread I am intrigued. How was some particular interesting town/parcel of land/whatever administered/organized/not-organized, and how did that system evolve over the next centuries, without attempting to make any generalizations?
The idea of feudalism has an eurocentric origin, but I do wonder if the idea can be applied to nations outside of Europe, such as ancient Chinese. Zhou Dynasty, for instance, is often described by my Chinese history books as a feudal kingdom.
I think this subject should be popularized into a layman-friendly Youtube video. I searched, there's nothing. Popular misconceptions can only be broken through popular mediums.
So, uh, what was going on in the middle ages then?
Could you give us some examples of actual political and social systems in several time periods, so we can see just how much variety is stifled by simply applying the "feudalism" label?
I mean I sort of get what you are saying but I'm having a hard time conceptualizing it.
I'm thinking actual examples for dummies that would immediately show the feudalism misconception. Like saying something along the lines of
I don't need a silly tl;dr but I would appreciate something of a more layman friendly explanation.
Coming to this rather late, but I'll ask anyway.
If it's misleading to group Western Europe in the Middle Ages under the term 'feudalism' (which probably shouldn't be surprising) what areas or periods can we usefully group together? eg. if I understand the socio-political system in 11-12th century England (not that I do), how far can I usefully generalise that?
What terminology do historians use to describe more specific systems?
I feel a little like this may be many people's stumbling block - give them some new generalised concepts to use, rather than always referring them to specifics, and they'll be happier about not using the term feudalism.
The introduction of this AMA takes time to caution us against a careless use of the word "feudalism" yet still does not make clear to me what exactly is missing from the word? By feudalism, I'm referring to definition #2,
A social economy in which landed lords dominated a subject peasantry from whom they demanded rents, labor services, and various other dues, and over whom they exercised justice;
So what's missing from this definition that makes it problematic to characterize the era as feudalistic?
A major part of the story of the French Revolution is the restriction of the rights of lords, which are often painted and worded as feudal rights. Considering that feudalism doesn't exist as how it has been presented before recent historiography, how would I as an Early Modern historian bring this shift in Medieval into my history of the French Revolution or does it not matter as I'm teaching aristocratic rights of a different era?
It seems that you are manufacturing an artificial polemic here.
Was there a socio-economic system, which existed in western Europe, c.450 - c.1485 (as you say), which had the the following characteristics?
Societies that had:
The legal rules, rights, and obligations that governed the holding of fiefs (feuda in medieval Latin), especially in the Middle Ages NOTE: While the provenance of the term feodum may be interesting, really this point about the individual laws which limited the power of the warrior-nobility is minutiae and hardly relevant to the existence of feudalism overall)
A social economy in which landed lords dominated a subject peasantry from whom they demanded rents, labor services, and various other dues, and over whom they exercised justice;
A form of socio-political organization dominated by a military class, who were connected to each other by ties of lordship and subordination (“vassalage”) and who in turn dominated a subject peasantry;
No need to answer, because I suspect that the answer would be a resounding "yes" to each and every question, despite what equivocations you care to invoke.
If your argument is that "feudalism" is purely a semantic construction which did not "really" exist because that is not the term that was used during the time of "feudalism", I'm afraid you will have to try much harder. This "argument" is akin to saying that the Neolithic Era did not exist because that is not what people called it at the time.
What you are saying is not interesting.
I have no questions for you or your colleague.
