History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VI

Oh no, feudalism is discussed again. It's 3rd time probably, over the last few years.

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I have a new issue to mention - how arbitrary can sometimes archaeology be ("this ancient pot is ours and is superior to your pot").

Here is a nice passage on how nationalist and racist attitudes, which were changing over time, affected theories of Romanian archaeology:

[Note: Nestor mentioned in this text is not a Medieval Russian chronicler, but a 20th century Romanian archaeologist]:



Of course Romanian archaeology is just an example. Similar tendencies could be found in all other European archaeologies in the 20th century.

Early Slavs were so far attributed all levels of militarization: they were described by some as unarmed farmers, peacefully colonizing half of Europe, by others as primtive but still dangerous savage barbarian warriors devastating everything on their way (that's actually how ancient written sources describe Slavic invasion of the Balkans; but later various scholars tended to question that, claiming that Slavs only settled as unarmed subjects of Avars, etc.).

Other scholars of course adopted various intermediate levels of militarization between "none" and "extreme", as mentioned above.

Slavic expansion is one of the greatest mysteries in European history because every branch of science tends to explain their origins differently.

Some people even tend to ignore the linguistic aspect of the ethnogenesis of Slavs (Florin Curta recently), but it's rather a wrong path to follow. A lannguage is a language and it cannot emerge just like that over vast territory, without any migrations (that's what Curta seems to assume,).

From linguistic evidence it seems that the original homeland of Late Common Slavic speakers was Belarus, but archaeology points to Ukraine along the Dnieper. On the other hand, genetics point to Central Europe (according to some at least). History records them at the Danube River first.

20th century ideas about Slavic inferiority to Germanic, Romance & Greek peoples also influenced studies on the Slavic origin and expansion by Non-Slavic scholars. One example is precisely Romania, where at one point cremation burials were seen as evidence of Slavic presence, and at another point as evidence of returning by locals to Pagan rituals from times before Roman conquest of Dacia. At one point Slavs were seen as the ruling class over native Romano-Dacians, at another point as savages who migrated to Balkan territory and became the lower class, learning civilization from Romano-Dacians (Vlachs). Etc.

Flying Pig said:

I think it's more the 'feudal system', which carries the implication that there was something systematic and uniform uniting all of the various 'feudal' arrangements and societies. By the time you take into account all of the potential differences within 'feudalism', the word simply comes to mean 'systems which existed in the Middle Ages', which is quite useless.

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To add to it, there are people like Susan Reynolds who reject feodum (and with it, most of our understanding of fief in the Middle Ages) and not just "feudalism" or "feudal system." Even some of the less ambitious uses of the term are problematic. While they may have existed and the evidence can be made to fit with them, there's also no positive evidence. If we started fresh today, it wouldn't be a logical thing to create out of the evidence (it's only misunderstandings and historical inertia that led to what we have).

That's one reason to be careful. When Feudalism just means a relatively ineffective central authority (usually in France. In England there was a strong central authority. In Germany, there were points of strong authority and points of weak authority. And nobody wants to pretend Italy makes any sense in this narrative) you have to be extremely careful. My point was just that fighting for "feudal bonds" isn't dramatically different from fighting because your King commands it unless the arrangement was because the King explicitly gave you land as a condition for your service in the future (for which there's almost no evidence of). Another way to think of it is "If you reject the Feudal Pyramid does "feudalism" still add anything to the discussion?"

Western scholars argue that feudalism is an exclusively "western" thing.

English scholars argue that English feudalism was superior to continental "western", like German, French.

Polish scholars argue that there was feudalism in Medieval Poland but of a bit different type than in France & Germany.

Russian scholars argue that there was a type of feudalism in Russia and it was superior to western (for example level of literacy in Kievan Rus was high).

Some scholars argue that feudalism did not exist but various distinct things were lumped together and called "feudalism" by 19th century historians.

Louis XXIV said:

To add to it, there are people like Susan Reynolds who reject feodum (and with it, most of our understanding of fief in the Middle Ages) and not just "feudalism" or "feudal system." Even some of the less ambitious uses of the term are problematic. While they may have existed and the evidence can be made to fit with them, there's also no positive evidence. If we started fresh today, it wouldn't be a logical thing to create out of the evidence (it's only misunderstandings and historical inertia that led to what we have).

That's one reason to be careful. When Feudalism just means a relatively ineffective central authority (usually in France. In England there was a strong central authority. In Germany, there were points of strong authority and points of weak authority. And nobody wants to pretend Italy makes any sense in this narrative) you have to be extremely careful. My point was just that fighting for "feudal bonds" isn't dramatically different from fighting because your King commands it unless the arrangement was because the King explicitly gave you land as a condition for your service in the future (for which there's almost no evidence of). Another way to think of it is "If you reject the Feudal Pyramid does "feudalism" still add anything to the discussion?"

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I would say that perhaps ideology is the defining factor at work. That is, a society which ritualises and emphasises through cultural practice the 'rightness' of the relationship between king and subject is fundamentally different to one in which it is presented entirely as a matter of power and force. Put another way, when knights are told that fighting for the king makes them better people, listen to stories in which their role models are heroically obedient and display the virtues of good servants and have elaborate ceremonies connecting their subordinate relationship with greater prestige, while peasants are told that failing to pay their taxes and follow orders is a break with divinely-imposed morality - then there's a case for an entrenched ideology which makes that society something more than a naked relationship in which weaker people fight for stronger people for the rewards or threat of sanctions.

I think that's true, but it's also a spectrum and it's somewhat difficult to say for certain which side of the spectrum the medieval world falls on. What's clear is the King had power often only for the reasons you described. The King could call on authority because he was the King. However, the King's authority (particularly in the Ban in northern France) was sometimes quite weak. In those cases, the King did basically call on people through a system of rewards or, more importantly, a threat of sanctions.

But the important thing to keep in mind is this system (to the sense there was any real order to a chaotic time), royal authority, etc., was not tied to land. No one owed loyalty to the King because of the land they owned (or, as the theory goes, didn't own but held in Fief). They owed loyalty to the King because he was the King but, sometimes, they didn't view that loyalty as anything more than theoretical unless the King had the resources to back it up.

Ideology works on more levels than nobility and royalty, though. Hierarchy was reinforced at all levels, notably through the church but also through the more general workings of culture, which justified the rule of the nobility through presenting it as ultimately good for the governed. You see this often in local festivals, especially those ones in which aristocrats are seen to provide for their inferiors, but also those such as the cricket games of later days in which everyone is put on (excuse the pun) a level playing field. Those act as a kind of pressure release, allowing people to break convention in a 'fun' way and in doing so making the hierarchy seem less rigid and oppressive. One might argue that attending a joust and cheering on the challenger who unhorses one's lord might fulfil the same function.

Yep, that is all true and very interesting. Although the excesses that people go to when they get to break convention makes me think things must have felt really bad other times.

Why was the unemployment in France during the Great Depression much lower in comparison to other European countries and the USA?

Got any good what ifs for Justinian III or other late Roman Empire emperors?

I was thinking...what if Justinian was a consensus builder instead of power hungry. If he avoided provoking his own assassination, as a unifying leader, would it be unreasonable for the Western Empire to eke on? It seems to me that by his in-fighting for total control, he set in motion political chaos that only sunk all chances of Western Rome surviving.

He also managed to bankrupt the Empire, which led to the collapse of the northern border to the slavic tribes.

I have read people claim (never read stuff on Justinian) that any success was down to other notables around him (eg Belisarios, Theodora etc).

He did have Anthemios and Isidoros build the plan (and carry it out) for the Hagia Sophia, though.

Shacassanach said:

Got any good what ifs for Justinian III or other late Roman Empire emperors?

I was thinking...what if Justinian was a consensus builder instead of power hungry. If he avoided provoking his own assassination, as a unifying leader, would it be unreasonable for the Western Empire to eke on? It seems to me that by his in-fighting for total control, he set in motion political chaos that only sunk all chances of Western Rome surviving.

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I've never heard the claim that the West fell because of Eastern intrigue. Shall we add it to the list?

It's not that unreasonable. The Theodosians did make a number of interventions in the West. Theodosius did twice, first against Magnus Maximus and then against Arbogastes and Eugenius both of which involved major battles against the Western field armies. Frigidus in particular seems to have caused serious harm to the Western armies. The tension between Stilico and Rufinus also caused at least one mini-civil war when Gildo the Prefect of Africa revolted and tried to over to the East. It also distracted Stilico who spent a lot of time planning to invade the East and denied the West reinforcements that might have been put to good use. I'm not sure if Eastern plotting was worse than Western plotting, I suspect not, but the friction between the two halves did contribute to the West's collapse.

As Dachs has tirelessly pointed out, the West didn't collapse as a result of any particular military defeat. It is indeed highly improbable that a single cause resulted in the 'fall' of the West.

Yeah, I know that. But as a mono-casual explanation it isn't a particularly bad one nor frankly is it the first time I've heard it invoked.

Tolni said:

Why was the unemployment in France during the Great Depression much lower in comparison to other European countries and the USA?

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It wasn't, in relative terms. France was late to be hit by the Depression, thanks in large part to their suspicion of Anglo-Saxon economics; the French economy had few large companies and trusts and people didn't usually invest in the stock market. There wasn't the situation as in America where ordinary people had bought shares and invested a great deal in them. True, French unemployment was low in absolute terms, but it rose suddenly from 13,000 in 1930 to 64,000 in 1931 and over 300,000 in 1932, out of a population of 41 million. British unemployment 'only' increased by 129% - though this was much greater in industrial areas - and German unemployment increased from about 6% to about 30% between 1928 and 1932 - about the same level of increase as that of the USA. It is true, though, that France had much fuller employment throughout the period than these other countries, but that was largely due to the result of the war. 1,300,000 Frenchmen died in the war, and a further 3 million were wounded, both of which disproportionately included young men - precisely the people who should have been doing the work, and also lowering the birth rate from 1918 onwards. So there was a shortage of workers to begin with - the opposite of the usual state of affairs in Britain or the USA.

Flying Pig said:

It wasn't, in relative terms. France was late to be hit by the Depression, thanks in large part to their suspicion of Anglo-Saxon economics; the French economy had few large companies and trusts and people didn't usually invest in the stock market. There wasn't the situation as in America where ordinary people had bought shares and invested a great deal in them. True, French unemployment was low in absolute terms, but it rose suddenly from 13,000 in 1930 to 64,000 in 1931 and over 300,000 in 1932, out of a population of 41 million. British unemployment 'only' increased by 129% - though this was much greater in industrial areas - and German unemployment increased from about 6% to about 30% between 1928 and 1932 - about the same level of increase as that of the USA. It is true, though, that France had much fuller employment throughout the period than these other countries, but that was largely due to the result of the war. 1,300,000 Frenchmen died in the war, and a further 3 million were wounded, both of which disproportionately included young men - precisely the people who should have been doing the work, and also lowering the birth rate from 1918 onwards. So there was a shortage of workers to begin with - the opposite of the usual state of affairs in Britain or the USA.

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How is it humanly possible to regurgitate information like this for a forum post?

He was around the first time it happened.






please don't hurt me, sir

Cheezy the Wiz said:

He was around the first time it happened.






please don't hurt me, sir

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Sometimes I really, really wish CFC had a 'like' button!

Anyway, on the topic: it's been suggested that France was a major contributor to the severity of the Great Depression because of the government's policy of hoarding gold. In a gold-standard world this was a highly deflationary policy when the world was already undergoing a severe credit crunch.

Research: http://m.nber.org//papers/w16350
Pop version: http://www.voxeu.org/article/did-france-cause-great-depression

I can't immediately think of a story that links it to French unemployment though. Partly because I'm just not used to thinking in a fixed-exchange-rate world.

Indeed - though it wasn't just the French who did it, I don't think. They also took a long time to devalue the Franc, which other countries had done to limit the damage, and which did help when France eventually followed suit.