
Contents
13 Feudalism
Get accessAnthony Crubaugh received his BA from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from Columbia University and is presently Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of History at Illinois State University. The author of Balancing the Scales of Justices: Local Justice and Rural Society in Southwest France, 1750–1800 (2001), his current project focuses on representations of the peasantry in French revolutionary newspapers.
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Published:18 September 2012
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Abstract
Feudalism generally refers to a medieval system of political, social, and economic organization based on vassalage and the granting of a foedum (fief) that developed in western Europe with the collapse of authority following Germanic invasions. Medieval feudal contracts involved the establishment of a hierarchical but mutually supportive relationship among private individuals, cemented by a ceremony in which a vassal paid homage and promised material and military support to a lord in return for the lord's protection and the investiture of a fief. Although feudal contracts governed the reciprocal obligations among the noble military elite, the landed estates that served as the basis of the warrior class's economic power required the labour of peasants.
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