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Feudalism comes from the Late Latin word feudum, itself borrowed from a Germanic root *fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which means fief, or land held under certain obligations by feodati. Even though the word origin is from the Middle Ages, the concept of feudalism was not invented until the 17th century in the modern era. Because feudalism is a modern concept, to understand what feudalism is, it is helpful to understand the history of the term since its invention, the key definitions of feudalism used by various historians, and recent modern interpretations and revolts.
Many definitions of the term exist. In order to understand what feudalism is, a working definition is desirable. The definition described in this article is based on a narrowly-defined legal relationship: feudalism is a 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. A broader social popular definition of feudalism which includes the peasantry bonds of Manorialism is described in Feudal society.
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 given 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 lies at the heart of feudalism.
Before a lord will 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 the maintenance of the fief. 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 the land. 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 lord-vassal relationship was not restricted to members of the laity; bishops and abbots, for example, were also capable of acting as lords.
Feudalism had begun as a bargain, the exchange of service for protection. But in the end, the bargain was not kept, one party continued to provide service while the other failed to provide protection.
The introduction of money in the 11th Century meant by the 14th Century it had spread to replace land as the primary medium of exchange. The influence of urban towns and the money system weakened land-based feudalism. The nobility, hard hit by rising costs, were obliged to sell land and to sell serfs their freedom. The feudal army had become obsolete and the mercenary army, paid in money not land, replaced it. The refinement of gunpowder-based weapons and technologies contributed to a decline in the popularity of castles, though it by no means rendered them obsolete. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon for nobles to exchange life in an isolated and uncomfortable castle in favour of life in a spacious manor house or a residence in some vibrant and bustling town.
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 the wilful nobles, especially for military support. The kings first hired mercenaries and later created standing national armies.
Historian J.J. Bagley noted that the 14th Century marked the end of the true feudal age and began paving the way for strong monarchies, nation states, and national wars of the 16th Century. Much 14th 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.
In order to better understand what the term feudalism means, it is helpful to see how it was defined and how its been used since its 17th Century creation.
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 ("Spirit of the Laws") in 1748. Since then it has been redefined and used by many diffrent people in different ways.
The term feudalism has been used by different political philosophers and thinkers throughout history.
Starting in the late 18th Century during the French revolution, radicals wrote about feudalism to tar the antiquated system of the ancien regime, or French monarchy. This was the age of Enlightenment when reason was king and the radicals were appealing to the negative image of 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.
Like the French revolutionaries, Karl Marx also used the term feudalism for political ends. In the 19th Century Karl Marx described feudalism as the economic situation coming before the inevitable rise of capitalism. For Marx, what defined feudalism was the military elite accumulating the surplus wealth of those under them by exploitation through military dominance. This was the definition of feudalism to Marx, a purely economic model.
The term feudalism is, among medieval historians, one of the most widely debated concepts. There exist many definitions of feudalism and indeed some haved revolted against it, saying the term does not exist at all.
In the late 19th and early 20th 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.
A historian whose concept of feudalism remains highly influential in the 20th Century is Francois-Louis Ganshof, who belongs to a pre-Second World War generation. He defines feudalism on very narrow legal and military perspective. He says feudal relationships existed within the medieval nobility and only the nobility. Ganshof articulted this concept in Marc Bloch is arguably the most influential medieval historian of the 20th 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 a book Marc Bloch Feudal Society. Tr. L.A. Manyon. Two volumes. Chicago : University of Chicago Press 1961 ISBN 0226059790. Marc Bloch did not conceive of feudalism as being limited soley to nobility, but as a type of society. Like Ganshof he saw there were heirarchal relationships between lords and vassals on the one hand, but also lords and peasants on the other. This radical notion that peasants are part of the feudal relationship is what set 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;" 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 on the use of the term feudalism, with some arguing that the term should not be used at all.
In 1974, U.S. historian patronage where a stronger patron would provide protection to a weaker client in exchange for gifts, political support and prestige. 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.
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 Gangler 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.
"Feudalism" and related terms should be approached and used with considerable caution owing to the range of meanings associated with the term. It is important to remember that no medieval society ever described itself or its institutions and relationships 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.
Uniquely in England, the village of Laxton in Nottinghamshire continues to retain some vestiges of the feudal system, where the land is still farmed using the open field system. The feudal court now only meets annually, with its authority now restricted to management of the farmland.
The Swedish variant of feudalism consisted of resourceful enough landowners who committed to maintain a soldier with a horse in the liege lord's army; in compensation they obtained exemption from land taxation (so-called frälse). This led to a curb in the relative local democracy in the Viking era, in favor of local lords who succeeded in exercising administrative and judicial power over their less powerful neighbors. The King also depended more on such vassals and their resources.
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 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 overlord
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