Transition from antiquity to feodalism (?)

[Tower of Bebel]

In what way does feodalism differ from the slave society of the antiquity? What was the reason behind the development of feodalism? And which social group was the most important factor in the tranistion from the slave society to the feodal society?

thx,

[Luís Henrique]

I recommend Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, by Perry Anderson.

Luís Henrique

[manic expression]

This is something I've been thinking about for a long time. The transition from antiquity's slave-owning societies to feudalism is unclear to me.

Here are some things I know:
The Roman world, at least in the west, was very much destroyed by repeated invasions and all-around disintegration. After this point, societies turned inward, not travelling, not communicating. Feudalism developed later, when mounted warriors became an elevated class and production was largely altered to sustain the knightly sector of society.

Marx wrote about this in Capital and other places, and I'm sure Engels wrote about it as well. I'll try to find some other pieces on this very difficult subject.

Also: how did Christianity correlate with the fall of antiquity and the rise of feudalism? Is there a connection? What do people think about this?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm wondering if this discussion is a bit too Euro-centric, particularly in light of the "Asiatic mode of production." Some have said that it's feudalism of a different kind, while others say differently.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by [email protected] 03, 2007 01:18 am
I'm wondering if this discussion is a bit too Euro-centric, particularly in light of the "Asiatic mode of production." Some have said that it's feudalism of a different kind, while others say differently.
Euro-centrism can sometimes be the case, largely for the reason that Europe industrialized first and subsequently shaped the rest of the world. However, I do think that Asian modes of production were similar to feudal Europe; landowners and fighters usually constituted a raised class with peasants providing the labor and towns and cities engaging in commerce and the like (which the countryside hated in most cases). The conflict between the towns and the countryside, compounded by the rise of money economies (usury being a good example of something that the landed classes and peasantry knew nothing about and despised), is observable in many societies across the world. After all, Europe, Asia and Africa were not in complete isolation, Islamic Spain learned from Persia, North Africa traded with Italy and Russia emulated the khans.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by manic [email protected] 02, 2007 07:07 pm
Euro-centrism can sometimes be the case, largely for the reason that Europe industrialized first and subsequently shaped the rest of the world. However, I do think that Asian modes of production were similar to feudal Europe; landowners and fighters usually constituted a raised class with peasants providing the labor and towns and cities engaging in commerce and the like (which the countryside hated in most cases). The conflict between the towns and the countryside, compounded by the rise of money economies (usury being a good example of something that the landed classes and peasantry knew nothing about and despised), is observable in many societies across the world. After all, Europe, Asia and Africa were not in complete isolation, Islamic Spain learned from Persia, North Africa traded with Italy and Russia emulated the khans.
^^^ I guess my question is superstructural, but why was European feudalism so decentralized? There weren't too many squabbling Chinese nobles fight each other from fortress to fortress (mainly because there were probably two or three big feudal factions to side with). Also, the Caliphate had only Iran to deal with within the Islamic world, and the Mongolian divide (after Genghis Khan's death) wasn't as severe as the European divides.

On the other hand, the closest to decentralized feudalism within Asia was Japan, with their samurais et al.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by [email protected] 03, 2007 02:47 am
^^^ I guess my question is superstructural, but why was European feudalism so decentralized? There weren't too many squabbling Chinese nobles fight each other from fortress to fortress (mainly because there were probably two or three big feudal factions to side with). Also, the Caliphate had only Iran to deal with within the Islamic world, and the Mongolian divide (after Genghis Khan's death) wasn't as severe as the European divides.

On the other hand, the closest to decentralized feudalism within Asia was Japan, with their samurais et al.
That's difficult to answer and up to debate.

First, I would say that the lack of communication and travel within Western Europe contributed greatly to the decentralization of the region. After different ethnic groups migrated, settled and cultivated unique languages and cultures, obstacles to pan-European power arose. It was hard enough keeping together Saxons, Wallonians, Swabians, Hessians in the Holy Roman Empire; imagine trying to unite them with Hungarians, Castillians and Venetians! In short, Europe had atomized before feudalism truly took full root, and so a secular umbrella authority over Europe was untenable.

Secondly, agriculture was the only game in town in early medieval Western Europe. Commerce had no part in society at the time, craftsmen were rare (and even then mostly used to sustain the emerging knightly class). If you weren't a peasant, you were either a landowning lord who beat people up now and then or a priest. That was mostly it. Due to this, the landowning nobility developed a considerable amount of power that other societies that were not so reliant on agriculture could not have provided. The landowners had in their grip the real productive powers of the day and it would take centuries before monarchs wrestled this power from them in various ways (European societies would become more and more centralized, the Sun King of France being an obvious example).

In many periods of Chinese history, Chinese nobles did squabble and they squabbled well. There are a bunch of eras where no one is really in charge of China, and different smaller kingdoms (who were formerly vassals) duked it out. However, you have to remember that the Qin and Han dynasties occurred around the same time as the Roman Empire, so the centralization of power was almost analogous. However, the landowning nobility would periodically gain more independence and bring down the imperial system (as you said, this clearly happened in Japan).

The Umayyad Caliphate was actually quite decentralized in practice; emirs and viziers were given a lot of control over day-to-day administration. The Caliphs of the time were more interested in financial needs and pragmatism, which pissed off the Shi'ites and Kharjites and caused a lot of rifts in Islam (that still exist today). The Arabs were also good at trading and knew how to do finance (even if Islamic law forbade usury), so this played a role as well.

The economy of the Mongolian hordes is very hard to hammer down because it changed so quickly. At first, it was nomadic before adopting Chinese government and splitting into separate but unified empires (China, Persia, Russia) and splitting later on. I'll have to read more about that, but the khans drew a lot of revenue from trade and taxing the crap out of the people they ruled over (Russia especially). Their warriors were also nomads whose relationship to the means of production were vastly different from European nobles (they didn't own land like the knights).

One more thing to bear in mind is the fact that the commerce of China/Islam/Khanate and medieval Europe is shockingly uneven; it's hard to understate the lack of trade and money in early medieval Western Europe, and it's even harder to overstate the huge changes that occurred when trade and money finally started to reach that same area. I think that played a big part in the power structures in place.

I'm not too sure on this myself, but those are some things that may be important to the question.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I must humbly admit that my remark regarding the "samurai" was a mere educated guess. Yes, they had influence, but my deduction was based mainly on the development of Imperial Japan (more concentration of power in the imperial bureaucracy, with the emperor being a figurehead regardless). I also didn't know the extent of internal Chinese and Islamic rivalries, merely because they didn't have the equivalent of European feudal lords who formally held so much power (like you said, mainly because of the "noble" ownership of land).

[Luís Henrique]

Feudalism is not disorder. Feudalism is a particular kind of order, featuring a hereditary hierarchical nobility. Feudalism is XI-XVIII century, not VI-X. So the quarreling among a rural ruling class does not constitute feudalism.

As far as I am informed, feudalism, outside Europe, certainly flourished in Japan. It is possible that Tibet and Hawaii also had feudal societies, but my knowledge of the subject is too small to take a firm position on that.

But China and the various Muslism empires (Turkey, Egypt, Persia, India) were never feudal (whether lumping them together under the "Asian mode of production" label is useful or not, is a different issue).

Luís Henrique

[manic expression]

Originally posted by Luís [email protected] 03, 2007 01:01 pm
Feudalism is not disorder. Feudalism is a particular kind of order, featuring a hereditary hierarchical nobility. Feudalism is XI-XVIII century, not VI-X. So the quarreling among a rural ruling class does not constitute feudalism.

As far as I am informed, feudalism, outside Europe, certainly flourished in Japan. It is possible that Tibet and Hawaii also had feudal societies, but my knowledge of the subject is too small to take a firm position on that.

But China and the various Muslism empires (Turkey, Egypt, Persia, India) were never feudal (whether lumping them together under the "Asian mode of production" label is useful or not, is a different issue).

Luís Henrique
Good points.

I do recall reading that the Ottoman Empire had a system of serfdom and landholding, which resembled feudal society. Do you know anything about that? Perhaps they adopted those structures from the European societies they conquered.

And although China and the Caliphate were not feudal, it is important to identify the ins-and-outs of the power struggles involved (which could change from dynasty to dynasty). How was the labor of China organized? I do know that the system of land did change from time to time (lands were parcelled out according to different schools of thought). Furthermore, the Islamic world can't be seen as a uniform economic system, especially when it assimilated new cultures (Persia, Egypt, Turkic peoples, Berbers, etc...). Do you know what effects this brought?

Also, it's interesting to note that in Europe, feudalism was not always the case. Italy was vastly different from western Europe above the Alps, mostly due to the development of commerce and cosmopolitanism in Italian city-states.

The most important question here, to me, is how China's economic system differed from medieval Europe, and how this affected the power structures of that society.