Hey, I care very strongly about the existence of all monarchies. They should all be destroyed.
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On "feudalism"
- Thread starter LightSpectra
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LightSpectra
me autem minui
I as well. The hierarchy should end at one's liege lord.
ParkCungHee said:
Almost every conceptual framework in Southeast Asia is premised on an (accurate) belief that the region was unlike Europe. The problem is that most of the supposed differences are based on views of How Europe Worked that have been dead academic ink for decades. I've seen, for instance, authors use the example of the growth of the dynatoi in the Eastern Empire as evidence of a general European movement towards feudalism. This is seemingly made in ignorance because the literature has long since moved away from that belief.
I would have expected a Papist to favour a theocracy.
I didn't realise I'd made so many posts like that. There are certainly other political things I care about more, but I suppose they just haven't come up, because I don't normally post about politics here very much.
But in answer to your question, yes, I do have significant negative sentiment towards constitutional monarchies, which I believe to be basically immoral. Right now, though, I'm particularly worked up about it after a conversation with my boss on the subject a couple of weeks ago, when he defended the monarchy on the basis that the Queen genuinely wields power and acts as a check on parliament, and that it's right that Prince Philip and Charles have - not "power", but "influence", as if that were preferable - because they do such a marvellous job and are so good at it.
That creeped me out more than anything I've heard in a long while, partly because it's so obviously a bad argument, which always annoys me whatever the topic, and partly because if it's actually true then our monarchy isn't merely ceremonial at all, which is appalling; so it's just possible I've become a bit more outspokenly republican in reaction to it.
Anyway, I apologise for derailing the thread. I'll give myself a warning directly and suggest that we all stick to the topic now.
Nick Carpathia
Unleash the HAARP
Mark my words. People only like Liz because she's old and like your grandma. The moment she karks it, they're going to kick Charles' ass out.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
I didn't think any blanket statements about "European feudalism" existed outside of middle school history textbooks and History Channel specials, certainly not to the extent of claiming that all parts of Europe had precisely identical feudal experiences. I've always understood it as a blanket term for the decentralized system that arose in the post-Roman vacuum of Western Europe. Who, exactly, claims that it was identical, or close enough to identical to warrant this sort of angry denunciation? I didn't get this message from the parts of the historians cited in the OP.
I also feel obliged to address the Marxist part at the end. Dialectical materialism doesn't really hinge on the specifics of feudalism; it could be English "bastard feudalism," the Lombard type your OP's quote mentions, or Byzantine pronoiai, the point is that it represents a period of more or less barter economies and decentralized political vassalage built upon service to paternal superiors, which together roughly yielded power to bourgeois interests over many centuries. Anyone who pretends it to be a linear, progressive path of all human history (a mistake I myself have made at times in vain attempts to avoid both complexity and oversimplification) is really behaving in a more whiggish nature than a Marxist one, since Marx never makes such a progressive claim about pre-capitalist history.
The rest of the post I agree with. I'm just puzzled as to why it's presented in an angry rebuttal style instead of simply an informative one.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Which is horribly simplistic at best and (more accurately) grossly inaccurate at worst. Did you see the link I posted?
That seems to me to be a misreading of what pronoiai were. It's hard to nail down, because apparently the meaning changed at some point in the eleventh century, but the classic pronoia was just an allotment of state revenue explicitly tied to a certain property that was entrusted to somebody, usually an individual, in exchange for something, but that something was usually the provision of well-armed military service at the behest of the imperial government. There were military pronoiai and other kinds, tied to monasteries or civic organizations and so on. Neither barter nor vassalage describes that at all.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
No I did not. I'll go back and read it.
EDIT: Okay, I read it. I very much appreciated that the author of that article really summed up my feelings about things himself:
"Perhaps most significantly, no one had presented a reasonable model or explanation to use in place of feudalism. Some historians and authors felt they had to provide their readers with a handle by which to grasp the general ideas of medieval government and society. If not feudalism, then what?"
All I keep hearing is "the present popular model of Feudalism is wrong!" But no one can tell me what is right, and prove it.
And finally, if there was no such thing as feudalism, then what did the French Revolution in 1789, Prussia in 1807, Austria in 1848, and Russia in 1861 abolish?
Barter certainly not, within much of the Imperial economy. But my understanding was that the Pronoiai were introduced as a way to buttress dwindling number of imperial troops, such as were presently supplied only through Tagmata, and that they were roughly based upon a land-grant system similar to other parts of Europe, such that recipient land lords became responsible for raising troops on behalf of the crown in a manner somewhat similar to feudal military service obligations.
Actually, after reading through both that thread AND your link, I still don't understand what is wrong with the term "feudalism".
I see it proved that not all relationships were "feudal" to begin with, but that is something that goes without saying...
EDIT: my feelings seem to be largely same as Cheezy's...
EDIT2: For instance, the article says:
Well hello, I know that. But how does that invalidate the concept of "feudalism"? We don't say "democracy" is meaningless because it is not at all uncommon for someone not to vote...
Overly broad and loaded down with intellectual baggage. I'm not in favor of getting rid of the word; I don't think that's likely to help. But it should be used with a great deal of caution and ought to be avoided if at all possible.
Lone Wolf
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
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- 9,908
My position is basically the same as Yeekim's; but this question sounds like an argument against the term. Here, every school textbook on the Middle Ages and every old-fashioned medievalist says that decentralization and dispersion of power was a chief component of feudalism - something that hardly applies to these examples.
In regards to Russia at least, Soviet historiography preferred to use more ambiguous phrases about the 1861 abolishment of serfdom - it signalled the abolishment of last vestiges of 'feudalism' or 'feudal relations in the countryside'.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
My understanding of feudalism as well is that it operated in the opposite way that the article says: that it was decentralized power, and that the accumulation of more power is what led to greater centralization and the agglomeration of large kingdoms, which contributed to the death of feudalism since kings wanted total control over their country, not tenuous control over upstart barons. However, the article itself is what makes the case that feudalism was created by kings to create a structure of fealty and levying, which is precisely what the Russian and Byzantine systems were (Peter the Great being credited with introducing serfdom to Russia). So if that example is wrong, then the article's entire case is a red herring, since it's arguing against something that was not feudalism was in the first place.
sophie
Break My Heart
Peter I didn't really introduce serfdom to Russia per se. Really he put the final nail into the coffin of free peasants, putting a cap on a process which had been going on for well over a century prior to the ascension of Peter.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
As I recall, he codified, legalized, and standardized that trend. Same thing.
aronnax
Let your spirit be free
So if Feudalism didn't exist, what did?
From what I am reading, I'm being convinced to believe that all European political relationship and societies were so vastly different one another.
Are there no over-arching trends or themes or characteristics of the political power structure across Europe that was similar or related in the same way that allows the term 'feudalism' or any substitute terms to be useful in the same way the Japanese Daiymos operate or similar?
From what I am reading, I'm being convinced to believe that all European political relationship and societies were so vastly different one another.
Are there no over-arching trends or themes or characteristics of the political power structure across Europe that was similar or related in the same way that allows the term 'feudalism' or any substitute terms to be useful in the same way the Japanese Daiymos operate or similar?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
The definition the article uses matches the Imperial Russian case perfectly, which is my point.
The fact that baronial power had been thoroughly eroded in France by 1789 doesn't change the fact that barons owing fealty to the King exercised their ancient rights to property, and that their enserfed peasants burned their lords' libraries to destroy such documents. I mean, Michelet notes, for example, that there was a great many free peasants in France who owned land, but owed fealty to no one, perhaps more than there were unfree peasants, by 1789. But that doesn't mean feudalism was "gone," any more than the existence of the NHS and free public education means that capitalism is "gone."
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