Did feudalism exist? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

There is one problem that this question begs over and over: what does feudalism signify to you?

The links that /u/Enrico_Dandolo gives in this thread are discussions where we try to unpack what feudalism means. And the problem quickly arises that there is no single definition of feudalism. And that is because the very idea of feudalism has had such a changeable meaning over 800 years, with meaning given to it by different interests who read evidence with a lot of bias.

As I wrote elsewhere:

Feudalism is an abstract concept, it means different things to different people. To some it might mean a pyramid structure of political and military power, from king down to serf. For some, it might be a word for the expression of power, so feudal means 'lords' treating their 'serfs' poorly. For others feudal might be focused on vassalage, the ties of a lesser to a greater noble and the implicit obligations. For others still, it might also included fiefs, with their implied expectation of military contributions. And to economists, feudal might mean the relationship of peasant and lord to economic production.

There are three problems with the above:

'feudal' seems to mean anything one wants it to mean, mixing politics with historical fact

not all the above 'feudal' conditions existed at the same time in the middle ages under a system called feudal

even where 'feudal' conditions did exist, they were not exclusive conditions.

What this means is that when we refer to 'feudal', hoping to use a term to communicate a clear 'system', we are actually making things less clear about a thousand years of history. A we are certainly making things less clear about human motivation.

For most people feudal system means this hierarchical pyramid. But not only was this an ideal picture created by the Church (who provide us with so much of the source research materials), it was heavily fought over, and often society look nothing like it. And even if it did 'look like it' it would tell us nothing about how the world actually functioned: certainly land-for-protection or whatever else you want to call 'fiefs and homage' was so relatively infrequent, or took such radically different appearances, as to be meaningless for us to actually understand medieval society.

The question then becomes a bleak one for most people who want their medieval world to look like Crusader Kings: if not 'feudalism' then what? Well, for medieval historians that is what makes the last 100 years of historiography exciting: we are still building the picture, and it's telling us radically interesting and diverse things.