What would be the best government for a medieval country where all (or at last most) farmers own their land?

What would be the best government for a medieval country where all (or at last most) farmers own their land?

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Ironmongerocracy! He who controls the iron controls the plow!

Country? As in more than one city?
Well, it's the middle ages so there'd still have to be some kind of warrior class. But given that there are no serfs and the farmers own their land, there isn't an aristocratic land owning class that can afford the best horses and armor. The first problem you need to solve is where these warriors come from. The next best choice after hereditary nobles are probably wealthy craftsmen and merchants from the city. The social hierarchy would probably be something like this:

>Patricians: Very wealthy craftsman families from the city who are de facto nobility
>Craftsmen: Urbanized workers in the city, rather wealthy
>Freemen: Countryside farmers who own their own land
>Proles: Poorfags who assist and/or work for the Freemen and Craftsmen, but are wage laborers rather than serfs
Then you'd have the clergy which is (at least on paper) outside of this hierarchy.

If you ask me to organize a medieval society with this in mind, I'd do it as follows:
>Each city owns the surrounding lands and is semi-autonomous
>The cities are ruled by a council of patricians
>Being a patrician is a hereditary title, but it's not unheard of for the wealthiest Craftsmen to buy their way into becoming a patrician
>Every city sends a number of representatives to some sort of senate
>Alternatively, it's a royal council and whenever the throne is vacant a king is elected from among the patrician families

These patricians would also be the warrior class, but they'd derive their wealth from urbanized industry rather than serfs working the land for them. This all naturally does assume a certain degree of urbanization. These patricians would in equipment be no different from knights, but probably a lot less well trained/disciplined as they spend most of their time managing their estates and workshops rather than training for combat from birth. Of course craftsmen and freemen c also be levied, with most of them being able to afford halfway decent gear.

anarchosyndicate

Depending on how warmongering the country or its neighbors are, the warrior class could easily be mercenaries or a professional army, who are of course payed for by wealthy patrician famlies

Not England, kingdom of bandits and robbers. Most crime-ridden kingdom in Europe and damn proud of it. I guess you should expect as a counter-culture to their Norman conquerors. Event the feudals lords steal things and give home to full gangs of outlaws within their castles. You should be ashamed.

Shit, I hadn't even thought of that. That's such a simple solution, now that you mention it. Perhaps these mercenaries could even organize themselves into guild and become a(n unofficial) presence in the political arena themselves. I could totally imagine something like mercenaries getting into brawls on the streets and behaving lewdly in public to the point where this becomes such a problem, the patricians provoke a war just to get the mercenaries off the streets.

Rome rule!

Most of the land was owned by Patricians. That was even the main reason for the fall of the republic.

Even if there are no serfs, there could still be a class of tenant laborers- these would be the proles you mention. There would still easily be an aristocracy, but they would have land+titles unlike the landed peasantry. They would lease portions of their land to the proles class. Generally they would be in possession of far more/better land, but the bottom of the nobility and upper end of the peasantry would overlap at least in economic terms.

>medieval country where all (or at last most) farmers own their land?

You just described Medieval Norway/Sweden/Finland. This remained the case in these lands until around 1700-1800 or so. Basically anywhere with a low enough population density.

>Basically anywhere with a low enough population density.

See also: Colonial America (not Medieval, but you get the idea. This is what tends to happen when there's plenty of land to go around)

Call me crazy if you want, but for some reason this setting is starting to sound incredibly comfy.

>Craftsmen and Freeman farmers work almost entirely independently, with only a handful of laborers under them at best
>Patricians on the other hand have large estates and massive workshops, employing dozens if not hundreds of workers
>Sometimes there aren't enough jobs, so many of these laborers are seasonal workers who work irregularly, sometimes helping out on various farms during harvesting season, and sauntering around cities looking for jobs at other times
>In other cities there may be labor shortages, so patricians exploit the status of these urban poor as free men (rather than serfs) by inviting them over to another city
>For laborers mobility becomes an important aspect, many patricians realize this and voluntarily invest in better road systems to better attract urban poor from other cities

>The professional army is rather small, the majority of the warriors are part of various mercenary bands that are contracted 'in perpetuity' by the government
>In times of peace they tend to get rowdy
>Drunkeness, bar brawls and public lewdness are not exceptional
>Old patricians constantly complain that these mercenaries are a threat to social morals with their skirtflipping and their cursing and their wolfwhistling and their tight pants and their oversized codpieces and their dabbing and their street lingo and their rap music and their violent video games
>Others see these mercenary guilds as a good way to keep the thugs off the streets and on the battlefield

So, if Moscow/Novgorod/etc, Poland and other Slavic Kingdoms didn't have serfdom during the middle ages (it came during the renaissance), what did they have?

Not sure about those lands not having Medieval serfdom, but speaking more generally, a society without serfs will still have a class of workers who will rent land from nobles and landed peasants (yeomen). They work the land, and keep part of their product, and the rest of their production goes to the landlord. If they want to leave and live/work somewhere else, they are able to do so, as unlike serfs they are free people.

(protip: serfdom wasn't as common historically as is commonly assumed)

It's very likely there wouldn't be any "professional" army. The nobility would be basically the equivalent- very well equipped, regular training for all sons. The landed commoners would also from a reasonably well equipped and trained militia and form the bulk of the forces, as they have a strong interest in defending their property and social order. The lower class would be recruited sometimes, but would require payment, or they could serve in lieu of having to pay rent or something. If the lower class ever became too large, and military careers were available, then you might begin to see a professional army developing.

Edit: I should also add that if only a small minority of the population belong to landless families, then there would be little reasoning for cities to exist. Or, at least the cities would tend to be smaller and there would be fewer of them. You're describing an urbanized society, but really in this model, villages and estates would be the (de-)center of social life.

Machiavelli's The Prince vehemently disagrees with you. A mercenary army can easily turn treacherous if you don't have a strong nationalist military backing their lord's interests on principle rather than profit, as the mercenaries might start to wonder if it would be easier and to their greater benefit to just conquer your lands for themselves, or especially if a rival faction is offering to pay them more than you currently are.
Plus, if a mercenary is captured by the enemy, they won't think twice about ratting out your strategy if it meant avoiding torture and death. Even a pouch of gold would convince them that it's in their interest to loosen their lips.
The free market doesn't actually have an answer to nationalist military forces who wouldn't sell out their countrymen for any sum of money.

>Machiavelli's The Prince vehemently disagrees with you.

The Prince doesn't describe a society where the majority of the population are landowners. Which is what this thread is about, and what I was addressing. My post said that if most of the peasantry and landowners, there would be little need for a mercenary/professional army because yeomen naturally form militias out of self-interest. What professional forces did exist would be the personal forces of nobles and wealthy commoners, and not state forces.

> if you don't have a strong nationalist military backing their lord's interests
>Pre-modern society
>nationalist

If there are military forces backing their lord, then they are by definition NOT nationalist, since their loyalty is to a man/station rather than to the idea of a nation or state.

EDIT:

>... if most of the peasantry and landowners

-if most of the peasantry ARE landowners

But unless the owned land is divided up between all the offspring upon their parents' deaths (eventually leading to small plots that can't support anyone), you soon have a class consisting of the non-inheritors.
The most practical thing for them to do is become the craftsmen and traders, which in turn leads to them concentrating around resources and trade hubs that provide the infrastructure and customer base to support their specialisation (i.e. Cities!).

Aristocracy with a elf slave driven economy.

Elves are too chaotic and rebellious. Dwarf slaves would actually be more reliable.

>Slaves
>In a society where the majority of people are free land owners
I can't see this going wrong at all.

If each household has on average one son who reaches adulthood, then that's who receives the property. Daughters marry into other households. Households without sons will pass their property to a daughter, or sell their land to second or third sons from other households able to afford it. This is sustainable so long as the population remains stable.

Like I said in another post, the majority of the population of Norway, Sweden, and Finland belonged to propertied families from pre-Medieval time until the 1700-1800's because that is when the population suddenly began to grow beyond what the older system could maintain. This also coincides with the growth of cities in the far-north of Europe.

Look at the early middle ages. Particularly at personal union states.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_state

Absolutism.
Not even memeing, a strong central government means that the local nobles can't abuse the peasants as they would in a feudal society.

>Not even memeing, a strong central government means that the local nobles can't abuse the peasants as they would in a feudal society.
In the case of the posterboy for absolutism (Louis XIV), it also means that the administration of said central government is full of commoners rather than nobles (considering the entire goal of the system is to get the nobles out of it).

>the local nobles can't abuse the peasants as they would in a feudal society.

"Peasant" has many different sub-categories, which people often seem unable to appreciate. At the simplest analysis it consists of:

- Serfs (landless, not free)
- Tenants (landless, but free)
- Yeomen (landed, free)

OP is asking about a society in which the large majority of people are yeomen, and are therefore not subject to the worst exploitations of the nobility.

Norse government was like that, and early America. Mongolia is STILL like that...