Tag: feudalism

Twelfth-century France was divided into loose and shifting territories that owed little or no allegiance to any central authority, ruled across large swaths by noblemen who were little more than warlords. As he watched his tenacious and cunning father grind his way through the conquest of Normandy, Henry would have learned that political survival was a game of forestalling shifts of power, managing volatile relations between one’s friends and enemies, and appealing to the right allies at the right time in order to further one’s territorial objectives. In such a bewildering business, only the most devious and adept players survived.

— The Plantagenets, Ambition

With the practical disappearance of the [Japanese] central government went disintegration of the old social order, a process that had long been accelerating as the Ashikaga shogun grew weaker and weaker. In the Age of the Country at War many ancient families were reduced to poverty or exterminated. Those that took their place were often headed by upstart soldiers with little or no aristocratic background. They did not owe allegiance to any great spreading clan like the Taira or Hojo of an earlier day; their families were families in the modern sense, groups of people closely related by blood or marriage, and the ambition of every man was to increase his immediate family’s wealth and prestige as much as possible.

This preoccupation forced many social innovations, one of which was a kind of primogeniture. During the stable Hojo regime in the 13th and 14th Centuries a landowner had dared to make a will dividing his land among all his children—including the daughters. Even if each received only a little land and therefore had few retainers, the firm power of the Hojo government would protect him in its enjoyment. But under the now-powerless Ashikaga shogunate such evenhandedness was no longer prudent. If there were too many inheritors, they might not be strong enough to defend themselves individually from greedy aggressors. They might lose their land, and the family as a whole might sink to a lower social level. This was to be avoided at all cost.

So a new custom developed. A father willed the bulk of his property to one of his sons, not necessarily to the first-born but to the most promising, or even to an adopted son if none of his own sons seemed likely to maintain the family prestige. Daughters were left out almost entirely because they were not considered able to keep land in the family. By the start of the Age of the Country at War the subordination of Japanese women, which went to such extremes in later ages, was already well advanced.

Along with these new inheritance customs, a new and more mature kind of feudalism developed. The rules and relationships were no longer imposed from above as they had been in Hojo times. The ghost of a central government in Kyoto had no power to impose anything. Instead, each daimyo in possession of a self-governing territory made his own laws, which usually combined traditional customs with new regulations to fit the times. Most of these family codes were rigidly autocratic, permitting few rights to anyone except the daimyo, but their regulations were seldom obeyed literally, and the picture of life they present does not give an altogether accurate view of Japanese society as it really was.

Actually, the Age of the Country at War was something of an age of freedom for Japan’s lower classes. In some provinces the small landholders banded together, swept aside the laws of the daimyo and got full control of the local government; in others the ji-samurai (rural landholders of warrior descent) were so numerous, well armed and belligerent that their wishes, not the daimyo’s, had to be respected. Artisans, too, were often better off than they had been; in spite of drastic laws intended to keep them at home, many of them fled their native fiefs for the growing towns, where their skills were better paid.

As the new feudal system took shape, growing from below, Japan came to be divided into many compact, independent domains with well-defined though sometimes shifting boundaries. At the head of each was a warrior daimyo, who may have inherited his position, or won it or increased it in war. Since there was no central power to back him, as in Hojo times, his strength and security now depended altogether on the support of the lesser families holding land in his domain. He defended them and watched over them carefully to see that they did not combine against him or fall under the influence of another lord. In some fiefs the daimyo managed to reinforce the power and prestige of his own family by keeping control of every sale or division of property and every marriage, not only of samurai but also of lower ranks. Lesser families did the same; every smallest decision was made by the head of the family, always trying to keep the family’s position as high as possible at the cost of its individual members. Thus, while the Age of the Country at War brought some measure of class freedom, it took away individual freedom; within a family little initiative was possible for anyone but the leader.

For most young men such a system would have been unbearably oppressive except for the outlet of war. Most of the great landholders, and many of the lesser ones too, were forever on the prowl, hoping to catch some neighbor at a disadvantage and swallow his territory. And the predatory enterpriser, a chieftain with a reputation for successful aggression, never lacked adventurous young supporters. Not all such recruits were of samurai rank; the gorgeous mounted knights of ancient tradition had given way to larger units that included many foot soldiers armed with spears or other comparatively inexpensive weapons. The warrior barons who led these armies no longer exposed themselves recklessly, as the knights had done, in romantic single combat. The best of them learned to marshal their forces and take advantage of terrain. When they noticed a soldier among their lowborn followers who showed talent for this kind of fighting, they might raise him to officer status or even to high social rank. This would have been almost unthinkable in earlier ages, but now there was no power in Japan to tell an independent daimyo what he could or could not do.

When there was no war on land to occupy them, the young fighting men of Japan could find an outlet for their energies in piracy, which was now thriving once more. In the second half of the 15th Century fleets of hundreds of pirate vessels were crossing the East China Sea and attacking the whole coast of China. The marauders not only pillaged seaside towns but also penetrated far inland to raid the country around Nanking, 150 miles from the sea.

— Early Japan, pp. 104-105

Nothing more clearly illustrates the power of war as a culture-shaping force than the eerie parallels between feudal Japan and feudal Europe. Both societies rested on the labor of relatively unfree peasants, and both were ruled by hereditary warrior classes—knights in Europe and bushi, or samurai, in Japan—representing, or at least serving, the landed aristocracy. If, through some magical transposition, a medieval knight and a samurai had met on the same road, they would have immediately recognized each other as kin. Both wore helmets and armor, fought on horseback, rallied to flags emblazoned with dynastic symbols or totems, invested their swords with mystic power, and subscribed to a special warrior ethic—chivalry in Europe, bushido in Japan—which codified, for its adherents, a kind of religion of war.

In her study of the bushi tradition, Catharina Blomberg lists these parallels, only to dismiss them as “entirely fortuitous” since, after all, there had been no contact between medieval Europe and Japan. What she misses is the entirely unfortuitous effect of the means of destruction which these two cultures shared: Both employed metal blades to cut human flesh and horses to transport warriors to and about the battlefield. This technology leads to, and even seems to require, the kind of social arrangement we know as feudalism, which has been defined as an “essentially military…type of social organization designed to produce and support cavalry.” A very similar pattern emerged in precolonial western Africa: a social and economic elite of mounted, knightlike warriors, subscribing to a quasi-religious warrior ethic.

The knight and the samurai are in some ways special cases, preferring, as they did, to fight at close range with their cherished swords. Other warriors of the pre-gun era, no less proud and individualistic, fought from a distance with metal-tipped arrows propelled by compound bows. The European knight was again and again shocked to encounter, during the Crusades and the various incursions of nomadic Asian “hordes,” highly skilled mounted warriors who announced their attacks with a hail of arrows and used their bladed weapons primarily to dispatch the wounded. But all—swordsmen and archers alike—were part of a system of warfare that depended on the synergy of metal and muscle. The metal could be worked to a point as an arrow tip or pounded to a cutting edge as a sword. The muscle could be that of the human arm alone or that of the arm reinforced by the speed and strength of the horse. Either way, the metal-and-muscle approach to warfare imposed certain common themes on the cultures that engaged in it, whether they did so reluctantly or with zest.

— Blood Rites, pp. 144-45

[Anegawa in 1570 C.E.] was a real feudal battle judging by the account in the Mikawa Fudoki, which gives a vivid picture of the bands of retainers fighting in groups, the lopping of heads by sword and bill, the confused mingling of the armies, the clouds of black smoke and dust, and above all the streams of perspiration that bathed the combatants, for it was the hottest season of the year….

— Shogun, Chapter 6

On the material side the life of the feudal class was rough and uncomfortable. The castles were cold and drafty. If a castle was of wood, you had no fire, and if a stone castle allowed you to have one, you smothered in the smoke. Until the thirteenth century no one except a few great feudal princes had a castle providing more than two rooms. In the hall the lord did his business: received his officials and vassals, held his court, and entertained ordinary guests. There the family and retainers ate on trestle tables that at night served as beds for the servants and guests. The chamber was the private abode of the lord and his family. The lord and lady slept in a great bed, their children had smaller beds, and their personal servants slept on the floor. Distinguished visitors were entertained in the chamber. When the lord of the castle wanted a private talk with a guest, they sat on the bed. The lord and his family could have all the food they could eat, but it was limited in variety. Great platters of game, both birds and beasts, were the chief stand-by, reinforced with bread and vast quantities of wine. They also had plenty of clothing, but the quality was largely limited by the capacity of the servant girls who made it. In short, in the tenth and eleventh centuries the noble had two resources, land and labor. But the labor was magnificently inefficient and by our standards the land was badly tilled. Not until the revival of trade could the feudal class begin to live in anything approaching luxury.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 30-31

Although the process is obscure, the result is quite clear. By 987 [C.E.] the soldiers of the West Frankish state were arranged in a feudal hierarchy bound together by oaths of vassalage. The king was at the top of the feudal pyramid: the suzerain of the land. A few dukes and counts were his direct vassals. They in turn had their vassals, rear vassals, and rear rear vassals. At the bottom of the pyramid was the simple knight with just enough land and peasant labor to support him, his family, and his horses. Now this structure was not all embracing by 987; in fact, it never was. As late as the latter part of the twelfth century the count of Dreux surrendered large allodial holdings to the count of Champagne and received them back as fiefs. A recent study has shown that large allodial estates persisted throughout the Middle Ages in the region around Bordeaux. But in comparison with the total area of the country these exceptions were of slight importance, and the principle beloved by feudal lawyers—no land without a lord—became essentially true. Thus all land was someone’s fief and every landholder except the king was someone’s vassal. The soldiers, the knights, held the land of France, and they were bound together by the feudal system.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 16-17

The origins of feudal institutions may be found in both Roman and German life. According to Tacitus, when a German war chief planned a campaign, he gathered about him a group of picked warriors which was called his comitatus. These men swore absolute fidelity and obedience to the chief in return for arms, food, clothing, and a share in the plunder. The German chieftains who set themselves up as kings in the Roman Empire had similar bands of sworn followers. The Frankish kings called the comitatus a truste and its members antrustiones. The Saxon kings were surrounded by bands of thanes. Thus the practice of a warrior binding himself by an oath to follow a chief in war was well established among the Germanic peoples. The Romans had a somewhat similar institution, the clientela. When a Roman freed a slave, the freedman usually remained a dependent of his former master, a cliens. Poor freemen might seek the protection of a senator by becoming his clients. In the latter years of the Roman Empire in the West the comitatus and the clientele tended to become merged into one institution. The great Roman nobles hired bands of German warriors to serve as their bodyguards. These warriors were known as bucellarii. Now the Roman senator may well have thought of his bucellarii as soldier-clients, but the Germans were more likely to consider themselves members of a comitatus. The bucellarii played an extremely important part in the wars of the fifth century [C.E.]: a large part of Belisarius‘ army was composed of his bucellarii. It seems clear that we have in these various Roman, German, and Romano-German institutions the prototype of the relationship between lord and vassal.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 12-13

But whatever his antecedents, the feudal knight was an important cog in the military machinery of the eleventh and twelfth centuries [C.E.]; and although Sidney Painter may have been guilty of some exaggeration in his summary of the achievements of European military feudalism, his opinion is worth quoting:

Feudal military organization was on the whole highly effective. The knights of Europe conquered vast territories from the Slavs, pressed the Moslems steadily back in Spain and drove them from Sicily, and established themselves at least temporarily in Palestine, Syria, the Byzantine lands, and Greece. As a defensive system feudalism was almost perfect. No organization ever devised could so quickly produce an effective military force wherever it was needed. The feudal army was essentially a militia, but a militia composed of the best soldiers of the day.

Perhaps so strong an assertion was needed to put the accomplishments of the feudal knight in proper perspective.

— Warfare in England: 1066-1189, Chapter 10

The retinue did not consist of only soldiers…but also of servants, artisans, professionals, estate officials, treasurers, stewards, lawyers and generally all that was needed by the normal operation of society. And, as the lord grew in status, so did the retinue; so that a sort of “bastard feudalism” developed, in which middle ranking figures under a king or major noble would compete for money, offices or influence…. The collective name for these retainers was “affinity,” which also happens to be a word that began in c. 1300 [C.E.] as “relation by marriage.” In a sense, the retinue were “kin,” or part of the “neighbourhood,” words that have developed other meanings over time. For this post, [we will] go on using the word retinue and retainer, but try to keep affinity in mind….

Obviously, this would mean that many persons outside the retinue would always be seeking to be a part of it, if they had no affinity of their own. This meant that outside the retinue were an amorphous group of general supporters and contacts, most of them completely unknown to the lord, but known to the various members of the retinue. Thus, even a minor lord could potentially affect hundreds, even thousands of persons, simply by their existence at the heart of his or her retinue. This made political maneuverings and the raising of an huge army a realistic possibility…. In [Dungeons & Dragons], we tend to think that to raise an army, we need to scatter out agents and interview people. In fact, the more likely truth is that there would be large numbers predisposed to our cause; we would need only to canvas our own connections, gain the support of other nobles and let them canvas their connections, and thus through specific persons already in our employ, we would dredge up the very people we needed from both our lands and from those wanting to be part of our lands. Thus, every war begins with a promise of land—which we will naturally take from the losers, when we win.

All this makes the retainer far, far more valuable than the follower—though, it must be said the retainer has less reason to be directly loyal. Ultimately, the retainer serves the office, not the individual. A lord is sure to be surrounded by trusted, reliable followers and henchmen, the “inner circle,” while sorting out the trusted members of the retinue from those not quite so trusted. In general, the retinue is expected to fall in line because the lord has the retinue’s general welfare at heart; if the lord fights to preserve the lord’s lands, he or she also fights to preserve the retinue’s lands. So all join together in the common cause.

— Retinue vs. Followers – The Tao of D&D

Author’s emphases are in italics. Mine are in bold.

When we retreat from the early modern age into the Middle Ages the distinction between government, army, and people becomes more tenuous still. The term “feudal” implies this was a period in which politics did not exist (the very concept had yet to be invented, and dates back only as far as the sixteenth century [C.E.]) So closely intertwined were a man’s political power and his personal status that his ability to conclude alliances could well depend on the number of marriageable daughters he had sired. Politics were entangled with military, social, religious, and, above everything else, legal considerations; feudalism before it was anything else comprised a network of mutual rights and obligations. The resulting witches’-brew was utterly different from the one we are familiar with today, so that to use the word politics probably does more harm than good. The medieval context hardly even makes it possible to speak of governments, let alone of states….

— The Transformation of War, p. 52

Emphasis mine.

Into [European feudalism’s] backward-looking, ritualistic, rigidly structured life, the growing economic forces at work in the new towns brought stress. As the trade in surplus goods increased, merchants found that the raw materials they needed were controlled by feudal lords who neither understood nor cared about commerce. Transportation of goods through their lands was both dangerous and costly. Alternative sites for commerce had to be found and the towns seemed to offer the best alternative.

Free from the feudal bonds of the countryside, the urban dweller was envied by his peasant counterpart. ‘Stadtluft machtfrei’ (the air of the town makes you free), they said in eleventh-century Germany, because after a statutory period of residence there a serf would automatically become a freedman. Soon enough the townspeople, with their economic strength and their craftsmen supported by the general surplus, began to demand from kings and emperors those statutes which would reinforce their freedom in law. Merchants who had no place in the feudal pyramid of serf, knight, priest and king now had the money to buy social status.

As the aristocrats began to commute their serfs’ dues from service to cash, money began to weaken the old social structure. Ambition began to express itself in outward show. ‘It is too easy to change your station now’ complained the Italian, Thomasin of Zirclaria. ‘Nobody keeps his place!’ The word ‘ambition’ took on common usage for the first time.

— The Day the Universe Changed, p. 31

Emphasis mine.

So. You live in a world where large-scale political units have collapsed, or might collapse at any moment. Violence and disorder are rampant. Literacy rates are low. “The economy” is or has recently been on life support. No modern communications technology exists; transport infrastructure is in shambles, and whenever we fix it, it also helps diseases spread. Oh, and—by the way—you’re in charge. Please fix this mess and build us a new stable realm, or we’ll ignore/insult/stab you and give the job to somebody else. Cheers!

This is the kind of setting in which something like “feudalism” makes sense.

It’s how you govern and exploit a large territorial claim when you don’t have a sophisticated-enough bureaucracy to administer lands directly: you delegate the job to local managers. It’s also how you ensure that you get the violent men on your side, and harness their pool of violence when you need it. The local conditions varied considerably, but something like this response explains everything from the iqta system in Muslim polities to some power-relations in Byzantium to, of course, the lord-and-vassal bonds of western Europe. Whether what was delegated remained within a tax-proceeds system (as in the Islamic iqta arrangements) or dealt more with rights to agricultural lands (as in the west), the core logic is this: look, I’m pretending to be in charge of ALL THIS but I can’t actually administer it. If you promise to fight for me faithfully and send me goodies, I’ll let you take charge of a chunk of “my territory,” and enjoy its fruits in peaceful legitimacy. Once this deal is arranged, the vassal discovers that his own slice of the pie is still too big to administer directly, and beside he needs some way to feed and motivate his troops, so he makes a parallel deal, carving up “his territory” for his own vassals. On and on it goes, like a giant game of sub-leasing to biker gangs, until the whole territory is delegated to violent men or those able to feed and command violent men. The system allows those at the top to govern, indirectly, what they never could administer on their own. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, everything, of course, since the system only works if people keep their promises. If one vassal rebels, the others can be called upon to squash him. If they all rebel…the lord at the top is out of options. This problem ripped apart 10th-century France, and it continually destabilized the iqta systems in the Middle East…. “Feudalism” was a logical response to desperately inadequate governing infrastructures, but it contained within itself the seeds of further political crisis and decentralization.

If you have a setting suffering from these social tensions, then what one might call “feudalism” makes a very coherent in-setting response—though it might take a million different forms….

— The Logic of Feudalism – Gundobad Games

Author’s emphases are in italic. Mine are in bold.

The phrase I drill into my student’s heads about the structure of medieval armies is that they are a retinue of retinues. What I mean by this is that the way a medieval king raises his armies is that he has a bunch of military aristocrats (read: nobles) who owe him military service (they are his ‘vassals’) – his retinue. When he goes to war, the king calls on all of his vassals to show up. But each of those vassals also have their own bunch of military aristocrats who are their vassals – their retinue. And this repeats down the line, even down to an individual knight, who likely has a handful of non-nobles as his retinue (perhaps a few of his peasants, or maybe he’s hired a mercenary or two on retainer).

…The average retinue…was five men although significant lords (like earls) might have hundreds of men in their retinues (which were in turn comprised of the retinues of their own retainers). So the noble’s retinue is the combined retinues of all of his retainers, and the king’s army is the combined total of everyone’s retainer’s retainers, if that make sense. Thus: a retinue of retinues.

— How It Wasn’t: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages, Part I – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

Author’s emphases both italics and bold.

See also:
Retinue Versus Followers