Norman England and Feudalism

[Paul Pott]

I've heard it said that William the Conqueror and his nobles from Normandy were the ones who first introduced feudalism to England and that before 1066 the Saxons did not have a feudal class structure, as opposed to France.

Is there any validity in this claim? Has any Marxist analysis ever agreed that there was some other mode of production in Saxon England?

[ComradeOm]

Be careful here. Feudalism is a broad term that came in many different variants. There were changes in the structure of English society after the Norman invasion - as the new ruling caste reordered the land to their own liking - but feudalism in the sense of a landed aristocracy and unfree peasants long pre-dated William and Co. Indeed, Chris Wickham (The Inheritance of Rome) argues that by 900 England was "the land where peasant subjugation was the completest and most totalising in the whole of Europe"

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

In 1066, 9% of the British population were still held in slavery, so whilst one can note the decline of the slave society by then, it was not true that by the 11th century it was non-existent.

And we can see that, by the 14th century (certainly the latter part), Feudalism was in serious decline as guild production came to the fore, exchange with money and the rise of towns meant a decline in the power of the feudal aristocracy, evidence by a steep increase in manumissions (i.e desertion of previously unfree peasants from feudal bondage).

So a rough estimation might be that the peak of Feudal power was sometime from the late 11th century through to the late 13th/early 14th centuries. That might be a good starting point for investigating the feudal period and its origins.

[Paul Pott]

Interesting that that time period roughly coincides with the High Middle Ages in bourgeois historiography.

[Devrim]

I've heard it said that William the Conqueror and his nobles from Normandy were the ones who first introduced feudalism to England and that before 1066 the Saxons did not have a feudal class structure, as opposed to France.

Is there any validity in this claim?

There was a widespread belief that the Normans had constricted Anglo-Saxon freedoms. You can see this expressed in radical texts written at the time of English Civil War. It has some small basis in truth, for example the Anglo-Saxons had a form of elective monarchy, but most of it seems to have been myth making.

Devrim

[Geiseric]

The Normans invaded Italy and the holy land too, it seemed they brought feudalism with them and were basically the popes henchmen.

[OHumanista]

The way you ask it yes, feudalism (in the classical french sense) was introduced at that time. I am not aware of any marxist analysis on anglo-saxon england or the transformations brought by the invading normans but there is plenty of new and very interesting material around the internet.

EDIT: To elaborate some more, it seems it worked on the basis of an elected aristocracy. Candidates at ealier times were much more varied than at later times when certain "offices" were exclusively dominated by one or a few families. That also includes the king which was elected by an assembly of local rulers, in this case the title of king became dominated by the House of Wessex.

[OHumanista]

The Normans invaded Italy and the holy land too, it seemed they brought feudalism with them and were basically the popes henchmen.

They weren't very loyal henchmen though. They were opportunistic more than anything and used the church as means of control. But in the case of Naples/Sicily they also often clashed politically with the Pope and allowed muslims, jews and greek orthodox people to remain in their rule until the end of their rule. Many comteporary sources also say their court was more arabic at later periods than european.

[ComradeOm]

The Normans... were basically the popes henchmen.Eh, no. I may come back to this later in more detail later but for now look up Civitate and Galluccio

[ComradeOm]

To elaborate on the above, the Papacy and Normans coexisted in Italy not as master and servant but as independent polities. Despite the basic geopolitical concerns that held them together - the Normans needed legitimisation for their conquests and to stall any Papal-Byzantine alliance; the Reform Popes were always on the lookout for armed support in their struggles with Germany - the relationship was far from straightforward

To give an example, it took decades for the Reform movement in Rome to reconcile itself with the arrival of the Normans. Civitate was a direct response to the widespread looting and exploitation of Church lands by the new bandits. It ended with the Pope as a prisoner and being forced to acknowledge the Norman conquests. It wouldn't be the last time the two came to arms and there was constant tension between the two; not least due to continual Norman incursions into Campania and disputes over ecclesiastical governance in Sicily

Yet the Normans were a useful ally when the Emperor came south across the Alps. Worth keeping around but very much with their own agenda. It was a volatile relationship