History Paper
Aanand
HISTLEC5.pptFeudal Europe, 12th-14th Centuries
- Description of Europe, circa 1200-1400
Europe: small peninsula stuck on western end of Eurasian landmass
“Feudal,” a loaded term; legal term first used in 17th century
Europeans didn’t use t/term
Used by historians
Term of abuse: “feudal” = backward
Two definitions of feudalism:
1) technical definition: nature of relations b/t a great lord & his vassal
2) broad definition = nature of European society
We’ll go w/broad definition
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Marxist definition of “feudalism”
“Mode of production”
“mode of production” refers to
1) production & reproduction of society/individuals
Talking about the ECONOMY
Economy sorts people into groups,
“classes” = relationship to t/economy
1) Different classes = different life chances/ opportunities
2) Also refers to relations b/t classes
A little abstract right now—but will b/c clearer as we move along
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Feudal Europe
Agrarian economy
“Peasants” 85% population
Subsist growing crops, raising animals
Agriculture = food & basic items for industry: wool, leather
Peasants produce
Practiced subsistence agriculture (Delbert the peasant)
Great Lords = dominant class
Lords intervene, take % of what peasants produce
How? Use non-economic means
“Extra-economic coercion”
Exercise of political authority backed by threat of violence
Monopoly over exercise of legitimate violence
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Peasants (not pheasants)
There are a lot of them
Circa 1300 C.E. make up 85% of population in Europe
7-9% of population lives in cities, rest of Europe’s population were “lords”
Peasants practice European “polyculture”
Grains comprised basis of peasant diet: bread & porridge
Other crops: grapes, olives, fruits, nuts (Med.)
Large role for animal husbandry
Source of food, energy, & manure for fields (fertilizer)
Peasants were “subsistence farmers,” i.e., grew just enough to survive from one growing/planting season to next
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Goal of peasantry: Survival
Not little capitalists maximizing profit at market
Peasants in effective possession of land
Don’t own it
Great lord did or perhaps the church
Peasants paid dues, rents land is theirs
Pass it on to heirs
Family: basic unit of economic production
All labor (w/few exceptions) provided by family
Labor organized according to “appropriate roles”
Not organized according to “rational” economic scheme)
Families consume what they produce, divided in accord w/norms—parents, siblings, etc.
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What peasant families don’t consume is 1) set aside for next planting season 2) set aside for animals (must be healthy to breed/reproduce) 3) taken by lords as rents/dues/fees
Regional differences in agriculture (North/South & East/West)
Mediterranean Europe: climate arid, dry: when it does rain, it’s in the winter
Peasants develop variety of strategies/adaptations
Plow: basic tool for agriculture—plows used to sow seed, aerate t/soil, turn over wild grasses/weeds, etc.
In Mediterranean major problem—loss of moisture if soil turned over too much
Use very small plow—really a large, sharp stick that barely scratches t/surface of t/soil
Plows pulled by donkey, cow, horse, even a wife
Med. agriculture very diverse (new plants usually entered Europe thru Med.)
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Ingenious irrigation networks, terracing of fields, etc. to squeeze as much as possible out of land
Northern European agriculture
Problem one of excess moisture
Peasants develop heavy plow, w/iron tip hafted onto it
Pulled by 6-8 oxen—used to create ridges/furrows, so crops won’t drown
Peasants in N. Europe grow smaller # of crops; but return on labor input much greater than in S. Europe
Peasant villages
Two forms of village organization in Europe
1) open-field or common-field villages: fairly large, 250-750 people
Villages nucleated settlement—huts clustered together around single street (w/church, well, village square in t/middle)
Surrounding t/village were open or common fields (hence the name)
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Three open fields surrounding t/village
Peasant plots scattered in all 3 fields (equal allotments)
Communal regulation of agriculture: no agricultural individualism
What is planted & when it is planted determined by village as a whole
Fall—plant winter wheat—spring plant faster growing grain, like barley—leave 3rd field fallow (grazing land)
After harvest rotate the open fields
Village structure
Elaborate infrastructure; village court & village elders
Change, innovation very difficult in this system
Woodland or Pastureland Village
Small, scattered settlements
Tendency to keep one’s holdings clustered together
No communal regulation of agriculture
@one free to do as they wish; weak village organization
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Nature of peasant existence
Peasants don’t live in a happy, egalitarian paradise
They work very, very hard
Support elites (church & great lords)
Peasants aren’t economic entrepreneurs, neither are great lords
Lords let peasants produce
Lords employ monopoly of violence to pump surplus out of peasants on their lands
Key to understanding relations b/t lords & peasants is how lords extract surplus
Process known as “extra-economic coercion”
Lordship has two aspects: 1) lord is lord over his land; peasants are tenants; pay rent/dues/fees to work t/land
Rents, etc., are fixed & inalterable (in most places)
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Lords are lords over other men—real key to lordship
Political rulers (no modern “state” as of yet)
Lords have authority we associate w/modern state
Nature of Lordly powers
can be very great & irritating to peasants
Rights of justice—establish courts, hear pleas, issue fines & fees
Right to put people to death
Right to issue fines on quality of wine/beer
Very lucrative rights
Lords TAX too—tolls on goods sold at market; tax people passing thru their land
Compulsory monopolies: known as “banalités”—wine presses, production of beer, oven for bread, bulls, etc.
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Banalités = discontent, anger among peasants
Political rights = lords extract (take) surplus out of peasant economy = lords dominate society
Rights regarded as “private property,” family possession
Historians refer to this as the “parcellization of sovereignty”
Relations among/between great lords
850-1000 C.E.—no dominant centralized political authority
Period of near “anarchy,” “bellum omnium contre omnes”
Lords fighting one another for control over peasants—over time lords regulate relations thru series of personal, one to one agreements—eventually institutionalized in t/form of “lordship & vassalage”
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Lord-vassal relations: formal, life-long personal tie between one lord & a lesser lord
Vassal owed military service—in return received a “service tenement” known as a “fief”—land & peasants
By 1200 C.E. lord-vassal system antiquated—new forms of power emerging
Beginning of the rise of the state
1200 C.E. some important kingdoms in Europe
Offer advantages to great lords:
1) king offers way to settle conflicts non-violently
2) they have resources to keep peasants in line (coercion)
3) king’s power offers counter-balance to growing influence of towns/cities (which have re-emerged after 1000 C.E.)
Don’t exaggerate their power
Not modern states—no monopoly over exercise of violence; small amateurish bureaucracies, etc.
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Lords ambivalent about rise of centralized monarchies
Long run helps lords as a class
Royal power = lords surrender their powers & revenues (painful, frightening prospect for most lords)
Re-emergence of towns/cities
From 300-1000 C.E. almost no cities in Europe
Urban life re-appears after 1000 C.E.—by 1200-1300 C.E. roughly 1000 towns/cities of importance in Europe
Cities different from cities of Roman Empire
Roman towns = administrative, religious centers
Medieval towns too—but also commercial centers
Play important role in society
Historians used to see towns as alien body in feudal society (not anymore, however)
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Cities & lords mutually dependent
Towns drew food supply from countryside (which the lords dominate)
Lords use cities for specialty items: weapons, armor, post-1250 C.E. guns, luxury items—silks, spices, rare objects of all sorts
Great lords = to live splendidly
Give gifts to your followers (which can only be had in towns/cities)
Not even peasants produce @thing they need—special tools, iron, etc., can only be acquired by merchants
Cities grow, prosper
Source of revenue for lords lucky to control them
Source of loans for kings, great lords
Cities provide militias, armies, etc.
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Kings foster towns whenever they can
Crucial to European political expansion
Planting towns (English in Wales & Ireland; Germans push into Slavic lands; Spanish Christians during Reconquista)
Towns places where merchants/artisans produce & trade goods/services
1200 CE very large towns by European standards
Venice, Florence ca. 100 thousand; London, Toulouse (in France, 40 thousand)
Merchants created far-flung trading networks—especially Venice, Genoa, Pisa
Venetian trade almost dominant by 13th century= trading posts, naval stations, supply depots
Genoese/Venetians in Crimea in Black Sea
New types of ships—use of lateen & square sails
The Arsenal—shipbuilding center in Venice
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Arsenal produced galleys for regular, government-sponsored trade convoys in Mediterranean
Legal & organization front (several developments)
Italian merchants develop companies to conduct business thru out Europe & E. Med.
Introduce various legal forms—letters of credit, bills of exchange, double-entry bookkeeping, etc. to facilitate trade/commerce
1200 CE—international banking houses emerging (family owned, operated); make loans to the church, kings, princes, etc.
Towns enjoy a lot of political independence
Had emerged during period of fragmented political authority (1000-1200 CE); carved out great deal of freedom
Italy had true “city republics,” some conquered outlying lands (like Venice—exception, not the rule)
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Elsewhere towns/cities acknowledge power of lords, kings but make their own laws, elect magistrates, have their own courts
12th-14th c., great deal of social differentiation emerging (small group of wealthy families, semi-proletariat mass of wage laborers—great deal of political strife, upheaval)
Catholic Church, ca. 1200
Only universal institution in Europe
Also only compulsory institution
Entire population of Europe (save for t/Jews) from the Atlantic to Russian border is Catholic
1200 CE: Church headed by pope in Rome—taking a dim view of “other” Christians
Some Jews, not very many though, tolerated but disadvantaged
Small Muslims communities in Spain/Italy
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Enter t/church w/infant baptism
Tie in society than cannot be renounced
To abandon Christianity is to be an apostate (@one who rejects previous belief)—punishable by death
Some churchmen are great lords: abbots, bishops, cardinals
Administrators of the church & in charge of large estates
These churchmen like secular princes—control estates, have large #s of peasants, hold courts, raise taxes, build castles, raise armies, wage war
Church dominates culture (elite)
Churchmen = educated, literate elite
Institutions of high culture, universities: prepare for church careers
Churchmen produce ideology explaining, justifying the world
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@thing is the way it is because God willed it that way
Human society divinely instituted
Before Adam & Eve & original sin—there was no political society, no classes, no property, just paradise
But stain of original sin passed on to all their descendants (@one) & political society & property came into existence
Political society: one and same time punishment from God for original sin, and a corrective for it
Society God has willed into existence is organic, corporate whole
@one has a purpose designed by God
Society likened to a “body,” w/the pope or HRE at its head; clergy is the soul of the body; nobles are the arms that defend the body; peasants are its legs, feet
@one believes kings are divinely ordained; made kings in religious ceremony like bishops
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This is the Europe that the Mongols will indirectly influence
Medieval Europe a society also on verge of a horrible, frightful crisis, ca. 1300 CE
Crisis that made medieval people think of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—famine, disease, war, death
For 150 years—plague, famine, war, & death would be let loose in this world—and perhaps, just perhaps the Mongols had something to do with it.
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