What is feudalism? Did it serve any historical purpose? Has it ever had a good use?

Answer 1

Despite what some will say there is still feudalism in the UK the way i see it. When you buy a house on leasehold you pay ground rents to the land owner. It helps the likes the Duke of Westminster to keep the lifestyles they have been accustomed to over the centuries.
So in that sense it is living history :-)

Answer 2

Feudalism is a system of government with a Lord ruling over the land, and peasants (serfs) serving are farmers and such. The serfs were tied to the land and worked to produce food for the Lord. In return the Lord would protect the serfs from anyone who would do any harm such as pillage, plunder, or kill. Feudalism is important because it is a form of government that has developed in prominent countries like Great Britain, Germany, France, or even Japan.

Answer 3

Feudalism/Manorialism:
King has lots of land. He grants Fiefs (or grants of land) to his lords, who in return provide military service as Knights. The lords usually had a large number of Serfs working under him to do all the real work, such as farming, in return for a small share of the crops, usually enough only to support the family.

It was used in the middle ages, after the fall of the Roman emperor up until the Renaissance. Then the Serfs just became nearly free farmers with the landlords rapidly loosing power to powerful kings and countries, such as Britain, France, and Spain (three main ones)

It provided the Stability for the Kings to gain enough support from each other to form a bureaucracy and establish a somewhat centralized government that could hold together all the land, and allowed for the Crusades to happen, which in turn led to exploration and Columbus' voyage to Americas.

In the new world (Americas) It then merely changed into Plantations, with slaves working the Fields.

It was also used for a very long time in Russia, near the rule of Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, and generally after the Mongol withdraw from the area. It was the dominant agricultural style for many years thereafter.

Answer 4

Hi there.
Simply put, feudalism is a system of power based on a pyramid shape. The king sits at the top and the major nobles derive their right to rule from him. Lesser nobles derive their rights from the major nobles and so it goes down the line. All land and people is in the control of one nominal person and the people owe their allegiance to that person.
Historically, it grew from the need to divide the spoils after conquest. A person would have his band to reward and woulfd be granted the resources of a particular area to support them all, such resource being human as well as animals and land.The bigger and more industrious the area, the more important the owner became.
The only good outcome of feudalism that I am aware of is, the protection of the environment. If somebody owns something then they usually look after it and want it to continue providing cash for them for years. This means that there are well tended lands and a lot of protected wild areas that would otherwise be laid waste in Europe - a lack of the protection that comes with long-term ownership is the major flaw that allows the very worst kinds of exploitation, such as the deforestation going on in Brazil right now.
Cheers, Steve.

Answer 5

Feudalism refers to a general set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility of Europe during the Middle Ages, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs.

Three primary elements characterized feudalism: lords, vassals and fiefs; the structure of feudalism can be seen in how these three elements fit together. A lord was a noble who owned land, a vassal was a person who was granted land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the fief, the vassal would provide military service to the lord. The obligations and relations between lord, vassal and fief form the basis of feudalism.

Feudal society is a sometimes debated term used to describe the medieval social order of western and central Europe and sometimes Japan (particularly in the 14th to 16th centuries) characterised by the legal subjection of a large part of the peasantry to a hereditary landholding elite exercising administrative and judicial power on the basis of reciprocal private undertakings. The term's validity is questioned by many medieval historians who consider the description "feudal" appropriate only to the specifically voluntary and personal bonds of mutual protection, loyalty and support among members of the administrative, military or ecclesiastical elite, to the exclusion of involuntary obligations attached to tenure of "unfree" land. This stricter concept is discussed under Feudalism, and the bonds which it excludes under Manorialism. Examples of feudalism are helpful to fully understand feudalism and feudal society. Some useful particular examples may be seen at Feudalism

Conception of feudal society
In the broader conception of feudal society, as developed in the 1930s by the French Annaliste historian Marc Bloch, the prevailing features include:

The absence of a strong central authority, and the diffusion of governmental power through the granting of administrative and legal authority over particular lands (fiefs) by higher lords (including the king) to vassals sworn by voluntary oath to support or serve them, usually (though not exclusively) by military means.
The obligation attached to particular holdings of land that the peasant household should supply the lord with specified labour services or a part of its output (or cash in lieu thereof) subject to the custom of the holding.

There has long been a debate on the proper definition of "feudalism!" Kings, people like Karl Marx also used the term feudalism for political ends.
Feudalism had begun as a contract, the exchange of land tenure for military service. Over time, as lords could no longer provide new lands to their vassals, nor enforce their right to reassign lands which had become de facto hereditary property, feudalism became less tenable as a working relationship.

Answer 6

It was a symbiotic relationship, an economic, justice, and mutual protection system. It had a good use for it's time. It had its positives and minuses. This is SUCH a broad question. IMO there is one huge thing that came from it that remains to this day . . . British Common law . . . that the US adopted wholly when we became an independent nation.

Answer 7

Yes, to make the state more richer and powerful but the one that is suffering is the people.
The one that has bigger gain from feudalism is the leaders.

Answer 8

System under which vassals held land on condition of military service.
No.
No