How did feudalism come about?
Was it because populations became so large that it required a centralized bureaucracy to monopolize violence and manage resources? Smaller bands and tribes usually know each other, or at least have relations that can step in and mediate conflict. Did feudalism come into being once the tribe became too large for mediation to occur?
unironically
Veeky Forums usually raises some pretty good points sometimes and I'm asking because I got into a conversation with someone during my DnD game about it
To answer the question, even though it's in the wrong place.
Medieval feudalism can be most attributed to the late Roman empire, and more specifically it's taxation system.
Trade was taxed while property was not. This incentivized large, rich landowners to make their land as self-sufficient as possible so that they did not have to pay taxes to obtain the necessities.
As the late Roman Empire progressed into the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire, these self-sufficent estates continued to grow, and as order broke down, individuals fled to what order survived. These estates were order.
Eventually, they grew into the feudal states we know and love/hate.
Are you talking about the latifundium that started to form after the second Punic war?
>Was it because populations became so large that it required a centralized bureaucracy to monopolize violence and manage resources?
The exact opposite. Many cities (especially Rome) actually dwindled in population, and centralized authority had collapsed. The new (often Germanic) kings needed to keep all their lands in check without a central administration. What happens is effectively a maffia system.
A farmer, once protected by Rome, is now fair game for bandits and thieves. A bandit comes around with his five subordinates and tells him "that's a nice farm you have there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it". So this bandit becomes the new owner of the farm and demands that the farmer works it for him and pays him a tax, but in exchange the farmer is allowed to keep all non-taxed harvest (which would be better than the nothing he'd have without the bandits protection). This bandit we call a count. But he's not the biggest guy on the block, so he asks for protection from a bandit with even more subordinates (a duke) under the same conditions: the duke becomes the new owner of the land, but the count is allowed to administer it for him in exchange for a taxation levied on his taxation levied on the farmer. But he's allowed to keep all taxes that he doesn't pay to his duke.
So by the end of the story the king technically owns all the land in his country, but has various nobles acting as his representative on various levels to ensure enough food is being harvested. We see this system decline once (like under Rome) the population starts to urbanize and a strong administration makes ruling the country with minimal noble intervention possible. The extreme conclusion to this is the French Revolution: the violent abolition of the nobility and total centralization of governance.
tl;dr: Feudalism is a way to deal with the fast and sudden collapse of a centralized administration.
The concept of feudalism was invented in the 17th century in France by government propagandists who wanted to justify their divine right to rule.
IIRC the thing he is talking about was a slow process that started to accelerate during the tetrarchy with Diocletian's reforms.
Intredasting article, but sadly there's nothing I hate more than reading large wlals of text on a computer screen. In a physical book I can handle it just fine though.
It arose from manorialism with the breakdown of the Roman Empire. People congregated around powerful people that could protect and support them.
...
>Was it because populations became so large that it required a centralized bureaucracy to monopolize violence and manage resources
Uh, user, the basis of Feudalism is that rights (like the right to demand toll fees, the income from a piece of land, land in general, control over a city, a position as a judge or just the position of being a door guard of some important functionary) are rented out to private contractors in return for some service (mostly military) or a fee. Those rights usually became heretedary after a generation or two.
While the bandit-thing certainly did happen, the contract (and a feudal relationship was fundamentally contractual) was about the superior guaranteeing that he would stand by his subordinate if what he had bestowed upon him was threathened by a third party.
And I don't think that upwards-dedications happened all that often. The usual case was that somebody juggled being subjected to the legal control of two parties, both of which he had obligations to that stemmed from different rights they had bestowed upon him seperately. Though, for example in antique Japan, bestowing your land to a temple or a nobleman's family in return for protection was in fact not unusual, but access to courts and rights was a lot more restricted there than it was in Europe as the court at the capital was the only legitimate legal body in the land.
Frankly speaking, the nucelus of european feudalism was already there when the Romans switched to an economy based on freedmen's service from industrial-style slavery after they had finally nailed down Spartacus and his mates.
>fall of the (Wester) Roman Empire
user, I don't have much to add to this thread, but I love you for making that distinction and I hope you have a pleasant day.
Naw, there were plenty of other political systems that existed before feudalism and allowed for the same things.
In part it was born of weaker kings and a rising middle class. Feudalism allowed for the nobility to have a more formalized and detailed relationship and obligations up and down the social ladder. It also allowed for domains too large for a king to directly manage to be controlled by direct vassles, a system that let your power grow when you'd run out of people in your own household you could trust to supervise things.
So far most anons have answered how serfdom came to be, but the military organization of a feudal kingdom came about differently.
When the Germanic tribes settled in Western Europe, they were married into existing families owning large manorial estates, but for the most part this new aristocracy followed its own tribal law that was above the Roman system limited to the native people and the Church. Over time as the lesser tribesmen and those who married into the tribe grew in numbers, the elite began to worry for their privileges and started fearing the rights these numerous, lesser tribesmen theoretically had - such as the right to be armed and form part of the tribal army.
In order to counter this Germanic kingdoms started cutting down on tribal militias and began supporting private household troops, and since most of their wealth was in land they paid them in land in return for military service.
Technically speaking Medieval Feudalism didn't exist. Feudalism is a blanket term for various forms of governments, many of which having little in common.
historymedren.about.com
isites.harvard.edu
This is a Veeky Forums question, but they'll probably mock you for asking wikipedia-tier shit, so I guess you're better off here.
The Roman Empire fell apart because geographic reasons made effective administration impossible. They didn't have telegrams or railroads or any of that fantasy shit like ravens and owls carrying messages. And even if they did, the generals were the ones controlling the legions, it's hard to care what a man far away tells you when you've got a fucking army and he has no way to get to you with the other ones. However, generals couldn't administer much space either, so they became local folks, essenially. And if you've got a band of warriors, well, that's great, but so do other people even if they're not as big. So they (and others that emulated them) used their authority to require local warlords to work for them. Then you've got someone who's your underling instead of your enemy, despite being more or less autonomous. Others copied this (and major parts of the innovations weren't Roman) and there you go, feudalism. Mostly in France, to start with, but it spread because it worked well.
>Manorialism is the same thing as feudalism
But that's wrong. One is economic, the other is political.
>This bandit we call a count.
>random dude with five underlings
>count
You're climbing the hierarchy way too fast, that's just some petty lord.
Also,
>the duke becomes the new owner of the land
Not how fealty worked in almost all cases and definitely not at the dawn of feudalism.
>So by the end of the story the king technically owns all the land in his country
No, he technically doesn't. This is what distinguishes feudalism from a monarchic nation-state system.
>The Roman Empire fell apart because geographic reasons made effective administration impossible. They didn't have telegrams or railroads or any of that fantasy shit like ravens and owls carrying messages.
But that was true for the late Republic and early Empire too. Why did the system work so well for centuries and collapse later? It's not just a case of geography, that didn't change too significantly since the Death of Caesar (when the empire was already spread pretty thin, from Belgium to Egypt).
The reason why it worked for so long was because it had a well maintained, well supplied, and well trained military of loyal Roman citizens backed up by foreign auxiliaries
By the end of the empire it was neither well maintained, well supplied, nor of Roman citizens
This, combined with the strain of the nomadic tribes pushed out by the Huns, made Rome unable to defend itself and resulted it being taken over by barbarians
The late republic and early empire were smaller, and more importantly they were mostly around the Mediterranean, allowing easy travel. Although you'll see maps colored in similarly, actual Roman presence didn't initially extend that far inland, but increased gradually over time after the area was conquered. Furthermore, the system wasn't exactly the same. Initially, Rome itself was strong, and her periphery respected that. But Rome gave more autonomy to the further regions as there became more practical reasons to do so, and meanwhile the central authority was undermined by political strife including frequent assassinations and change in leadership. Compounding that were external military losses that made the central authority significantly weaker both in material fact and (perhaps more importantly, in this regard) in appearance. That includes both the barbarian invasions that are often talked about, but also civil wars and the Sassanid issues. Some scholars suggest that climactic issues may have also impacted the situation, as falling temperatures would make travel (particularly across mountains) more difficult and food more expensive, resulting in less communication and greater economic and political turmoil. Climate definitely shares a measure of the blame at least indirectly, since climate changes were a big part of the impetus for the barbarian migrations that undermined Roman authority.