Why is feudalism seen as such a bad system nowadays? It worked in Europe for hundreds of years

>the byzantines adopted feudalism

Because of human rights
A feudal system will always lead to oppresion of peasents
Because of the existence of fire arms peasebt uprisings are much easier
It is literally impossible to pull off in this day and age

>The king can remove a Duke from his position any time he wants
in theory perhaps, but the problem is not just one bad duke its that the entire system is inherently inefficient. If a lord gives a title to his best son that son is not the best person for the job, merely the least bad of the lord's children. And it depends greatly on what nation and time period you are referring to, but often the king was just the most powerful of many independent nobles, attempting to remove an abusive lord could start a war. And what do you do when its the king himself who is abusive, as so often happened?

>I don't see how it doesn't respect personal freedom.
Do you not understand what it means to be a serf? You are born to serfs, this determines that you will be a serf. You are legally not allowed to leave the land without the lord's permission, and you can't pursue any profession other than being a tenant farmer, you will never be able to follow your passions or rise to your potential. That is disrespect of personal freedom.

Additionally feudal states did not have a system of justice as we understand it, laws did not exist to protect the people from abuse, merely to control them. In most feudal states the king was entirely above the law and theoretically had unlimited power.

>Because of human rights
No such thing
>A feudal system will always lead to oppresion of peasants
How so?

Not without a massive civil war he can't. Kings attainting men of their titles lead to revolts by the barons.

Because it is impossible to maintain without a monopoly on military power by the warrior elite. The rise of professional armies that utilized firearms, crossbows, pikes, and other low-training weapons technology meant nobles no longer had any kind of leverage to demand their usual dues.

>shitposter gets his jaw broken in half and cries about it

>No such thing
so let me kill you

>No such thing
just as there's no such thing as divine right to rule

you asked why people feel feudalism is bad, I told you its because it doesn't respect human rights and I think that's a bad thing, the vast majority would agree with that so we don't use the feudal system. You have your answer.

You can come back when you learn literally the first thing about medieval history

>i get to decide who goes on Veeky Forums
you are a LARPer with no knowledge on the issue other than quoting people who don't exist outside of your fantasy worlds

You're giving one guy absolute power and expecting that no one down the line will abuse said power

under feudalism they're all slaves so none of them have absolute power

Because we still live in the shadow of the vestigial institutions (monarchy, mostly, but also the church) and the revolutions which overthrew them. People will think more highly of feudalism when they stop thinking so highly of literally everyone who dismantled it. Probably a few hundred years. It's not really that feudalism was any worse than what preceded it, it's just recent enough for people to hate on. If you want to be reactionary and go back to feudalism, you're dumb though.

Woah what a novel idea
Like you must really have something here cuz some 15 other people independently came up with the same idea in their threads within the last two days.

The byzantines were never a feudal society. Prove me wrong

You do a valid point when it comes to an incompetent son inheriting, but the same argument can be made for almost every other form of government. People can vote a corrupt, incompetent politician to run the country and they can elect corrupt, incompetent people to run the houses of government.
With regards to serfdom, most serfs are just expected to pay their taxes and occasionally provide military service besides that they can lives normally without interruption.

But there's no such thing as human rights therefore your argument is invalid.

Serfs are legally bound to land, plus empirically a feudal system is much more prone to corruption than a non feudal one. It's an inherently ad hoc system of governance

The articles outlining a theoretical fudal society were written in reposnse to the failure to muster an army to fight Atilla. Hence, the byzantines wrote a political treatise to rpevent their own country from udnergoing such a failure. After the fall of the Roman Empire they adopted the system fully and started local force-theorist reovlutions to decide who gets to run each city/province that would then report to the emperor.

And the duke would said “lol ok :/ srry, goodbye fellows at least i tried tehehe”

Sources these apparently extant articles

Never said that. Corrupt leaders will work their way into any form of government.

The author was anonymous

Also, for what it's worth, feudalism is not very economically efficient. It is a system based entirely on self sufficiency and low levels of centralization. You forgo competitive economic advantages so you aren't reliant on the outside world for many things.

Additionally, feudalism doesn't protect private property rights very well because of the nobility's privileged place in the legal system. They also have monopolies on many industries and services which disincentivize innovation and infrastructure. These all detract from the economic development of the polity as a whole.

A highly centralized state with strong institutions and army will almost always defeat a less centralized enemy.

No thanks ;)

Link them to me

I dont owe your shitposting ass anything.

Give me any proof of their existence

>People can vote a corrupt, incompetent politician to run the country and they can elect corrupt, incompetent people to run the houses of government.
Sure, but let's compare the systems for removing a corrupt and incompetent leader in the two systems

>Democracy
>A bad leader gets elected
>Wait a few years until the next election
>Peacefully remove him from office

>Feudal Monarchy
>A bad leader inherits the throne
>Wait until he dies, which could take decades, and there's no guarantee that the next person will be any better
>Stage a violent uprising to remove him in which many innocent people will be killed and the economy will be thrown into chaos.
>Even then there's STILL no guarantee the next guy will be better.

>Give me
fuck you

Not him, but as a historian if you're unable to back up your claim with the primary documents then your analysis will be discarded.

There's no garuntee that the next leader you elect will be any better either. What's your point? Also if a King turns out to be a great leader he leads the country until he dies and not for a set term like in a democracy.

And if the king is terrible he leads to country for his whole life and ruins everything

I'm not the one claiming the existence of obviously false documents

Honestly, because even if you ignore the liberty and all that shit, it was just an inefficient system. The reality is more centralized governments are able to accomplish at lot more.

This isn't necessary true, a major advantage of feudalism was despite it's de-centralized nature it could levy large numbers of troops and trained troops, at that. Obviously, modern states are even better at mobilizing troops, but it's a mistake to peg that attribute to just centralization rather than nationalism and governmental efficiency. For it's time, feudal states punched above their weight vs centralized states who would have a harder time paying and maintaining armies.

>It is literally impossible to pull off in this day and age
Not true, more than likely that's what society will revert back to post-nuclear war. Or adoption of a full unhindered ancap society, take your pick.

it actually did its job spectaculary. Which was to provide men to fight in wars and defend against invaders while always allowing someone to have the skills to lead. Constructuvism was developed from it, which is somewhat artsy.

Feudal armies were tiny

Yes but centralized government systems are able to do those first 2 things much better due to organization.

meant to quote

The invasion period lasted a very short time compared to the essentially perpetual civil war of the Merovingian dynasty or the post Louis the pious era

They couldn't fight longtern campaigns though, they had to do off and on periods. The Hundred Years War was over the course of 100 years, but they didn't fight for anywhere near the majority of those years.

Am i suppose to LARP as a historian for you? Give the literal text which was never translated from Greek and talked about through word of mouth to you? So you'll accept my education? Eat shit

How many truly great kings were there throughout history who brought about a golden age because of their dynamic leadership, a dozen, maybe?

How many corrupt and incompetent kings were there who led their nation to ruin?

countless

You also seemed to miss my point that the peaceful transition of power inherent to democracy is the key difference.

feudal armies were not large at all compared to the million men armies of ancient rome

The central government of the Roman Empire failed and was changed.

The decentralized governments of feudal Frankia failed and were changed
Also non feudal Byzantium lasted until the beginning of the end of the feudal age

Not due to invasion, it collapsed under its own weight. It didn't change that Europe never possessed that level of organization again until like the 16th century.

Maybe in comparison to Rome or China, but those states were far beyond the size of the feudal states. In the ultimate battle of feudal Japan at Sekigaha, somewhere around 10% of the Japanese population is roughly estimated to have been levied for the battle. That is a pretty insane rate of mobilization.

Speaking of, would China for most of its history be considered feudal or centralized? I mean there was always a new dynasty taking over, but it feels like in most cases all they really wanted to do was change who was in charge.

>mfw feudalism is never ever coming back

I mean, they did as much as anyone else in Europe.

I'm talking about Europe, where the armies were in the lower thousands

They didn't except arguably in the Armenian areas

You're on a history forum where the rule is that "a high level of discourse is expected". If you cannot provide the sources for your claim about an anonymous essay from the ERE providing the founding principles of feudalism then its completely worthless.

The foundations of european feudalism really come about during the reign of Diocletian when he greatly expanded the administration, making administrators govern much smaller areas, made laws tying farmers to the land, and changed the tax structure so that farmers were encouraged to pay taxes in produce rather than with coin. Although its roots went back even earlier to the crisis period when the economy of the pax romana ere empire collapsed and localities were no longer able to get goods that were produced in far flung corners of the empire, so they had to become much more self sufficient. This was the origin of the manorial system.

The Romans didn't control Armenia since Nero, after that it was occupations, but not annexation.

China was centralized with stretches of backing into feudalism when central authority relaxed. Essentially, territory would become hereditary when the state collapses then the central authority once restored would work at removing those privileges and making governorship by appointment once more. Over time, the state lapses into feudalism less.

The western portions of Armenia were under on and off Byzantine control

Japan is a wierd situation as it was such a massive civil war

>The foundations of european feudalism
That would be Christianity you mouth-breathing armchair with no education save wikipedia

...

demanding free shit is not a high level of discourse you filthy socialist

'territory' isn't under the admnistration of an empire. It refers to what they conquered by force of arms. They didn't have any laws or government there hence they didn't have the ability to put any laws in place there.

They got money and soldiers there

It still stands such mobilization was possible because of feudal land holdings allowing for detailed conscription and local administration extremely vested in their interests to press people into service for their own ends. I'm not convinced a centralized state could achieve that level of conscription, particularly multi-ethnic/cultural states where the local populace have no reason to fight. Under feudalism, if your lord has a reason to fight, so do you.

During the Western Zhou dynasty from 1050-771 BC a form of government very similar to European feudalism developed where the king enfiofed members of his clan at the highest ranks, and those who had distinguished themselves in battle were given smaller lands and titles. When the Zhou failed to fight off a barbarian invasion they moved their capital east and many of the lords who were in theory subordinate to the king were actually far stronger militarily, but the king was kept around for another 500 years despite becoming increasingly irrelevant because of the prestige of the position. Eventually the feudal states declared independence and there was a warring states period.

During the Han dynasty there was an attempt to return to Zhou style feudalism. The Emperor ruled half the country directly, and the rest was divided into 7 kingdoms which were given to relatives of the emperor, but 50 years after this system was established the kings rose up against the emperor demanding full autonomy. The Emperor won and it was decided that this had been a failed experiment, and the whole country should be run by the Emperor like during the Qin. This was a few years before the start of the reign of Emperor Wu, and it was what caused him (and his prime minister) to invent the concept of Imperial Confucianism, which applied a veneer of Confucianism over distinctly legalist institutions in an attempt to justify moving away from feudalism.

Japan is a special case. European feudal armies were tiny

explain

Armies in Europe for substantial states (HRE) were easily in tens of thousands. Lower thousands when dukes brawl maybe, the Barbarossa is still legened to have raised 100,000 men to march on the holy land. At minimum he raised tens of thousands from Germany, no small amount. In the Hundred Years War, armies also levied past ten thousand regularly.

pay me faggot. tell me a story about feudalism since im the only who isn't quoting spam

By the late Middle Ages when feudalism was on the decline, yes.

I made points about the roots of feudalism coming about during the tetrarchy, you said "no it was christianity" and also some autistic screeching

explain to me what you meant or fuck off

you're not ready for a big boy board yet, you have to go back

>fuck off
no
>axplain it to me
already did
>tetrarchy
you ahd the most shit prose ive ever read that reminded me of the goddamn bible. Its no wonder no one litsens to you chrsitains when ti coes to roman history,.

Charlemange could easily field over 100,000 men from the height of his empire. How far back do we need to drag it for feudalism to be at it's peak? Large armies were not unknown to Europe during the middle ages.

>big boy board
>apologists how demand I give them free pdfs of primary sources
sounds like socialists

I'm gonna call bullshit on that. Phillip Augustus had less than ten thousand at bouvines

Genuinly curious where did you find that?

well that was almost english

at what battle did Charlemagne ever field anywhere near that many men?

Found it within 5 minutes on Ask Historians, sourced to Bachrach, Bernard. "Charlemagne and the Carolingian general staff", The Journal of Military History, 2002, 313-57.

Ovbiously, Charlemange never had reason to call up every single man he could muster-- it'd be absurdly costly for no reason. He is well recorded to field up to 30,000 in an army at a time without drawing on his full strength. But there's every reason to believe he could levy many more.

What campaigns is he recorded to have 30000?

If that's true then why did he scrap his planned invasion of Jutland? Did he fear the viking warrior?

Honestly, I'm not an expert on Charlemange, this topic sort of drifted out of my area of expertise. The source for both those claims is quoted as Bachrach, so you'll have to go ask him where he got that number; but its quoted for a wide field army for a whole theater rather than one battle force.

>The king can remove a Duke from his position any time he wants so his family won't continue to rule.
But what if the king is a cunt?

Well, those are still dwarfed by battles of even the early modern period

People realized inbreeding is not so good in the long run

Big swates of land, depopulation in general and specially in the cities, need of protection from raiders.

Really, what kind rights you want to have if you could be dead next morning?

Byzantines... one could said they had a mixed system, a general couping an empire, unstability of nobiliary titles, court intrigues, high literacy, civil law, and many others non-feudal aspect ruled the medieval eastern roman empire

the name should give it away, really