Feudalism

The term feudalism ( feudum of latin, fiefs ' → feudal system ) referred to in the social sciences, especially the social and economic system of the European Middle Ages. The term was coined in France in the early era of the Enlightenment, Posted by Montesquieu in 1748, in particular explained by Voltaire. In the French Revolution in 1789, he played a major role as a rallying cry for the characterization of the earlier economic and social order. In German-speaking countries, the term feudalism came to the early 19th century. Later, Karl Marx classified feudalism as a necessary precursor of capitalism. As a self-designation of a social order was or the term is not used.

Features

An idealized feudal society can be described by the following features: A ruler leaves a resulting warrior caste to their material supply, the use of parts of his country; including the residents thereon. The feudum is a fief (ie one in the initial basic principle only on loan ), transmitted beneficium, that is a blessing in the sense of material facilities. From the fiefdoms develop over time stately and economic norms that exclude the lower level of the peasants by a state - policy development and counteract the same time towards the top, the supreme ruler, the emergence of a closed state administration. Strictly speaking, the term feudalism therefore two separate dimensions includes:

The production of feudalism is strongly influenced by the natural economy. The vast majority of the population consists of farmers. But you are not the owner of the land ordered by them. This land is the property of the landlord. The farmers are in a state of servitude, so they are personally dependent on the landlord and unfree.

This means:

• They are to the soil ( the to-order country) bound ( glebae adscripti ) and do not have the right to leave it.
• They are under the jurisdiction of their Lord.
• You owe the landlords duties, both in terms of labor services ( Fron ) on the directly appointed by the landlords country ( Salland ), and in the form of payments in kind, which must be applied from the one piece of land that they farm itself ( tithes ). The statute labor or goods taxes can be replaced by cash charges in the course of development.

The ownership of the landlord is also limited, because he has received it as a fief from a higher-ranking nobles, whom he owes for military service. He is his vassal.

To assess the feudalism as an economic system includes the observation that a portion of the revenue of the feudal lord is distributed again as patriarchal alms, as a gift to " loyal " vassals, etc. Indeed, it is part of the task of the feudal lord to deliver justice (which, however, was rarely fully met in the reality of the feudal lords - also gave the former ideal of justice sometimes quite significantly from the usual day off ).

The chain of dependent, associated with military service fiefdom extends to the King, whose sovereign domain in the end is all the land. In the medieval idea he is, however, only a vassal, he is God assumed. The political sovereignty is parceled quasi downwards. The King is in this system, only the head of his vassals, to whom he is bound by mutual ties of fealty, but he has no direct access to his subjects.

This results in a certain developmental dynamics:

Individual aspects of feudalism were able to get in some places for a long time in societies that were no more influenced feudal. So the Scottish property law followed until 2002 known as a " feudal tenure" system, in which about the purchasers of land formally vassal of a feudal lord was.

Origin and history

• In today counted to Germany areas, the beginnings of feudalism are in the 9th century and reach in the 12th century with the so- called mainly from the Marxist literature emergence of the First serfdom their high medieval expression. In the 16th century there is a reassessment of the relations of domination, which east of the Elbe to the so-called Second serfdom lead in Germany, while in other parts of Germany, the absolutism of the symbolic charge of the sovereign and the aristocracy with power demonstratively drives, but a unification of the state at the same time of is reduced initiated above. The bourgeois revolution of 1848 applicable in Germany as the end of feudal principles ( with the exception of Mecklenburg: there 1918).
• The core region of European feudalism was the north of modern France, which corresponded to the ideal-typical feudal system much more than any other region. Here existed a uniquely dense Lehnshierarchie with varied levels of Subinfeudation.
• In Southern Europe (Spain, Languedoc, Italy) the remnants of the ancient world were stronger. Such was relatively more land absolute, not lehnsgebundenes allodium ( property). In addition, the cities did not disappear as much as in northern Europe and they experienced in the Languedoc and Italy as early as the 10th century a new period of prosperity.
• In Northern Europe (Saxony, England, Scandinavia) with stronger remains of Germanic societies, it took much longer until it came to the establishment of serfdom. In Saxony and partly also in other areas of Germany until the 12th century; in Sweden they could never completely through. In England, in turn, the autonomous jurisdiction people never disappeared completely. From it, the common law developed.

Refeudalization

The institution of serfdom remained in the aristocratic landowners in the historical region of Central Eastern Europe to the mid-19th century, while outside their lands already prevailing wage labor. With the introduction and expansion of new farming methods by those same landlords to increase productivity in the agricultural subsistence economy of the free peasant communities lost their livelihoods. The farm workers were forced to again give up their freedom and to hire themselves out as serfs. This development is called " refeudalization " or as a " second serfdom ".

In view of current developments in the 20th and 21st century social scientists speak today of a refeudalization society. it

" Threatens the development of what might be called a refeudalization society: a society ' are delineated within social groups, inherited wealth as well as poverty, and not only through the transmission and the lack of material goods but - sozialisatorisch far earlier and far-reaching - especially through the social determination of educational and career opportunities. So today, the chances of a child from a family with a high social status more than seven times larger, pursue higher education than that of a working child. A, nobility of opportunities ' at a stand at the other end of the groups of the property and resources without lots of prospects over. "

Characteristics include the increasing inequality of wealth, the mere production of public, representing particular interests of individuals or organizations as universal interests, the exclusion of the public in decisions of public interest, social origin as a crucial factor for prosperity.