The term “feudal” or “feodal” is derived from the medieval Latin word feodum. In 1771, in his History of Manchester, John Whitaker first introduced the word “feudalism” and the notion of the feudal pyramid. The phrase “feudal system” appeared in 1736, in Baronia Anglica, published nine years after the death of its author Thomas Madox, in 1727. In the 18th century, Adam Smith, seeking to describe economic systems, effectively coined the forms “feudal government” and “feudal system” in his book Wealth of Nations (1776). The term “féodal” was first used in 17th-century French legal treatises (1614) and translated into English legal treatises as an adjective, such as “feodal government”.

pecunia) “cattle”, “money” Old High German fehu, fihu, “cattle”, “property”, “money” Old Frisian fia Old Saxon fehu Old English feoh, fioh, feo, fee.

The root of the term “feudal” originates in the Aryan word pe’ku, meaning “cattle”, and possessed cognates in many other Indo-European languages: Sanskrit pacu, “cattle” Latin pecus (cf. Herr Reinmar von Zweter, a 13th-century Minnesinger, was depicted with his noble arms in Codex Manesse. Some historians and political theorists believe that the term feudalism has been deprived of specific meaning by the many ways it has been used, leading them to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society. The term feudalism has also been applied-often inappropriately or pejoratively-to non-Western societies where institutions and attitudes which are similar to those which existed in medieval Europe are perceived to prevail. Some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing feudalism (or traces of it) in places as diverse as China during the Spring and Autumn period (771-476 BCE), ancient Egypt, the Parthian Empire, the Indian subcontinent and the Antebellum and Jim Crow American South. Outside its European context, the concept of feudalism is often used by analogy, most often in discussions of feudal Japan under the shoguns, and sometimes in discussions of the Zagwe dynasty in medieval Ethiopia, which had some feudal characteristics (sometimes called “semifeudal”). The adjective feudal was in use by at least 1405, and the noun feudalism, now often employed in a political and propagandistic context, was coined by 1771, paralleling the French féodalité ( feudality).Īccording to a classic definition by François-Louis Ganshof (1944), feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations which existed among the warrior nobility and revolved around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs, though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment was only related to the “narrow, technical, legal sense of the word”.Ī broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch’s Feudal Society (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and those who lived off their labor, most directly the peasantry which was bound by a system of manorialism this order is often referred to as a “feudal society”, echoing Bloch’s usage. There is no commonly accepted modern definition of feudalism, at least among scholars. Those at the bottom of the hierachy (serfs) had an excess of duties over rights.ĭavid Miller, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought (Oxford, 1987) Definition The essential currency was land and military service, the former held in return for the latter.įeudalism was a hierachy of lords and vassals, and it was possible to be both in relation to different persons. A medieval theory in which society was deemed to be held together by ties of loyalty and obligation between persons in a hierarchy.

Feudalism in the middle ages definition