Why does Europe have feudalism and why does it end?
The use of gun-powder made the King more powerful and the feudal Lords could not be a match to them. The invention of printing machine and the progress of education changed the outlook of the people who relegated feudalism to distant background. For these reasons, feudalism in Europe came to an end.
Why was feudalism bad for a Lord?
Why was feudalism bad in the Middle Ages? Feudalism had two enormous effects on medieval society. (1) First, feudalism discouraged unified government. Individual lords would divide their lands into smaller and smaller sections to give to lesser rulers and knights. (2) Second, feudalism discouraged trade and economic growth.
Why did feudalism replace slavery?
Slavery began to be replaced by a feudal-style tenant farmer economy wherein free men tied to the land worked farms for a lord reducing the need for slaves The Norwegian law code from 1274, Landslov (Land’s law), does not mention slaves, but former slaves. Thus it seems like slavery was abolished in Norway by this time.
Which countries used feudalism?
Which countries used the feudal system? Feudalism spread from France to Spain, Italy, and later Germany and Eastern Europe . In England the Frankish form was imposed by William I (William the Conqueror) after 1066, although most of the elements of feudalism were already present.
What caused the feudal system to end?
The major causes of this decline included political changes in England, disease, and wars. Cultural Interaction The culture of feudalism, which centered on noble knights and castles, declined in this period.
When did the feudal system end?
The terms feudalism and feudal system were generally applied to the early and central Middle Ages—the period from the 5th century, when central political authority in the Western empire disappeared, to the 12th century, when kingdoms began to emerge as effective centralized units of government.
When did the decline of feudalism start?
14th CenturyThe decline of feudalism occurred throughout the 14th Century. The peasant-dominated society turned into one where powerful nobles controlled the military and had more rights, but wars marked this period.
What replaced feudalism in England?
As feudalism faded, it was gradually replaced by the early capitalist structures of the Renaissance. Land owners now turned to privatized farming for profit. Laborers began demanding - and were given - better wages and additional liberties.
When did the feudal system End in England?
1660In the later medieval period, feudalism began to diminish in England with the eventual centralization of government that began around the first quarter of the fourteenth century, and it remained in decline until its eventual abolition in England with the Tenures Abolition Act 1660.
Who destroyed the feudal system?
The Crusades (1096 C.E.- 1291 C.E.) The Crusades is one of the most important factors that defined the end of the Feudal system in Medieval Europe.
What is the feudal system 1066?
The feudal system The king owned all the land but gave some to the barons. The barons had to fight for the king and train knights for him. The knights then received some land from the barons. The villeins worked on the land for the knights and barons.
How long was the feudal system in place?
Overview. Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries. It can be broadly defined as a system for structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land, known as a fiefdom or fief, in exchange for service or labour.
How did feudalism work in England?
The feudal system of governance and economics thrived in England throughout the high medieval period, a time in which the wealthy prospered while the poor labored on the land with relatively little hope of economic autonomy or representative government. In the later medieval period, feudalism began to diminish in England with the eventual centralization of government that began around the first quarter of the fourteenth century, and it remained in decline until its eventual abolition in England with the Tenures Abolition Act 1660. By then, a deeply embedded socio-economic class disparity had laid the foundation for the rise of capitalism to take the place of feudalism as the British Empire grew.
What is the meaning of "feudalism"?
The word, "feudalism," was not a medieval term, but an invention of sixteenth century French and English lawyers to describe certain traditional obligations between members of the warrior aristocracy.
What was the role of the vassal in the feudal court?
This security of military help was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship, but the vassal had another obligation to his lord, namely attendance at his court, whether manorial, baronial or at the king's court itself in the form of parliament. This involved the vassal providing "counsel", so that if the lord faced a major decision he would summon all his vassals and hold a council. On the manorial level this might be a fairly mundane matter of agricultural policy, but the duty also included service as a juror when the lord handed down sentences for criminal offenses, up to and including in cases of capital punishment. Concerning the king's feudal court, the prototype of parliament, such deliberation could include the question of declaring war. Depending on the period of time and the location of the court, baronial, or manorial estate, feudal customs and practices varied. See examples of feudalism .
What is feudal aid?
Tallage. Feudalism. v. t. e. Feudalism as practised in the Kingdom of England during the medieval period was a state of human society that organized political and military leadership and force around a stratified formal structure based on land tenure. As a military defense and socio-economic paradigm designed to direct ...
What did the Lord and Vassal promise to do during homage?
During homage, the lord and vassal entered a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces, a valuable right in a society without police and with only a rudimentary justice system.
What is the name of the nobles who held land from the king?
All nobles, knights and other tenants, termed vassals, merely "held" land from the king, who was thus at the top of the "feudal pyramid". When feudal land grants were of indefinite or indeterminate duration, such grants were deemed freehold, while fixed term and non-hereditable grants were deemed non-freehold.
What was the ceremony called when a lord gave land to a tenant?
This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty.
How did feudalism succeed?
To succeed, feudalism required considerable manpower. Vassals and serfs worked the manor year in and year out, bound by law to a lifetime of labor. But when war broke out between England and France in 1337, both nations undertook an unprecedented military buildup. This marked the start of the Hundred Years' War, a series of intermittent conflicts that lasted until 1543. In both countries, the army swelled its ranks with feudal laborers, undermining the manorial system while increasing the value of commoners by teaching them much-needed military skills.
Why did feudalism wane?
But in the 14th century, Feudalism waned. The underlying reasons for this included warfare, disease and political change.
What was the end of the Middle Ages?
End of the Middle Ages. The end of serfdom meant the end of feudalism itself. Europe's manors could no longer function without a labor supply. As feudalism faded, it was gradually replaced by the early capitalist structures of the Renaissance. Land owners now turned to privatized farming for profit.
What was the system of land use and patronage that dominated Europe between the ninth and 14th centuries?
Feudalism was a hierarchical system of land use and patronage that dominated Europe between the ninth and 14th centuries. Under Feudalism , a monarch's kingdom was divided and subdivided into agricultural estates called manors. The nobles who controlled these manors oversaw agricultural production and swore loyalty to the king.
What was the system of feudalism?
Feudalism was a coercive system that granted few individual liberties. Ancient laws kept peasants tied to the land, making their labor compulsory. Yet over time, concepts of individual rights gradually gained footing, especially in England.
What was the 12th century reform?
The 12th century reforms of Henry II, for instance, expanded the legal rights of a person facing trial. In 1215, King John was forced to approve the Magna Carta, a document obligating the crown to uphold common law. Eighty years later, Edward I finally extended parliamentary membership to commoners.
Where did the peasantry revolt?
Between the 1350s and the 1390s, uprisings took place in England, Flanders, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. After an English revolt in 1381, Richard II promised to abolish serfdom.
Why did feudalism decline?
Feudalism was based on the division of land by the king to nobles and vassals in return for their military service under the Feudal Levy. Land was the main source of the economy and was dependent on the peasants who worked on the land.
Why was the Feudal Levy unpopular?
The Feudal Levy was unpopular and as time went by Nobles preferred to pay the King rather than to fight and raise troops
What opened new trade options to England during the Middle Ages?
The Crusades and travel during the Middle Ages opened new trade options to England
What was the purpose of feudalism?
Feudalism required personal service in exchange for land. But people wanted to do more with land than just rent it from the law. A peasant who was doing well might want to lease more land to become even wealthier. Contract law allowed this and it was useful but Feudal law needed it to be clear who was required to perform the service and it is a lot more difficult to divide up personal service than money. So the law dealing with land became a mixture of feudal and contract law with some very stra
When was feudalism first used?
The very first uses of ‘Feudalism’ (actually ‘feodal’ in French) were in 1614 after the period it is supposed to refer to and the word only came into any kind of general use after Adam Smith used it in the ‘Wealth of Nations in 1776.’
Why did feudalism require personal service?
Feudalism required personal service in exchange for land. But people wanted to do more with land than just rent it from the law. A peasant who was doing well might want to lease more land to become even wealthier. Contract law allowed this and it was useful but Feudal law needed it to be clear who was required to perform the service and it is a lot more difficult to divide up personal service than money. So the law dealing with land became a mixture of feudal and contract law with some very strange features.
What was the German peasant revolt?
Initially started by Martin Luther with his teachings and 95 Theses, serfs in the Holy Roman Empire were angry at both the Church and the nobility. The people started to question the power of the Church and the Pope. Where in the Scriptures does it say that the Pope succeeds Peter as the leader of the Church? They were also tired of how the nobles treated them in perpetual labor, aka serfdom. These insurgents began to storm abbeys and monasteries as well as raid towns to kill their aristocratic lords. Even some of the nobles sided with the peasants in order to place themselves away from harm. The movement ultimately failed to do what it was intended to do, and Emperor Charles V made sure that the peasants would pay for civil unrest with even harsher labor and lesser rights. But it still shook the gentry to its core, and made way for the Enlightenment philosophers to create ideals, with reason, that allows every man liberty and equality, and slavery to be abolished.
Why was the savagery system so successful?
Because it was a remarkably successful system. It offered the overlords wealth and resources, and the serfs security and a degree of safety from banditry.
What was the rough system of the King?
It is only a rough description of a rough system whereby the king gave lands (and their peasants) to subordinate earls in return for their supporting him with soldiers in his wars and the same gift/obligations going down the chain to lesser lords.
Who created the unfree tenancy in England?
This ended piecemeal starting in the reign of Henry II (r.1154–1189). Almost all unfree tenancies in England were created by arbitrary decree of William the Conqueror (r.1066–1087) on land seized afte
What is the semantic issue with feudalism?
Brown's article “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and historians of Medieval Europe,” in The American Historical Review 79 (1974): 1063-1088, is the seminal work on the subject. She questions whether or not feudalism was a viable cultural construct for modern scholars to use in a discussion of medieval social relationships because as it was there were a large number of different ways in which it was applied. If feudalism was different in each place, is it really worth trying to impose it upon scholarly methodology? Susan Reynolds has followed Brown in her 1992 book Fiefs and Vassals: Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. In it she breaks down feudalism to its two basic components: vassalage and fiefs. Two good reviews by respected medievalists are available here. Furthermore, I have responded to a related question here that offers a brief overview of practices in high medieval England. So the question is, if people with less power went into contractual agreement with people with more power both before and after the Glorious Revolution, the Civil War, the Protectorate, etc., is there anything remarkable about the feudal system? Brown would argue there is nothing remarkable, while her opponents might argue that there was a lot of ritual and symbolism involved in the feudal process that disappears in the seventeenth century with the establishment of the Anglican church, the rise of Parliamentary politics, and so forth.
How did the nobles gain power?
Let's first identify where the nobility's power came from so we can understand why the changes that happened ended up weakening that power. Nobility really stems from land ownership at it's core. In the early Medieval period, land was really the main source of wealth (as it had been for millenia) was land ownership. So in that period, really, being noble was not particularly different from being wealthy. As time went on, the responsibilities of these nobles increased as feudalism developed, and more importantly, the idea of nobility became more than just economic class distinction, but a social one as well. You could no longer marry into nobility, and even purchasing land if you were not a noble was difficult if not impossible in many parts of Europe. Nobility became this powerful idea that became intertwined with the economic, social, and familial statuses of it's members.
What was the height of noble power?
So, let's fast forward to where werton left off, the Glorious Revolution. The later half of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century in essence is the height of noble power. Parliament was composed almost exclusively of nobles at this point, even if they weren't titles holders, whether one was in the house of lords, or representing a riding in the Commons. This represents a complete rejection of the absolute monarchy that Charles I was trying to forge in likeness to France, where the nobility had been largely stripped of all real power by this point by the King there. As the 18th century wore on, more and more power was abdicated away by the monarchs to their Privy Councilors and Parliament.
How did the Industrial Revolution erode noble power?
As farming became less profitable (the Corn Laws are an example of the nobility's effort to counter this) the nobility had less capital to maintain their estates. Money is power as the saying goes. Conversely, you have a new class of industrial capitalists who are spending lavishly. With capital comes power in many respects, because those who have the money are the ones holding the government purse strings (which is, after all, how Parliament took over from the King in the first place!)
What was the difference between the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century?
The difference between the middle ages and the seventeenth century was the rise of the New Model Army, a military group controlled directly by Parliament (though it had its own ups and downs). After the Glorious Revolution, the rich and the noble simply became high-ranking officers in the state military instead of controlling their own troops. In addition, you had a rising group of 'middling men' who gained lots of money very quickly in the rapidly expanding British empire who were not part of the traditional nobility. The medieval social hierarchy was certainly changed for good, there was no longer an definite equation of wealth with nobility, and there would never be an absolute monarch in England again after 1688. That change, I think, is fairly well documented. The more important question in my mind is whether or not 'feudal' is an appropriate way to describe the culture of medieval England.
How did the Industrial Revolution affect the population?
One side effect of the industrial revolution was that all that money wasn't being spent building factories on farms, it was being spent on factories in cities and ports. England and Wales experienced a huge shift during the 19th century that, even as the total population of the country was growing, the rural population was actually shrinking. This put even more pressure on farming as a viable industry, and more to the point, meant a huge amount of people were now no longer under the power of one of the nobles. They lived in cities, and those cities were dominated by the 'common' industrialists.
Did money alone make a thousand years of feudal social stratification disappear?
However, that is a pretty shallow answer. We have to look deeper as to what that money meant. Money alone doesn't suddenly make a thousand years of feudal social stratification disappear, despite efforts by those capitalists to the contrary. Indeed, some even bought whole estates from pauper lords whose only assets were their titles and mansions in an attempt to essentially buy their way into status. That wasn't enough to break the noble's hold on power. Many nobles were still quite wealthy, and more than a few moved past the stigma of being capitalists and opened mines, factories, and more.
Overview
Classic English feudalism
Feudalism took root in England with William of Normandy’s conquest in 1066. Before that, the seven relatively small individual English kingdoms, known collectively as the Heptarchy, maintained an unsteady relationship of raids, ransoms, and truces with Vikings from Denmark and Normandy from around the seventh-to-tenth centuries. Viking dominance led to separation of an eastern segment of the land into a region known as the Danelaw that generated income for the D…
Origins of Feudalism
The word, "feudalism," was not a medieval term, but an invention of sixteenth century French and English lawyers to describe certain traditional obligations between members of the warrior aristocracy. Not until 1748 did it become a popular and widely used word, thanks to Montesquieu's De L'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws). The coined word feudal derives from an ancient Gothic source faihu signifying simply "property" which in its most basic sense was "cattle" and i…
Vassalage
Before a lord (or king) could grant land (a fief) to a tenant, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal entered a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces, a valuable right in a society without police and with o…
Varieties of feudal tenure
Under the feudal system several different forms of land tenure existed, each effectively a contract with differing rights and duties attached thereto. The main varieties are as follows:
Freehold (indeterminate & hereditable):
• by barony (per baroniam). Such tenure constituted the holder a feudal baron, and was the highest degree of tenure. It imposed duties of military service. In time barons were differentiated betwee…
See also
• Bastard feudalism
• Cestui que
• Charter of Liberties
• Chivalry
• Concordat of Worms
References and sources
References
1. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th.ed. vol. 9, p.119.
2. ^ Cartwright, Mark. "Feudalism". World History Encyclopedia.
3. ^ Moreland, John (2011). "Land and Power from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England?". Historical Materialism. 19 (1): 175–193. doi:10.1163/156920611x564707. ISSN 1465-4466.
Further reading
• Barlow, F. (1988) The Feudal Kingdom of England 1042-1216. 4th edition, London.
• Round, J. Horace. (1909) Feudal England. London.
• Molyneux-Child, J.W. (1987) The Evolution of the English Manorial System. Lewes: The Book Guild. ISBN 0863322581
The Hundred Years' War
The Black Death
- Ten years after the Hundred Years' War began, the bubonic plague broke out in Europe. Spreading northwards from Italy, the bacterial infection known as the Black Death claimed at least a third of Western Europe's total population. With the young men of France and England off at war, agricultural output was already declining. Now there was a new challenge facing feudalism. Man…
Political Changes
- Feudalism was a coercive system that granted few individual liberties. Ancient laws kept peasants tied to the land, making their labor compulsory. Yet over time, concepts of individual rights gradually gained footing, especially in England. The 12th century reforms of Henry II, for instance, expanded the legal rights of a person facing trial. In 1215, King John was forced to approve the …
Social Unrest
- By the 1350s, war and disease had reduced Europe's population to the point that peasant labor had become quite valuable. Yet conditions for the serfs themselves remained largely unchanged. They were still heavily taxed on wages kept artificially low. Unable to survive in these circumstances, Europe's peasantry revolted. Between the 1350s and the 1390s, uprisings took pl…
End of The Middle Ages
- The end of serfdom meant the end of feudalism itself. Europe's manors could no longer function without a labor supply. As feudalism faded, it was gradually replaced by the early capitalist structures of the Renaissance. Land owners now turned to privatized farming for profit. Laborers began demanding - and were given - better wages and additional l...