FEUDALISM

 

FEUDALISM

As a social system , feudalism stands for an agreement between the warrior nobles and the people whom he engaged to work for him in agriculture, military service, court matters or any other field where they could be useful. This system existed in Europe in the middle ages, though it continued to exist in a different form even till the late eighteenth century in France  

The warrior noble was the holder of the land, but its possession was in the hands of his subordinates. He was responsible to protect them from external aggression, whereas his subordinates were bound to  render him military service within the land owned by him. The land owned by him was called fief. It was a rented area for which the payment was made through work and not money. Thus, the area owned by the noble warrior was called fiefdom. The people who served him were known as vassals. The word vassal in this context implies a person in the Middle Ages who promised to fight for and be loyal to a king or other powerful owner of land , in return for being given land to live on. The word ‘feudal’ has also some connection with the word ‘fidelity’ which means the quality of being loyal or faithful to somebody. It is important to note that the agreement arrived at between the noble warrior and his vassals was like  a legal agreement and its violation was a breach of trust .

Feudalism was certainly an exploitative system. It was a fore-runner of capitalism because the vassal got less than what he deserved and the noble warrior was a greater beneficiary.  It created many problems and protests in the European countries in which it existed for about six centuries.  

According to Marc Bloch (1939), the feudal system was a combination of the legal, economic, military and cultural customs that flourished in Medieval Europe between the 9^th and 15^th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

Economist Adam Smith (1723-90) and political philosopher Karl Marx (1818-83) criticised  feudalism in their own way. Smith regarded it as an inherited socio-economic system in which the inheritors possessed social and economic privileges and obligations. It was a system in which wealth derived from agriculture was not arranged according to market forces but on the basis of customary labour services owed by serfs to land-owning nobles.  For Marx, feudalism was he power of the ruling class i.e. aristocracy by which they controlled arable land  and thus created a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants. Consequently, it led to a conflicting power relationship between capitalists and wage-labourers.

Feudalism had a near death blow when the feudal system about land was replaced by business corporations and agrarian societies were transformed into industrial societies. Today, it has no existence worth the name in any part of the world.