Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The rise an fall of feudalism
The rise an fall of feudalism
The rise an fall of feudalism
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The rise an fall of feudalism
The term Feudalism can mean many things, depending on the context. If the person trying to define the term is not a Medievalist, then the definition would most likely be negative. As R.A. Brown says about feudal and feudalism: "in popular speech they are ignorantly intended as insults even more derogatory than 'medieval.'" The problem with the terms is that they are modern terms not medieval ones. The writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries developed terms of denigration for the societies that they were studying, and applied them over a wide area, as a way to understand their own eras. Thus we have, still, the use of the term Feudal Europe, even though Marc Bloch states that "feudal Europe was not all feudalized in the same degree or according to the same rhythm and, above all, that it was nowhere feudalized completely," also he says that there are areas where feudalism is conspicuously absent, such as Scandinavia, Ireland and others.
An accurate definition of the term has been an apparent stumbling block in the academic community, as the recent debate on the subject in the Internet discussion list Mediev-l demonstrates. For almost a month Medieval scholars wrote back and forth about the virtues and the drawbacks of the terms, with the majority lining up on the drawback side. As a basic and simple definition one may assume that feudalism exists in a society with
1) extremely strong ties of personal dependence,
2) a strong military class at the top of the social structure,
3) hierarchical systems of land rights based on
personal dependence,
4) a breakup of central authority, with State powers distributed to powerful men (usually) in control
of large areas of land,
and
5) a body of insti...
... middle of paper ...
...for the discrediting of the term as well. Feudalism has been defined in so many different ways, that it is not possible to reach a true definition.
Many people have different notions about what is and is not feudal. Now the tendency is to just get rid of the term, rather than defining it with authority, as with Brown. This would be a mistake. As a constructed term feudalism fulfills its purpose as a generalization: it gives students and lecturers a springboard from which they can leap to higher, more complex ideas and concepts, without losing much along the way. However much some scholars may 'deplore' the term feudalism, however much popular speech mangles the meaning behind feudal, with the proper definition and a brief explanation, they can open up many facets of Medieval European society and culture.
A cruel cycle in which the rich people maintain control and the poor people are trapped with no way to rescue themselves, feudalism is a hierarchical market system. The people with money in Men With Guns are the landlords, the owners of the plantations. These people obviously control the land that they own as well as the profit from the output their land produces, but they also control the government, the army, and consequently, the common people. This near omnipotent control forces the common people into a feudal relationship.
Confederation- a group of individual states that are in an alliance, but the independent states each have more power than the central government
Capitalism and Feudalism: The Lowell System During the mid-nineteenth century, as the industrial revolution was taking shape, so too, was an economic system in Lowell, Massachusetts. The system involved a series of textile mills, which hired mostly women from rural towns, which were slowly giving way to the large cities as a result of industrialization. The textile mills hired the women to work long hours in brutal, often dangerous conditions, and many paid high rent to company boardinghouses. This may sound like feudalism, but it was, in fact, an example of oligarchical capitalism. However, it shares features with the conditions in "Norma Rae" and "Matewan".
Feudalism dominated European social life during the Middle Ages (Doc.1). “Feudalism was a political, economic, and social system in which nobles were granted the use of land that legally belonged to the king” (Doc. 1) "Social" life in the Middle Ages was the only kind of life people knew. Whether nobility, craftsperson or peasant, your life is defined by your family, your community and those around you (OI). “The Church protected the Kings and Queens (OI).” “The King is above Nobles, Nobles above Knights, and the Knights are above serfs (Doc.1).”
Although scholars dispute its roots, Feudalism was mostly seen in Frankish lands around the 9th and 10th century. ("Feudalism: History of Feudalism in Europe." Infoplease.) The system was first introduced as a means of protection for the king. However, as time grew the opportunity to use it as means of exchange for services between the king and vassal was found. Instead of just forcing people into the king’s army the idea of giving fiefs to those who would pledge their life to service the king was decided on. Likewise, vassal, or the knights saw the advantages they had that could be used to their advantage.
Feudalism was a political system in which the lesser served the greater in return for land. Also, the Church had a great deal with the political side of the Middle Ages. “In time of chaos The Roman Catholic Church was the single, largest unifying structure in medieval Europe” (Doc. 3). In other words, the Church influenced all there was. In 800 CE Pope Leo named King Charlemagne the “Emperor of the Romans” (OI). This is a great example of how the Church had political power.
Powell wrote, “…the feudal age is most important for the development of Western Europe: this importance lies chiefly in the process of state-building which had its origins here” (Powell 1). The monarch of this feudal society was responsible for state-building, centralization, and maintaining unity. Therefore, the throne was heredity, so that a single family maintained political power throughou...
PGCPS. (n.d.). Government Systems: Unitary, Confederate, and Federal Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2011, from www. pgcps.org: www.pgcps.org/~croom2/Reading_Government%20Systems.doc
The economy mostly seen in the early middle ages was feudalism, Europe’s form of government
According to the Federalists in the early stages of the American republic, a strong central government was necessary to provide uniform supervision to the states thus aiding in the preservation of the Union. This necessity for a more organized central government was a result of the ineffectiveness of the Article of Confederation’s government that was without a unifying government body. One component of this philosophy was the creation of an executive and other federal branche...
Firstly, both the title and the contents give a clear idea of his intentions. The title of his work, Feudal Society straight away shows the reader what Bloch’s intentions were in completing his work. Bloch was not talking about a feudal system that existed with medieval society, instead he wrote about the feudal society that existed in parts of Europe during the medieval period. This involved looking at the structures of Medieval society throughout the continent and coming to understand how feudalism was built around these structures. This is of course bringing the concept of structuralism into the study of history as it relates to the idea that society is moving in a certain direction and that feudalism formed part of
“The Song of Roland” illustrates very clearly the impact, efficacy and consequences of the feudalism as a political and social system. Feudalism is rightly pointed on ordering the social classes in the text by distributing the power gradually in each of them. A good example to make this clear is when the pagan king, Marsile, tries to trick on Charlemagne (Charles the Great) and offers to be his vassal and the reign of Spain. This giving would actually never happen, as he will still continue to be Spain’s king just as he has been before the “deal”, except the occasional situations when Charles may find appropriate to intervene. This is how the deal mildly organized the social order through power, giving Charles freeway and absolute power to do as he wishes, giving the Muslim king significant power, giving the others that follow immediately under him a little less power, and so on.
During the Middle Ages, feudalism served as the “governing political, social, and economic system of late medieval Europe.” Feudalism consisted of feudal liege lords giving land and protection to vassals, common men, in exchange for their allegiance and military service. Although this principle may at first sound like a fair trade, it in actuality restricted the entire society and took away every bit of their independence. In essence, this system could even be compared to a “mini-dictatorship” because the common people relied on ...
Print. "The Middle Ages: Feudal Life." Learner.org. Annenberg Foundation, 2012. Web.