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Feudalism
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a
combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political
customs that flourished in medieval Europe from the 9th to
15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring
society around relationships derived from the holding of land
in exchange for service or labour.

The classic definition, by François Louis Ganshof (1944),[1]

describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the
warrior nobility and revolved around the key concepts of lords,
vassals, and fiefs.[1] A broader definition, as described by Marc
Bloch (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior
nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the
nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry, all of whom were bound
by a system of manorialism; this is sometimes referred to as a
Investiture of a knight (miniature
"feudal society".
from the statutes of the Order of the
Knot, founded in 1352 by Louis I of
Although it is derived from the Latin word feodum or feudum
Naples)
(fief),[2] which was used during the Medieval period, the term
feudalism and the system it describes were not conceived of as
a formal political system by the people who lived during the
Middle Ages.[3] Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's
"The Tyranny of a Construct" (1974) and Susan Reynolds's
Fiefs and Vassals (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive
discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism
is a useful construct for understanding medieval society.[10]

Definition
Orava Castle in Slovakia. A
The adjective feudal was in use by at least 1405, and the noun medieval castle is a traditional
feudalism was in use by the end of the 18th century,[4] symbol of a feudal society.
paralleling the French féodalité.

According to a classic definition by François Louis Ganshof (1944),[1] feudalism describes a set of
reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility that revolved around the key
concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs,[1] though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment was only
related to the "narrow, technical, legal sense of the word."

A broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch's Feudal Society (1939),[11] includes not only the
obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility,
the clergy, and those who lived off their labour, most directly the peasantry, which was bound by a
system of manorialism. This order is often referred to as a feudal society, echoing Bloch's usage.

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Outside its European context,[4]

the concept of feudalism is often used by analogy, most often in
discussions of feudal Japan under the shoguns, and sometimes in discussions of the Zagwe dynasty
in medieval Ethiopia,[12] which had some feudal characteristics (sometimes called
"semifeudal").[13][14] Some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing feudalism (or traces of
it) in places as diverse as Spring and Autumn period China, ancient Egypt, the Parthian Empire,
India until the Mughal dynasty and the Antebellum South and Jim Crow laws in the American
South.[12]

The term feudalism has also been applied—often pejoratively—to non-Western societies where
institutions and attitudes similar to those in medieval Europe are perceived to prevail.[15] Some
historians and political theorists believe that the term feudalism has been deprived of specific
meaning by the many ways it has been used, leading them to reject it as a useful concept for
understanding society.[4][5]

The applicability of the term feudalism has also been questioned in the context of some Central
and Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Lithuania, with scholars observing that the
medieval political and economic structure of those countries bears some, but not all, resemblances
to the Western European societies commonly described as feudal.[16][17][18][19]

Etymology
The word feudal comes from the medieval Latin feudālis, the
adjectival form of feudum 'fee, feud', first attested in a charter
of Charles the Fat in 884, which is related to Old French fé, fié,
Provençal feo, feu, fieu, and Italian fio.[20] The ultimate origin
of feudālis is unclear. It may come from a Germanic word,
perhaps fehu or *fehôd, but these words are not attested in this
meaning in Germanic sources, or even in the Latin of the
Frankish laws.[20]

One theory about the origin of fehu was proposed by Johan

Hendrik Caspar Kern in 1870,[21][22] being supported by,
amongst others, William Stubbs[23][24] and Marc
[23][25][26]
Bloch. Kern derived the word from a putative
Frankish term *fehu-ôd, in which *fehu means "cattle" and -ôd
means "goods", implying "a movable object of value".[25][26]
Bloch explains that by the beginning of the 10th century it was
common to value land in monetary terms but to pay for it with Herr Reinmar von Zweter, a 13th-
objects of equivalent value, such as arms, clothing, horses or century Minnesinger, was depicted
food. This was known as feos, a term that took on the general with his noble arms in Codex
meaning of paying for something in lieu of money. This Manesse.
meaning was then applied to land itself, in which land was used
to pay for fealty, such as to a vassal. Thus the old word feos
meaning movable property would have changed to feus, meaning the exact opposite: landed
property.[25][26]

Archibald Ross Lewis proposes that the origin of 'fief' is not feudum (or feodum), but rather
foderum, the earliest attested use being in Vita Hludovici (840) by Astronomus.[27] In that text is a
passage about Louis the Pious that says annona militaris quas vulgo foderum vocant, which can

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be translated as "Louis forbade that military provender (which they popularly call "fodder") be
furnished."[23]

Initially in medieval Latin European documents, a land grant in exchange for service was called a
beneficium (Latin).[23] Later, the term feudum, or feodum, began to replace beneficium in the
documents.[23] The first attested instance of this is from 984, although more primitive forms were
seen up to one-hundred years earlier.[23] The origin of the feudum and why it replaced beneficium
has not been well established, but there are multiple theories, described below.[23]

The term "féodal" was first used in 17th-century French legal treatises (1614)[28][29] and translated
into English legal treatises as an adjective, such as "feodal government".

In the 18th century, Adam Smith, seeking to describe economic systems, effectively coined the
forms "feudal government" and "feudal system" in his book The Wealth of Nations (1776).[30] The
phrase "feudal system" appeared in 1736, in Baronia Anglica, published nine years after the death
of its author Thomas Madox, in 1727. In 1771, in his book The History of Manchester, John
Whitaker first introduced the word "feudalism" and the notion of the feudal pyramid.[31][32]

Another theory by Alauddin Samarrai suggests an Arabic origin, from fuyū (the plural of fay,
which literally means "the returned", and was used especially for 'land that has been conquered
from enemies that did not fight').[23][33] Samarrai's theory is that early forms of 'fief' include feo,
feu, feuz, feuum and others, the plurality of forms strongly suggesting origins from a loanword. The
first use of these terms is in Languedoc, one of the least Germanic areas of Europe and bordering
Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). Further, the earliest use of feuum (as a replacement for beneficium)
can be dated to 899, the same year a Muslim base at Fraxinetum (La Garde-Freinet) in Provence
was established. It is possible, Samarrai says, that French scribes, writing in Latin, attempted to
transliterate the Arabic word fuyū (the plural of fay), which was used by the Muslim invaders and
occupiers at the time, resulting in a plurality of forms – feo, feu, feuz, feuum and others—from
which eventually feudum derived. Samarrai, however, also advises to handle this theory with care,
as Medieval and Early Modern Muslim scribes often used etymologically "fanciful roots" to support
outlandish claims that something was of Arabian or Muslim origin.[33]

History
Feudalism, in its various forms, usually emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire:
such as in the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century AD, which lacked the bureaucratic
infrastructure[clarification needed] necessary to support cavalry without allocating land to these
mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated
land and their power over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and
economic spheres.

These acquired powers significantly diminished unitary power in these empires. However, once the
infrastructure to maintain unitary power was re-established—as with the European monarchies—
feudalism began to yield to this new power structure and eventually disappeared.[34]

Classic feudalism
The classic François Louis Ganshof version of feudalism[4][1] describes a set of reciprocal legal and
military obligations of the warrior nobility based on the key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs. In
broad terms a lord was a noble who held land, a vassal was a person granted possession of the land
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by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and protection by
the lord, the vassal provided some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal
land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding
rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship.[1]

Vassalage
Before a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to
make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and
symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which
was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty.
During homage, the lord and vassal entered into 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. Fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas and denotes the
fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. "Fealty" also refers
to an oath that more explicitly reinforces the commitments of
the vassal made during homage. Such an oath follows
homage.[35]
Homage of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis
Once the commendation ceremony was complete, the lord and
vassal were in a feudal relationship with agreed obligations to
one another. The vassal's principal obligation to the lord was to provide aid or military service.
Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the
vassal had to answer calls to military service by the lord. This security of military help was the
primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship. In addition, the vassal could have
other obligations to his lord, such as attendance at his court, whether manorial, baronial, both
termed court baron, or at the king's court.[36]

It could also involve the vassal providing "counsel", so that if

the lord faced a major decision he would summon all his
vassals and hold a council. At the level of the manor this might
be a fairly mundane matter of agricultural policy, but also
included sentencing by the lord for criminal offences, including
capital punishment in some cases. Concerning the king's feudal
court, such deliberation could include the question of declaring
war. These are examples of feudalism; depending on the period
of time and location in Europe, feudal customs and practices
varied.

The feudal revolution in France France in the late 15th century: a

In its origin, the feudal grant of land had been seen in terms of mosaic of feudal territories

a personal bond between lord and vassal, but with time and the
transformation of fiefs into hereditary holdings, the nature of the system came to be seen as a form
of "politics of land" (an expression used by the historian Marc Bloch). The 11th century in France
saw what has been called by historians a "feudal revolution" or "mutation" and a "fragmentation of
powers" (Bloch) that was unlike the development of feudalism in England or Italy or in Germany in
the same period or later:[37] Counties and duchies began to break down into smaller holdings as

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castellans and lesser seigneurs took control of local lands, and (as comital families had done before
them) lesser lords usurped/privatized a wide range of prerogatives and rights of the state,
including travel dues, market dues, fees for using woodlands, obligations, use the lord's mill and,
most importantly, the highly profitable rights of justice, etc.[38] (what Georges Duby called
collectively the "seigneurie banale"[38]). Power in this period became more personal.[39]

This "fragmentation of powers" was not, however, systematic throughout France, and in certain
counties (such as Flanders, Normandy, Anjou, Toulouse), counts were able to maintain control of
their lands into the 12th century or later.[40] Thus, in some regions (like Normandy and Flanders),
the vassal/feudal system was an effective tool for ducal and comital control, linking vassals to their
lords; but in other regions, the system led to significant confusion, all the more so as vassals could
and frequently did pledge themselves to two or more lords. In response to this, the idea of a "liege
lord" was developed (where the obligations to one lord are regarded as superior) in the 12th
century.[41]

End of European feudalism (1500–1850s)

Around this time, rich, "middle-class" commoners chafed at the authority and powers held by
feudal lords, overlords, and nobles, and preferred the idea of autocratic rule where a king and one
royal court held almost all the power.[42] Feudal nobles regardless of ethnicity generally thought of
themselves as arbiters of a politically free system, so this often puzzled them before the fall of most
feudal laws.[42]

Most of the military aspects of feudalism effectively ended by about 1500.[43] This was partly since
the military shifted from armies consisting of the nobility to professional fighters thus reducing the
nobility's claim on power, but also because the Black Death reduced the nobility's hold over the
lower classes. Vestiges of the feudal system hung on in France until the French Revolution of the
1790s. Even when the original feudal relationships had disappeared, there were many institutional
remnants of feudalism left in place. Historian Georges Lefebvre explains how at an early stage of
the French Revolution, on just one night of August 4, 1789, France abolished the long-lasting
remnants of the feudal order. It announced, "The National Assembly abolishes the feudal system
entirely." Lefebvre explains:

Without debate the Assembly enthusiastically adopted equality of taxation and

redemption of all manorial rights except for those involving personal servitude—which
were to be abolished without indemnification. Other proposals followed with the same
success: the equality of legal punishment, admission of all to public office, abolition of
venality in office, conversion of the tithe into payments subject to redemption, freedom of
worship, prohibition of plural holding of benefices ... Privileges of provinces and towns
were offered as a last sacrifice.[44]

Originally the peasants were supposed to pay for the release of seigneurial dues; these dues
affected more than a quarter of the farmland in France and provided most of the income of the
large landowners.[45] The majority refused to pay and in 1793 the obligation was cancelled. Thus
the peasants got their land free, and also no longer paid the tithe to the church.[46]

In the Kingdom of France, following the French Revolution, feudalism was abolished with a decree
of August 11, 1789 by the Constituent Assembly, a provision that was later extended to various
parts of Italian kingdom following the invasion by French troops. In the Kingdom of Naples,
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Joachim Murat abolished feudalism with the law of August 2, 1806, then implemented with a law
of September 1, 1806 and a royal decree of December 3, 1808. In the Kingdom of Sicily the
abolishing law was issued by the Sicilian Parliament on August 10, 1812. In Piedmont feudalism
ceased by virtue of the edicts of March 7, and July 19, 1797 issued by Charles Emmanuel IV,
although in the Kingdom of Sardinia, specifically on the island of Sardinia, feudalism was
abolished only with an edict of August 5, 1848.

In the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, feudalism was abolished with the law of December 5, 1861
n.º 342 were all feudal bonds abolished. The system lingered on in parts of Central and Eastern
Europe as late as the 1850s. Slavery in Romania was abolished in 1856. Russia finally abolished
serfdom in 1861.[47][48]

More recently in Scotland, on November 28, 2004, the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland)
Act 2000 entered into full force putting an end to what was left of the Scottish feudal system. The
last feudal regime, that of the island of Sark, was abolished in December 2008, when the first
democratic elections were held for the election of a local parliament and the appointment of a
government. The "revolution" is a consequence of the juridical intervention of the European
Parliament, which declared the local constitutional system as contrary to human rights, and,
following a series of legal battles, imposed parliamentary democracy.

Feudal society
The phrase "feudal society" as defined by Marc Bloch[11] offers
a wider definition than Ganshof's and includes within the
feudal structure not only the warrior aristocracy bound by
vassalage, but also the peasantry bound by manorialism, and
the estates of the Church. Thus the feudal order embraces
society from top to bottom, though the "powerful and well-
differentiated social group of the urban classes" came to occupy
Depiction of socage on the royal
a distinct position to some extent outside the classic feudal
demesne in feudal England, c. 1310
hierarchy.

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

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 De L'Esprit des Lois (1748; published in
English as The Spirit of Law), and Henri de Boulainvilliers's 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).[30] In the 18th century, writers of the Enlightenment
wrote about feudalism to denigrate the antiquated system of the 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". Enlightenment authors generally mocked and ridiculed anything
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from the "Dark Ages" including feudalism, projecting its negative characteristics on the current
French monarchy as a means of political gain.[49] For them "feudalism" meant seigneurial
privileges and prerogatives. When the French Constituent Assembly abolished the "feudal regime"
in August 1789, this is what was meant.

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 serfs to landowning
nobles.[50]

Heinrich Brunner
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.[51] Brunner believed Martel to be a brilliant warrior
who secularized church lands for the purpose of providing
precarias (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.[52]
The Frankish domains in the time of
Responding to Brunner's thesis, Paul Fouracre theorizes that Charles Martel (boundaries
approximate), primarily modern day
the church itself held power over the land with its own
France, Germany, Belgium,
precarias.[53] The most commonly utilized precarias was the Netherlands, Czech Republic and
gifting of land to the church, done for various spiritual and Austria
legal purposes.[54] 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.[55]

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 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.[56] 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.[57]

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.

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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."[58] Some later
Marxist theorists (e.g. Eric Wolf) have applied this label to include non-European societies,
grouping feudalism together with imperial China and the Inca Empire, in the pre-Columbian era,
as 'tributary' societies .[59]

Later studies
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 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 knights 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,[56] 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.[56]

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,[56] 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
Annaliste tradition. In a published version of his 1952 doctoral thesis entitled 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
monastery of Cluny, as well as the dioceses of Mâcon and 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 monarchy—that had represented public justice and order in Burgundy

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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 subordinated the feudal state as secondary to his
concept of a Personenverbandsstaat (personal interdependency state), understanding it in
contrast to the territorial state.[60] This form of statehood, identified with the 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.[61] But the applicability
of this concept to cases outside of the Holy Roman Empire has been questioned, as by Susan
Reynolds.[62] The concept has also been questioned and superseded in German historiography
because of its bias and reductionism towards legitimating the Führerprinzip.

Challenges to the feudal model

In 1974, the American historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown[5] 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.[56] In Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval
Evidence Reinterpreted (1994),[6] Susan Reynolds expanded upon Brown's original thesis.
Although some contemporaries questioned Reynolds's methodology, other historians have
supported it and her argument.[56] Reynolds argues:

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.[63]

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.[64] 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.[65] 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.[56]

Historian Richard Abels notes that "Western civilization and world civilization textbooks now shy
away from the term 'feudalism'."[66]

See also

General
Barons in Scotland

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Bastard feudalism
Cestui que
English feudal barony
Feudal baron
Feudal duties
List of feudal wars 12th–14th century
Investiture
Lehnsmann
Majorat
Neo-feudalism
Nulle terre sans seigneur
Protofeudalism
Quia Emptores
Statutes of Mortmain
Suzerainty
Vassal state
Ziamet

Non-European
Fengjian (Chinese)
Feudalism in Pakistan
Feudal Japan
Hacienda
Indian feudalism
Mandala (political model)
Sakdina, a Thai feudal system
Samanta, an Indian feudal system
Small castes
Zemene Mesafint

References
1. François Louis Ganshof (1944). Qu'est-ce que la féodalité. Translated into English by Philip
Grierson as Feudalism, with a foreword by F. M. Stenton, 1st ed.: New York and London, 1952;
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23. Meir Lubetski (ed.). Boundaries of the ancient Near Eastern world: a tribute to Cyrus H.
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Bibliography
Wickham, Chris (2010). The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000.
Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140290141.

Further reading
Bloch, Marc, Feudal Society. Tr. L.A. Manyon. Two volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1961. ISBN 0-226-05979-0.
Ganshof, François Louis (1952). Feudalism (https://archive.org/details/feudalism00gans).
London; New York: Longmans, Green. ISBN 978-0-8020-7158-3.
Guerreau, Alain, L'avenir d'un passé incertain. Paris: Le Seuil, 2001 (complete history of the
meaning of the term).
Poly, Jean-Pierre and Bournazel, Eric, The Feudal Transformation, 900–1200., Tr. Caroline
Higgitt. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1991.
Reynolds, Susan, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-820648-8.

Historiographical works
Abels, Richard (2009). "The Historiography of a Construct: "Feudalism" and the Medieval
Historian". History Compass. 7 (3): 1008–1031. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00610.x (https://
doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2009.00610.x).
Brown, Elizabeth (1974). "The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval
Europe". American Historical Review. 79 (4): 1063–1068. doi:10.2307/1869563 (https://doi.org/
10.2307%2F1869563). JSTOR 1869563 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1869563).
Cantor, Norman F. (1991). Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the
Great Medievalists of the Twentieth century. Quill.
Friday, Karl (2010). "The Futile Paradigm: In Quest of Feudalism in Early Medieval Japan".
History Compass. 8 (2): 179–196. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00664.x (https://doi.org/10.111
1%2Fj.1478-0542.2009.00664.x).
Harbison, Robert (1996). The Problem of Feudalism: An Historiographical Essay (https://web.a
rchive.org/web/20080229034347/http://www.wku.edu/~rob.harbison/projects/Gfeudal.html).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism 14/16
16/07/2024, 17:54 Feudalism - Wikipedia

Western Kentucky University. Archived from the original (http://www.wku.edu/~rob.harbison/pro

jects/Gfeudal.html) on February 29, 2008.

End of feudalism
Bean, J.M.W. (1968). Decline of English Feudalism, 1215–1540. OL 23803960M (https://openli
brary.org/books/OL23803960M).
Davitt, Michael (1904). The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland: Or, The Story of the Land League
Revolution. OCLC 1595429 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1595429). OL 23299170M (https://o
penlibrary.org/books/OL23299170M).
Hall, John Whitney (1962). "Feudalism in Japan-A Reassessment". Comparative Studies in
Society and History. 5 (1): 15–51. doi:10.1017/S001041750000150X (https://doi.org/10.1017%
2FS001041750000150X). JSTOR 177767 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/177767).
S2CID 145750386 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:145750386).; compares Europe
and Japan.
Nell, Edward J. (1967). "Economic Relationships in the Decline of Feudalism: An Examination
of Economic Interdependence and Social Change". History and Theory. 6 (3): 313–350.
doi:10.2307/2504421 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2504421). JSTOR 2504421 (https://www.jsto
r.org/stable/2504421).
Okey, Robin (1986). Eastern Europe 1740–1985: Feudalism to Communism. University of
Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816615616. OCLC 13644378 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1364437
8). OL 2718094M (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2718094M).

France
Herbert, Sydney. The Fall of Feudalism in France (1921) full text online free (https://archive.or
g/details/falloffeudalismi00herbrich).
Mackrell, John Quentin Colborne. The Attack on Feudalism in Eighteenth-century France (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=Kb7WAQAAQBAJ) (Routledge, 2013).
Markoff, John. Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords, and Legislators in the French
Revolution (Penn State Press, 2010).
Sutherland, D. M. G. (2002). "Peasants, Lords, and Leviathan: Winners and Losers from the
Abolition of French Feudalism, 1780-1820". The Journal of Economic History. 62 (1): 1–24.
JSTOR 2697970 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2697970).

Global Health
Keshri VR, Bhaumik S (2022) . The feudal structure of global health and its implications for
decolonisation . BMJ Global Health Available online https://gh.bmj.com/content/7/9/e010603

External links
"Feudalism" (https://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9034150/feudalism), by Elizabeth A. R.
Brown. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
"Feudalism?" (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1i.html#Feudalism) Archived (https://web.a
rchive.org/web/20141018025458/http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1i.html#Feudalism)
October 18, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, by Paul Halsall. Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
"Feudalism: the history of an idea" (https://www.academia.edu/634989/Feudalism_the_history_
of_an_idea), by Fredric Cheyette (Amherst), excerpted from New Dictionary of the History of
Ideas (2004)
Medieval Feudalism (https://web.archive.org/web/20120209083705/http://www.scribd.com/doc/
28860952/Mediavel-Feudalism), by Carl Stephenson. Cornell University Press, 1942. Classic
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introduction to Feudalism.
"The Problem of Feudalism: An Historiographical Essay" (https://web.archive.org/web/2009022
6131755/http://www.wku.edu/~rob.harbison/projects/Gfeudal.html) at the Wayback Machine
(archived February 26, 2009), by Robert Harbison, 1996, Western Kentucky University.

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