Editing Feudalism (section)

== Historiography ==
The idea of ''feudalism'' was unknown and the system it describes was not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the medieval period. This section describes the history of the idea of feudalism, how the concept originated among scholars and thinkers, how it changed over time, and modern debates about its use.

=== Evolution of the concept ===
{{English Feudalism}}
The concept of a feudal state or period, in the sense of either a regime or a period dominated by lords who possess financial or social power and prestige, became widely held in the middle of the 18th century, as a result of works such as [[Montesquieu]]'s {{lang|fr|De L'Esprit des Lois}} (1748; published in English as ''[[The Spirit of Law]]''), and [[Henri de Boulainvilliers]]'s {{lang|fr|Histoire des anciens Parlements de France}} (1737; published in English as ''An Historical Account of the Ancient Parliaments of France or States-General of the Kingdom'', 1739).<ref name=cheyette/> In the 18th century, writers of the Enlightenment wrote about feudalism to denigrate the antiquated system of the {{lang|fr|[[Ancien Régime]]}}, or French monarchy. This was the [[Age of Enlightenment]], when writers valued reason and the Middle Ages were viewed as the "[[Dark Ages (historiography)|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. For them "feudalism" meant [[Fief|seigneurial]] privileges and prerogatives. When the [[National Constituent Assembly (France)|French Constituent Assembly]] abolished the "feudal regime" in August 1789, this is what was meant.<ref name=bartlett>{{cite book |author-link=Robert Bartlett (historian) |first=Robert |last=Bartlett |chapter=Perspectives on the Medieval World |title=Medieval Panorama |date=2001 |publisher=Getty Publications |isbn=0-89236-642-7}}</ref> 

[[Adam Smith]] used the term "feudal system" to describe a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations. In such a system, wealth derived from agriculture, which was arranged not according to market forces but on the basis of customary labour services owed by [[Serfdom|serfs]] to landowning nobles.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh315/Feudal.htm |title=Feudalism |first=Richard |last=Abels |publisher=usna.edu |access-date=30 August 2010 |archive-date=5 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170705064653/https://www.usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh315/Feudal.htm |url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Heinrich Brunner ===
[[File:Francia at the death of Pepin of Heristal 714-es.svg|thumb|The Frankish domains in the time of Charles Martel (boundaries approximate), primarily modern day France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Austria]]
[[Heinrich Brunner]], in his ''The Equestrian Service and the Beginnings of the Feudal System'' (1887), maintained that [[Charles Martel]] laid the foundation for feudalism during the 8th century.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fouracre |first=Paul |title=Debating Medieval Europe: the Early Middle Ages, c. 450-c.1050 |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=2020 |isbn=9781526117328 |editor-last1=Mossman |editor-first1=Stephen |location=Manchester |pages=35–62 |language=English |chapter=The Successor States, 550-750}}</ref> Brunner believed Martel to be a brilliant warrior who secularized church lands for the purpose of providing ''[[precaria]]s'' (or leases) for his followers, in return for their military service. Martel's military ambitions were becoming more expensive as it changed into a cavalry force, thus the need to maintain his followers through the despoiling of church lands.<ref name="FouracreIntroduction">{{Cite book |last=Fouracre |first=Paul |title=The Age of Charles Martel |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |isbn=9781315845647 |edition=1st |location=London |publication-date=2000 |pages=1–11 |language=English |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> 

Responding to Brunner's thesis, [[Paul Fouracre]] theorizes that the church itself held power over the land with its own ''precarias''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fouracre |first=Paul |title='Writing about Charles Martel', in Law, laity and solidarities : essays in honour of Susan Reynolds / edited by Pauline Stafford, Janet L. Nelson and Jane Martindale |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=2007 |location=Manchester |publication-date=2007 |pages=19 |language=English}}</ref> The most commonly utilized ''precarias'' was the gifting of land to the church, done for various spiritual and legal purposes.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fouracre |first=Paul |title='Writing About Charles Martel' in Law, Laity and Solidarities : Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds / Edited by Pauline Stafford, Janet L. Nelson and Jane Martindale |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=2007 |location=Manchester |publication-date=2007 |pages=19 |language=English}}</ref> Although Charles Martel did indeed utilize ''precaria'' for his own purposes, and even drove some of the bishops out of the church and placed his own laymen in their seats, Fouracre discounts Martel's role in creating political change, that it was simply a military move in order to have control in the region by hording land through tenancies, and expelling the bishops who he did not agree with, but it did not specifically create feudalism.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fouracre |first=Paul |title='Writing About Charles Martel' in Law, Laity and Solidarities : Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds / Edited by Pauline Stafford, Janet L. Nelson and Jane Martindale |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=2007 |location=Manchester |publication-date=2007 |pages=18 |language=English}}</ref>  

=== Karl Marx ===
[[Karl Marx]] also uses the term in the 19th century in his analysis of society's economic and political development, describing feudalism (or more usually feudal society or the feudal [[mode of production]]) as the order coming before [[capitalism]]. For Marx, what defined feudalism was the power of the ruling class (the [[aristocracy]]) in their control of arable land, leading to a [[Social class#Class society|class society]] based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under [[serfdom]] and principally by means of labour, produce and money rents.<ref name=daileader/> He deemed feudalism a 'democracy of unfreedom', juxtaposing the oppression of feudal subjects with a holistic integration of political and economic life of the sort lacking under industrial capitalism.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Halikias |first1=Dimitrios |title=The Young Marx on Feudalism as the Democracy of Unfreedom |journal=The Historical Journal |date=2023 |volume=67 |issue=2 |pages=281–304 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X23000493 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/1E4726CDDF8401225BFFAD350B7607BC/S0018246X23000493a.pdf/the-young-marx-on-feudalism-as-the-democracy-of-unfreedom.pdf |access-date=10 February 2024}}</ref>

He also took it as a paradigm for understanding the power-relationships between capitalists and wage-labourers in his own time: "in pre-capitalist systems it was obvious that most people did not control their own destiny—under feudalism, for instance, serfs had to work for their lords. Capitalism seems different because people are in theory free to work for themselves or for others as they choose. Yet most workers have as little control over their lives as feudal serfs."<ref>{{cite book |first=Peter |last=Singer |title=Marx: A Very Short Introduction |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2000 |orig-date=1980 |page=91}}</ref> Some later Marxist theorists (e.g. [[Eric Wolf]]) have applied this label to include non-European societies, grouping feudalism together with [[History of China#Imperial China|imperial China]] and the [[Inca Empire]], in the [[pre-Columbian era]], as 'tributary' societies .<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wolf |first=Eric Robert |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/905625305 |title=Europe and the people without history |date=2010 |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |isbn=978-0-520-26818-0 |oclc=905625305}}</ref>

=== Later studies ===
{{Feudal status}}

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [[J. Horace Round]] and [[Frederic William Maitland]], both historians of medieval Britain, arrived at different conclusions about the character of [[History of Anglo-Saxon England|Anglo-Saxon English society]] before the [[Norman Conquest]] in 1066. Round argued that the Normans had brought feudalism with them to England, while Maitland contended that its fundamentals were already in place in Britain before 1066. The debate continues today, but a consensus viewpoint is that England before the Conquest had commendation (which embodied some of the personal elements in feudalism) while [[William the Conqueror]] introduced a modified and stricter northern French feudalism to England incorporating (1086) oaths of loyalty to the king by all who held by feudal tenure, even the vassals of his principal vassals (holding by feudal tenure meant that vassals must provide the quota of [[knight]]s required by the king or a money payment in substitution).

In the 20th century, two outstanding historians offered still more widely differing perspectives. The French historian [[Marc Bloch]], arguably the most influential 20th-century medieval historian,<ref name=daileader/> approached feudalism not so much from a legal and military point of view but from a sociological one, presenting in ''Feudal Society'' (1939; English 1961) a feudal order not limited solely to the nobility. It is his radical notion that peasants were part of the feudal relationship that sets 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 centred on "lordship", and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature, and a feudal economy.<ref name=daileader/>

In contradistinction to Bloch, the Belgian historian [[François Louis Ganshof]] defined feudalism from a narrow legal and military perspective, arguing that feudal relationships existed only within the medieval nobility itself. Ganshof articulated this concept in ''Qu'est-ce que la féodalité?'' ("What is feudalism?", 1944; translated in English as ''Feudalism''). His classic definition of feudalism is widely accepted today among medieval scholars,<ref name="daileader">{{Cite book |last=Daileader |first=Philip |title=The High Middle Ages |publisher=[[The Teaching Company]] |date=2001 |isbn=1-5658-5827-1 |chapter=Feudalism |author-link=Philip Daileader |issue=869}}</ref> though questioned both by those who view the concept in wider terms and by those who find insufficient uniformity in noble exchanges to support such a model.

Although [[Georges Duby]] was never formally a student in the circle of scholars around Marc Bloch and [[Lucien Febvre]], that came to be known as the [[Annales school]], Duby was an exponent of the {{lang|fr|Annaliste}} tradition. In a published version of his 1952 doctoral thesis entitled {{lang|fr|La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise}} (''Society in the 11th and 12th centuries in the [[Mâconnais]] region''), and working from the extensive documentary sources surviving from the Burgundian [[Cluny Abbey|monastery of Cluny]], as well as the dioceses of [[Ancient Diocese of Mâcon|Mâcon]] and [[Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dijon|Dijon]], Duby excavated the complex social and economic relationships among the individuals and institutions of the Mâconnais region and charted a profound shift in the social structures of medieval society around the year 1000. He argued that in early 11th century, governing institutions—particularly comital courts established under the [[Carolingian dynasty|Carolingian]] monarchy—that had represented public justice and order in [[History of Burgundy|Burgundy]] during the 9th and 10th centuries receded and gave way to a new feudal order wherein independent aristocratic knights wielded power over peasant communities through strong-arm tactics and threats of violence.

In 1939, the Austrian historian [[Theodor Mayer (historian)|Theodor Mayer]] subordinated the feudal state as secondary to his concept of a ''[[Territorial state#Personenverbandsstaat|Personenverbandsstaat]]'' (personal interdependency state), understanding it in contrast to the [[territorial state]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bentley |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JWqIAgAAQBAJ&q=personenverbandsstaat&pg=PA126 |title=Companion to Historiography |date=2006 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-1349-7024-7 |page=126 |access-date=17 November 2019 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> This form of statehood, identified with the [[Feudalism in the Holy Roman Empire|Holy Roman Empire]], is described as the most complete form of medieval rule, completing conventional feudal structure of lordship and vassalage with the personal association among the nobility.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Elazar |first=Daniel Judah |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yKOIqPsf7acC&q=personenverbandsstaat&pg=PA381 |title=Covenant and commonwealth : from Christian separation through the Protestant Reformation |date=1996 |publisher=[[Transaction Publishers]] |isbn=978-1-4128-2052-3 |volume=2 |page=76 |access-date=17 November 2019 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> But the applicability of this concept to cases outside of the Holy Roman Empire has been questioned, as by Susan Reynolds.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Reynolds |first=Susan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vkQ8z7S2cIIC&q=personenverbandsstaat&pg=PA397 |title=Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted |date=1996 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-1982-0648-4 |ol=7397539M |page=397 |author-link=Susan Reynolds |access-date=17 November 2019 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> The concept has also been questioned and superseded in German [[historiography]] because of its bias and reductionism towards legitimating the {{lang|de|[[Führerprinzip]]}}.

=== Challenges to the feudal model ===
In 1974, the American historian [[Elizabeth A. R. Brown]]<ref name=ebrown>{{cite journal |doi=10.2307/1869563 |volume=79|issue=4 |pages=1063–1088 |last=Brown |first=Elizabeth A. R. |title=The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe |journal=[[The American Historical Review]] |date=October 1974 |jstor=1869563}}</ref> rejected the label ''feudalism'' as an anachronism that imparts a false sense of uniformity to the concept. Having noted the current use of many, often contradictory, definitions of ''feudalism'', she argued that the word is only a construct with no basis in medieval reality, an invention of modern historians read back "tyrannically" into the historical record. Supporters of Brown have suggested that the term should be expunged from history textbooks and lectures on medieval history entirely.<ref name=daileader/> In ''Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted'' (1994),<ref name=reynolds>{{cite book |last=Reynolds |first=Susan |title=Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=1994 |isbn=0-19-820648-8}}</ref> [[Susan Reynolds]] expanded upon Brown's original thesis. Although some contemporaries questioned Reynolds's methodology, other historians have supported it and her argument.<ref name=daileader/> Reynolds argues:
{{Blockquote|Too many models of feudalism used for comparisons, even by Marxists, are still either constructed on the 16th-century basis or incorporate what, in a Marxist view, must surely be superficial or irrelevant features from it. Even when one restricts oneself to Europe and to feudalism in its narrow sense it is extremely doubtful whether feudo-vassalic institutions formed a coherent bundle of institutions or concepts that were structurally separate from other institutions and concepts of the time.{{sfn|Reynolds|1994|p=11}}}}

The term ''feudal'' has also been applied to non-Western societies, in which institutions and attitudes similar to those of medieval Europe are perceived to have prevailed (see [[Examples of feudalism]]). Japan has been extensively studied in this regard.{{Sfn|Hall|1962|pages=15–51}} [[Karl Friday]] notes that in the 21st century historians of Japan rarely invoke feudalism; instead of looking at similarities, specialists attempting comparative analysis concentrate on fundamental differences.<ref>[[Karl Friday]], [https://www.academia.edu/download/71051487/j.1478-0542.2009.00664.x20211002-26720-9g3rf8.pdf "The Futile Paradigm: In Quest of Feudalism in Early Medieval Japan"],{{dead link|date=July 2022|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} ''History Compass'' 8.2 (2010): 179–196.</ref> Ultimately, critics say, the many ways the term ''feudalism'' has been used have deprived it of specific meaning, leading some historians and political theorists to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society.<ref name=daileader/>

Historian [[Richard Abels]] notes that "Western civilization and world civilization textbooks now shy away from the term 'feudalism'."<ref>Richard Abels, "The Historiography of a Construct: 'Feudalism' and the Medieval Historian." ''History Compass'' (2009) 7#3 pp: 1008–1031.</ref>