Transitioning out of Feudalism

[SigniferOne]

"A priori" is a philosophical concept which has no place in history. A priori can be the transcendental ground of experience only.
In history we cant have a priori statements, as everything we know is a posteriori.

You take 'a priori' too strictly. I use it here only to mean something inherent. For instance, there is nothing inherent in fifedom that requires serfdom. Similarly there is nothing inherent in serfdom that requires fiefdom or fractured sovereignty (see Russia). A priori (intrinsically), those two concepts are separate and we can apply one without having to apply the other. Country A could have serfs but strong central authority, while Country B could have many vassals and lords but no serfdom. Since both of those terms describe aspects of feudal society, we would call both Country A and Country B partially feudal. Do you have issue with that statement?

In Russia the land was in the hands of the nobility, the boyars. In theory, the Czar was the owner of all land (if Im right in my memory) but in paractice the nobility owned the land and the peasents.

Yes but the Boyars never claimed separate sovereignty. That's the point of calling 19th century Russia a partially feudal society.

[Ludicus]

“..Fiefs and vassalage, as they are generally defined by medieval his­torians today, are post-medieval constructs, though rather earlier than the construct of feudalism. Historians often refer to both fiefs and vassals when neither word is in their sources. They sometimes refer to them in ways that, irrespective of terminology, seem to me to distort the relations of property and politics that the sources record.Even when the historians follow the terminology of their documents and take pains to establish the phenomena recorded, they tend to fit their findings into a framework of interpretation that was devised in the sixteenth century and elaborated in the seventeenth and eighteenth. Learned as were the scholars of those times and much as we owe to them, they knew less than we know about the middle ages and much less about the differing ways that societies may be organized. We cannot understand medieval society and its property relations if we see it through seventeenth- or eighteenth-century spec­tacles. Yet every time we think of fiefs and vassals we do just that.

...the evidence I have found does not suggest that the rela­tion between rulers and nobles in the later middle ages had evolved out of that between early medieval war-leaders and their followers in the way that accounts of non-Marxist feudalism suggest. They did not start from the 'personal' vassalage of the war-band and then become 'territorialized' through the grant of fiefs. Nor did fiefs then gradually become hereditary while obligations to military service, aid, counsel, and so on remained attached to them. The idea of this development derives ultimately from a small piece of conjectural history put forward in the early twelfth century by one of the Lombard lawyers whose little treatises were soon after com­bined into the Libri Feudorum”

Susan Reynolds,Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted

"The assumptions the legal scholars made in the 16th century concerning the Libri Feudorum were completely wrong: The Libri Feudorum was not addressing actual legal practices of the 11th century, but was simply expounding on an academic concept; and the explanation of the origins of fiefs contained in the Libri Feudorum (concerning an initially limited use of lands that was later extended) was not a reliable history, but was little more than conjecture.
The conclusions that Cujas and Hotman had drawn from the Libri Feudorum were therefore inaccurate. Actual "feudal" relationships were few and far between, because most grants of land were not based on an agreement of military service. Some were bestowed as rewards for past service, or as payment for continued or future service without the specific oaths of fidelity or any understanding that the land was held on condition of service to the lord. The land didn't necessarily belong to nobles to begin with; the authority of a nobleman might have come into play in confirming that the free man had the right to occupy the land, but that didn't mean the nobleman or the king owned it. It wasn't at all uncommon for the land to be owned outright by a free man or knight.

Furthermore, vassalage was not a common relationship. Oaths of fidelity did take place, but the holding of the land by the free man was not necessarily contingent upon his upholding that oath to a lord. And society was by no means dependent on feudal relationships for stability; even when the monarch was weak, there was an expectation that all men were subject to the king and should therefore follow the king's laws. Historians were already aware that the general perception of lawless noblemen and renegade knights holding sway over a fearful populace in their accumulation of personal power was yet another myth about medieval times. But it wasn't the feudal relationship that kept lawlessness to a minimum; it was respect for the monarchy and rule of law.

The feudalism model was popular because it simplified medieval society. But medieval society wasn't really simple. The more historians have learned over the last century, the clearer this has become. In the Middle Ages society wasn't as rigid as it was once believed; there was such a thing as social mobility; women had more power and rights than was originally deduced from reading sources written by monastics who rarely saw any women, let alone interacted with them; The charming triangle of "those who fought, those who prayed, and those who worked," which was actually devised as a description of society during the Middle Ages, does not take into account a wide variety of people who lived in and contributed to medieval communities. And fighting men were not limited to knights who swore fealty to their lords and received land in return; there were paid mercenaries, archers, miners, foot-soldiers, and a host of other types of combatants who participated in the fierce and frightening conflicts of medieval battles under a variety of conditions.

There may yet be reason to hope, as Elizabeth Brown(1) put it, "that, with a resounding whoop, historians [will] join together, following the example of the National Assembly, to annihilate the feudal regime . . ." With fresh scholarship to incorporate in new publications, it may be possible to get the word out to other historians, as well as non-academics. Then, maybe someday, medievalists can stop sighing at the mention of the F-word, and there'll be no need to repeat the refrain that there was no such thing as feudalism."

Melissa Snell
(1) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., "The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe"

[Odovacar]

Hmm..it would be good to see more details. alas I dont have the book but I hope this is not another "world shattering" attempt to revolutionarize something which dont need it at the first place.

Feudalism as an idea was not solely built on vassalage, so I dont see any reason to discard the term.

Our historians here in Hungary never cared lombard jurists and french feudalism concept, they simply deal with diploms.
Indeed fiefs were granted mostly as rewards for a past military service, but the receiver was expected to aid the king in war.
Some of the fiefs could be owned by citizens but even they had milkitary service.

Also I dont think 20th century historians ever believed only knights fought in wars or only nobles.

even when the monarch was weak, there was an expectation that all men were subject to the king and should therefore follow the king's laws.

I dont clearly understand this..if the king was weak generally inner turmoils could happen. That doesnt mean everyone rebelled, of course.
Most frequently however, weak kings were not obeyed by their nobles. In other times the leading nobles had no intent to make calamities, then it was relatively calm in the realm.

Also the claim that women had more power than we thought is ridiculous since we never thought women were slaves, deprived of any right,especially baronesses, to beging with....