6 ms·

It’s important to emphasize that feudalism is fundamentally a transactional system. What the nobility had to offer peasants was safety. In the absence of the Ro

It’s important to emphasize that feudalism is fundamentally a transactional system. What the nobility had to offer peasants was safety. In the absence of the Roman imperial system, binding yourself to a local lord who could raise men at arms and a small castle to protect you and your family is a rational decision. I wouldn’t go so far as saying that feudalism is good, but it’s at least understandable when viewed that way. Of course late feudalism became extra intolerable once kings stopped protecting peasants and started pulling them into new wars instead.

remarkEon 6y ago
I don’t see how democracy is much different, to be quite honest. The same structures get set up (the state, instead of a Lord, provides security ... over time the state drags the “citizens” into new wars all the same). I suppose the difference is that in a democracy you at least have an illusion of influence on the state, whereas in a Feudalistic society everyone was quite honest about how the peasants had no or only limited influence at best.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  This is ignoring all of the details. Feudal peasants were much closer to slaves than to citizens in a democracy. They had a duty to produce certain amounts of resources for the lord - often not a percentage like a tax, but a minimum amount due. In many places at many times, they were bound to the land - they were not allowed to move away from the village where they lived, definitely not to a different Lord's lands. As you also note, they had no power to influence decision making, and even if they did rise up, they were violently put down, by neighboring lords if they somehow were successful against their own. Not to mention, (modern) states offer much more than military security. They offer healthcare, food, care for the disabled, infrastructure, education, and many other services. And, especially in smaller nations or at local levels (think town, not US state), there is quite a lot of real democratic power, certainly incomparable to the realities of serfdom.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    > This is ignoring all of the details. Feudal peasants were much closer to slaves than to citizens in a democracy. I disagree. We overestimate the freedom we have and underestimate theirs. For example they had much more free time than we do today. We on the other hand are still "free" to choose where to work (as long as we aren't in poverty, which is unfortunately untrue for too many, with no prospect of future change), but the workplace is as undemocratic as it gets. Forget our (tech) golden workplaces. Most people spend 2/3 of their lives in authoritarian workplaces that they can't leave because they need their shit job to survive. Where is the practical difference with being a serf? Even in the west, most of us don't live a democracy, except for the minority of their time.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    Look, I’m not making an argument in favor of serfdom (far from it). I’m pointing out that many current iterations of democracy have become quite corrupt, so much so that the difference between it and feudalism is one measured on the margins (your details). Every couple days an article gets upvoted on this website that describes how the economies in (western) democracies have metastasized to the point where it’s participants are just cogs, working for a massive corporate enterprise that explicitly does not care about them, voting in elections about a government that quite often does the opposite of what is in their expressed interests, and/or are stuck in an infinite loop of debt-enabled credentialism. Okay yeah that’s not de jure feudalism. Inching closer and closer to de facto, though. Edit: to say this again, because apparently it’s needed. I am not in favor of feudalism.
    - mrmonkeyman 6y ago
      But still lightyears off. You are dramatizing our priviledged existence. Billions (literal) would offer their firstborn son to be "cogs" working a "massive corporate enterprise". What you are describing is the good part of modern life, I suggest you don't look at the bad parts if this already disturbs your soul.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      I didn't take your comments as being in favor of feudalism, I took it as being a bit too cynical of modern states. The clarifications in your new comment make it clearer that you are more talking about a direction, not saying we already live in neo-feudalism, and I agree with you completely that it is something we're inching towards.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  If you’ve left your town without your landlords permission, you enjoy a freedom that medieval peasants didn’t have. If your apartment changed hands without you suddenly becoming someone’s property, you’ve enjoyed a freedom peasants didn’t have. If you’ve been involved in a legal process that wasn’t adjudicated by your land lord then you’ve enjoyed a freedom peasants didn’t have. I can’t believe I need to explain this, but democracy is nothing like feudalism.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    Do you think I’m making an argument in favor of feudalism? I’m sorry that pointing out that our current structures of government aren’t exactly performing at their presumed capacity is a troubling idea.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      You’re getting downvoted because our current system of government, no matter how flawed, is very different from feudalism. The comparison is poor for all the reasons I listed and more. There are better ways to critique our current system without such hamfisted comparisons.
  - masswerk 6y ago
    Actually, most parts of medieval society were astoundingly mobile. Not everyone was tenant or serf, many, as in the trades and crafts, workers of all kind and everyone involved in moving goods, were often travelling and surprisingly mobile, as were the ruling class. Mind that this was before settled living became the standard model. (Which happened in continental Europe only in the 18th century.)
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    In fact you aren't allowed to leave the country if the state doesn't allow it. You equate two concepts together because the words are similar (lord and landlord) but that's childish. It's obvious a lord back in the is much closet to a governments then a landlord.
mustacheemperor 6y ago
A small castle was also an ideal location from which to terrorize and pillage the surrounding countryside, so not too unlike transacting safety for your store from the local mob.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Bit of both, I’m sure. I would also bet that if the peasants had a sufficiently thorough history, they would probably hate first peasants to have entered into serfdom for protection. While that might have seemed like a good idea right after the fall of Rome, it probably looked less good a few centuries later.
- bennysonething 6y ago
  Exactly, it was a protection racket. And like all protection brackets some people romanticize them (I've come across this view multiple time in my home town, Belfast, where paramilitaries have offered this "service" to small businesses). Also it's worth pointing out that literacy rates across Europe plummeted as the Roman empire fell apart. I read that even Charlemagne "struggled with his letters".
  - Bayart 6y ago
    Charlemagne struggled with writing the incredibly arcane Merovingian script [1]. That's the very reason he came up with the Carolingian script [2] the very print script you're reading this message with is descended from and the reason why he implemented school reforms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_script [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule
    - bennysonething 6y ago
      Ah well that's interesting, thanks.
- ummonk 6y ago
  Yup. To the point that guilds in the late Middle Ages started recruiting their own militias to protect their trade from "nobility" (i.e. thugs with castles).
watwut 6y ago
Peasant did not bound himself to castle. Peasant was bound to castle by whoever ruled the place and decided to assign this or that person to administer the land. Peasants did not had all that much say in that choice.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I didn’t say they bound themselves to a castle, I said they bound themselves to someone who could raise a castle. And I’m sure the first peasants had some choice. Later ones ... not so much.
  - killtimeatwork 6y ago
    At least in Poland, in the later centuries, it was pretty much slavery. Escaped peasants were hunted across the country. The punishments for escape were severe, and sometimes included mutilations which precluded the escapees from running but didn't hurt their farming abilities. Peasants weren't exactly property like for example in the US, but in practice were bought and sold with the land (number of people living on a land was a large part of valuation) and could be mistreated or killed with no legal recourse.
    - stereolambda 6y ago
      Not saying that peasants in Poland-Lithuania were in an enviable position, but this line of comparison is advanced by some popular non-historians: I'd say, to get some "cool" surface analogies to the US. Slavery would be more if there were an option of taking or leaving your peasants with property as you like. It's hard to imagine for the nobility to ignore the manpower in valuation. And there was still some actual slavery in Lithuania (small scale) and Russia, and also if you'd be kidnapped by Tatars and sold somewhere in the Ottoman Empire. The latter was a fairly common thing in some parts of the country. Peasants, as opposed to slaves, were integrated into the civil society, although on very disadvantageous terms. Even on private land, they had their own judicial "councils" (look up 'sąd dominialny'), of course entirely on the mercy of the lord in practice. (There was also the state/crown land with marginally better conditions.) All this didn't stray qualitatively from the broad Eastern European baseline. A Russian, Prussian or Hungarian noble wouldn't get punished for killing his peasant either, unless he'd seriously screw up his relations with the local regime. A French one pre-1789 would have to play his cards right. PLC got much flak in the period for peasant oppression because 1. it often didn't have raw political power to distract from it 2. there was the perceived hypocrisy in its political system, very loud about liberty, equality etc.
ajmadesc 6y ago
Safety from...other nobility.
pyrale 6y ago
> What the nobility had to offer peasants was safety. I believe the main offering was pain. Submission was a good way to avoid it, and peasants were not stupid enough to pass on it. On the other hand, our definition makes it look like the relation was consensual, and a good deal for everyone involved.
throwaway2245 6y ago
> What the nobility had to offer peasants was safety. The purpose of the article, as I read it, is to identify that this claim was written into history by the nobility.

remarkEon 6y ago

I don’t see how democracy is much different, to be quite honest. The same structures get set up (the state, instead of a Lord, provides security ... over time the state drags the “citizens” into new wars all the same). I suppose the difference is that in a democracy you at least have an illusion of influence on the state, whereas in a Feudalistic society everyone was quite honest about how the peasants had no or only limited influence at best.

tsimionescu 6y ago
This is ignoring all of the details. Feudal peasants were much closer to slaves than to citizens in a democracy. They had a duty to produce certain amounts of resources for the lord - often not a percentage like a tax, but a minimum amount due. In many places at many times, they were bound to the land - they were not allowed to move away from the village where they lived, definitely not to a different Lord's lands. As you also note, they had no power to influence decision making, and even if they did rise up, they were violently put down, by neighboring lords if they somehow were successful against their own. Not to mention, (modern) states offer much more than military security. They offer healthcare, food, care for the disabled, infrastructure, education, and many other services. And, especially in smaller nations or at local levels (think town, not US state), there is quite a lot of real democratic power, certainly incomparable to the realities of serfdom.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  > This is ignoring all of the details. Feudal peasants were much closer to slaves than to citizens in a democracy. I disagree. We overestimate the freedom we have and underestimate theirs. For example they had much more free time than we do today. We on the other hand are still "free" to choose where to work (as long as we aren't in poverty, which is unfortunately untrue for too many, with no prospect of future change), but the workplace is as undemocratic as it gets. Forget our (tech) golden workplaces. Most people spend 2/3 of their lives in authoritarian workplaces that they can't leave because they need their shit job to survive. Where is the practical difference with being a serf? Even in the west, most of us don't live a democracy, except for the minority of their time.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  Look, I’m not making an argument in favor of serfdom (far from it). I’m pointing out that many current iterations of democracy have become quite corrupt, so much so that the difference between it and feudalism is one measured on the margins (your details). Every couple days an article gets upvoted on this website that describes how the economies in (western) democracies have metastasized to the point where it’s participants are just cogs, working for a massive corporate enterprise that explicitly does not care about them, voting in elections about a government that quite often does the opposite of what is in their expressed interests, and/or are stuck in an infinite loop of debt-enabled credentialism. Okay yeah that’s not de jure feudalism. Inching closer and closer to de facto, though. Edit: to say this again, because apparently it’s needed. I am not in favor of feudalism.
  - mrmonkeyman 6y ago
    But still lightyears off. You are dramatizing our priviledged existence. Billions (literal) would offer their firstborn son to be "cogs" working a "massive corporate enterprise". What you are describing is the good part of modern life, I suggest you don't look at the bad parts if this already disturbs your soul.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    I didn't take your comments as being in favor of feudalism, I took it as being a bit too cynical of modern states. The clarifications in your new comment make it clearer that you are more talking about a direction, not saying we already live in neo-feudalism, and I agree with you completely that it is something we're inching towards.
ashtonkem 6y ago
If you’ve left your town without your landlords permission, you enjoy a freedom that medieval peasants didn’t have. If your apartment changed hands without you suddenly becoming someone’s property, you’ve enjoyed a freedom peasants didn’t have. If you’ve been involved in a legal process that wasn’t adjudicated by your land lord then you’ve enjoyed a freedom peasants didn’t have. I can’t believe I need to explain this, but democracy is nothing like feudalism.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  Do you think I’m making an argument in favor of feudalism? I’m sorry that pointing out that our current structures of government aren’t exactly performing at their presumed capacity is a troubling idea.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    You’re getting downvoted because our current system of government, no matter how flawed, is very different from feudalism. The comparison is poor for all the reasons I listed and more. There are better ways to critique our current system without such hamfisted comparisons.
- masswerk 6y ago
  Actually, most parts of medieval society were astoundingly mobile. Not everyone was tenant or serf, many, as in the trades and crafts, workers of all kind and everyone involved in moving goods, were often travelling and surprisingly mobile, as were the ruling class. Mind that this was before settled living became the standard model. (Which happened in continental Europe only in the 18th century.)
- rowanG077 6y ago
  In fact you aren't allowed to leave the country if the state doesn't allow it. You equate two concepts together because the words are similar (lord and landlord) but that's childish. It's obvious a lord back in the is much closet to a governments then a landlord.

mustacheemperor 6y ago

A small castle was also an ideal location from which to terrorize and pillage the surrounding countryside, so not too unlike transacting safety for your store from the local mob.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Bit of both, I’m sure. I would also bet that if the peasants had a sufficiently thorough history, they would probably hate first peasants to have entered into serfdom for protection. While that might have seemed like a good idea right after the fall of Rome, it probably looked less good a few centuries later.
bennysonething 6y ago
Exactly, it was a protection racket. And like all protection brackets some people romanticize them (I've come across this view multiple time in my home town, Belfast, where paramilitaries have offered this "service" to small businesses). Also it's worth pointing out that literacy rates across Europe plummeted as the Roman empire fell apart. I read that even Charlemagne "struggled with his letters".
- Bayart 6y ago
  Charlemagne struggled with writing the incredibly arcane Merovingian script [1]. That's the very reason he came up with the Carolingian script [2] the very print script you're reading this message with is descended from and the reason why he implemented school reforms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_script [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule
  - bennysonething 6y ago
    Ah well that's interesting, thanks.
ummonk 6y ago
Yup. To the point that guilds in the late Middle Ages started recruiting their own militias to protect their trade from "nobility" (i.e. thugs with castles).

watwut 6y ago

Peasant did not bound himself to castle. Peasant was bound to castle by whoever ruled the place and decided to assign this or that person to administer the land. Peasants did not had all that much say in that choice.

ashtonkem 6y ago
I didn’t say they bound themselves to a castle, I said they bound themselves to someone who could raise a castle. And I’m sure the first peasants had some choice. Later ones ... not so much.
- killtimeatwork 6y ago
  At least in Poland, in the later centuries, it was pretty much slavery. Escaped peasants were hunted across the country. The punishments for escape were severe, and sometimes included mutilations which precluded the escapees from running but didn't hurt their farming abilities. Peasants weren't exactly property like for example in the US, but in practice were bought and sold with the land (number of people living on a land was a large part of valuation) and could be mistreated or killed with no legal recourse.
  - stereolambda 6y ago
    Not saying that peasants in Poland-Lithuania were in an enviable position, but this line of comparison is advanced by some popular non-historians: I'd say, to get some "cool" surface analogies to the US. Slavery would be more if there were an option of taking or leaving your peasants with property as you like. It's hard to imagine for the nobility to ignore the manpower in valuation. And there was still some actual slavery in Lithuania (small scale) and Russia, and also if you'd be kidnapped by Tatars and sold somewhere in the Ottoman Empire. The latter was a fairly common thing in some parts of the country. Peasants, as opposed to slaves, were integrated into the civil society, although on very disadvantageous terms. Even on private land, they had their own judicial "councils" (look up 'sąd dominialny'), of course entirely on the mercy of the lord in practice. (There was also the state/crown land with marginally better conditions.) All this didn't stray qualitatively from the broad Eastern European baseline. A Russian, Prussian or Hungarian noble wouldn't get punished for killing his peasant either, unless he'd seriously screw up his relations with the local regime. A French one pre-1789 would have to play his cards right. PLC got much flak in the period for peasant oppression because 1. it often didn't have raw political power to distract from it 2. there was the perceived hypocrisy in its political system, very loud about liberty, equality etc.

ajmadesc 6y ago

Safety from...other nobility.

pyrale 6y ago

> What the nobility had to offer peasants was safety. I believe the main offering was pain. Submission was a good way to avoid it, and peasants were not stupid enough to pass on it. On the other hand, our definition makes it look like the relation was consensual, and a good deal for everyone involved.

throwaway2245 6y ago

> What the nobility had to offer peasants was safety. The purpose of the article, as I read it, is to identify that this claim was written into history by the nobility.