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Feudalism

Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

This article is about the classic, medieval, Western European form of feudalism. For feudalism in other societies, as well as that of the Europeans, see Examples of feudalism.

The classic definition, by François Louis Ganshof (1944),[1] describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility and revolved around the key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs.[1] A broader definition, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry, all of whom were bound by a system of manorialism; this is sometimes referred to as a "feudal society".


Although it is derived from the Latin word feodum or feudum (fief),[2] which was used during the Medieval period, the term feudalism and the system it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people who lived during the Middle Ages.[3] Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's "The Tyranny of a Construct" (1974) and Susan Reynolds's Fiefs and Vassals (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society.[10]

Definition[edit]

The adjective feudal was in use by at least 1405, and the noun feudalism was in use by the end of the 18th century,[4] paralleling the French féodalité.


According to a classic definition by François Louis Ganshof (1944),[1] feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility that revolved around the key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs,[1] though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment was only related to the "narrow, technical, legal sense of the word."


A broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch's Feudal Society (1939),[11] includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and those who lived off their labour, most directly the peasantry, which was bound by a system of manorialism. This order is often referred to as a feudal society, echoing Bloch's usage.


Outside its European context,[4] the concept of feudalism is often used by analogy, most often in discussions of feudal Japan under the shoguns, and sometimes in discussions of the Zagwe dynasty in medieval Ethiopia,[12] which had some feudal characteristics (sometimes called "semifeudal").[13][14] Some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing feudalism (or traces of it) in places as diverse as Spring and Autumn period China, ancient Egypt, the Parthian Empire, India until the Mughal dynasty and the Antebellum South and Jim Crow laws in the American South.[12]


The term feudalism has also been applied—often pejoratively—to non-Western societies where institutions and attitudes similar to those in medieval Europe are perceived to prevail.[15] Some historians and political theorists believe that the term feudalism has been deprived of specific meaning by the many ways it has been used, leading them to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society.[4][5]


The applicability of the term feudalism has also been questioned in the context of some Central and Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Lithuania, with scholars observing that the medieval political and economic structure of those countries bears some, but not all, resemblances to the Western European societies commonly described as feudal.[16][17][18][19]

Bloch, Marc, Feudal Society. Tr. L.A. Manyon. Two volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.  0-226-05979-0.

ISBN

Ganshof, François Louis (1952). . London; New York: Longmans, Green. ISBN 978-0-8020-7158-3.

Feudalism

Guerreau, Alain, L'avenir d'un passé incertain. Paris: Le Seuil, 2001 (complete history of the meaning of the term).

Poly, Jean-Pierre and Bournazel, Eric, The Feudal Transformation, 900–1200., Tr. Caroline Higgitt. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1991.

Reynolds, Susan, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.  0-19-820648-8.

ISBN

Archived October 18, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, by Paul Halsall. Internet Medieval Sourcebook.

"Feudalism?"

by Fredric Cheyette (Amherst), excerpted from New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (2004)

"Feudalism: the history of an idea"

by Carl Stephenson. Cornell University Press, 1942. Classic introduction to Feudalism.

Medieval Feudalism

at the Wayback Machine (archived February 26, 2009), by Robert Harbison, 1996, Western Kentucky University.

"The Problem of Feudalism: An Historiographical Essay"