Feudalism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Feudalism is an indefinite term referring to either a form of political organization or a type of economic system. Politically, feudalism is an aristocratic hierarchy in which political authority is dispersed among lords and their vassals. Such feudal relations center on the homage pledged to lords by vassals, who were granted a benefice or fief (usually land) in return for service (primarily military). While feudal relations arose in many countries, such as Japan from the ninth to nineteenth centuries, they dominated in northern Europe during the Middle Ages, especially in Germany, France, and England. Feudalism was not a term used during this time to describe a specific system of government but is an abstraction used by Enlightenment scholars, some of whom gave it a primarily economic meaning and condemned it as a form of oppression.

Vassalage was a bond of honor between lord and vassal, who might be someone already recognized among the aristocracy or a free commoner. In a solemn ceremony the vassal gave an oath of personal loyalty and service for which the vassal received support and protection by the lord. A vassal would attend his lord’s court; be consulted in governmental, judicial, and military decision making; and most important, fight in the service of his lord. A king would have vassals throughout his domain, and these in turn would establish vassalage relationships with others in their localities. Vassalage gave rise to a new class of nobility—knights, heavily armed warriors mounted on horses and obliged to serve their lords. Simultaneously, a code of honorable behavior called chivalry arose among these knights. Thus, vassalage differed from the relationship of serf and peasant to lord, subject to ruler, or citizen to state. Vassals not only gave counsel in the lord’s court but performed most governmental functions in their own localities in which they were lords in turn. Under feudalism, then, political authority was shared among a small group of free lords and military leaders, each of whom exercised it in relatively limited territories and who further distributed that authority to subordinates. Government was not centralized but functioned mostly at the local level at which the lord and his court maintained order, determined law, collected taxes, and performed judicial and administrative functions. In these ways, feudalism is one antecedent of Federalism.

Vassalage hearkens back to both German and Roman traditions, but in the Middle Ages it came to be accompanied by a benefice or fief, by means of which the vassal could support himself. This land grant was precarious, contingent on fulfillment of duties to the lord, but it provided a stronger and more stable bond between lord and vassal. Fiefs eventually became hereditary, with the vassal’s heir paying homage to the same lord. The details of the duties and rights for both vassal and lord varied greatly from region to region. As a result there was no single, fixed form of feudal government. Feudal relations began in the eighth and ninth centuries in Europe as loose, flexible alliances, and they gradually became increasingly precise and clearly articulated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when feudal relations were at their height.

Feudalism as an economic term arose with Enlightenment scholars in the eighteenth century. Feudal lords presided over most means of production in the agrarian economy: land, forests, rivers, buildings, markets, and mills. The land was either worked by serfs or rented to peasant tenants, but in principle the entire produce of the land belonged to the landlord. Adam Smith, in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), used the term “feudal system” to describe a system of economic production in which peasants and serfs are exploited by being coerced to labor for the landlord rather than provided with the monetary incentives of a free market system. A similar understanding of feudalism as manorialism was adopted by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who described feudalism as one of the phases of political and economic development marked by severe class oppression.

While feudalism in Europe during the Middle Ages was characterized by considerable violence and frequent warfare between lords, it was not anarchic. The possession of substantial land and political authority entailed the public responsibilities of defending, policing, administering, and judging. Political power was exercised locally as a private possession of a lord, but concepts of central government survived in the form of kingship, which retained real prestige if not always executable sovereign power. Vassalage assigned certain duties and rights to both lords and vassals, which preserved conceptions of individual liberty and other rights, thereby guarding against absolutism, as demonstrated in the Magna Carta.

Bibliography:

Backman, Clifford R. The Worlds of Medieval Europe. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society. Translated by L. A. Manyon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Casel, Fred A., ed. Feudalism and Liberty: Articles and Addresses of Sidney Painter. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1961.
Coulborn, Rushton, ed. Feudalism in History. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1965.
Ganshof, F. L. Feudalism. 2d ed. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961.
Herlihy, David, ed. The History of Feudalism. New York:Walker, 1970.