Crisis of Feudalism

Introduction

The social system that existed during the middle ages in medieval Europe in which people were given
land and protection by a nobleman, and had to work and fight for him in return is called feudalism. It
was also an alternative of the slave social formation contained Roman as well as Germanic elements.
Here the authority of the king who symbolized the state was hierarchically distributed among a large
number of feudal lords.

Feudalism was primarily based on the personal kinship ties and impersonal bureaucratic politics. It
was basically a relationship between overlords and vassals or lords in which the overlords grant land
to the lords or vassals and in return of which the vassals gave military services to their master.
Feudalism arises in some parts of Ancient Rome when central government broke down and public
functions, obligations erupted. Feudalism was basically a chain of kinship ties and relationship among
four groups; king, overlord, lord, and client in which the king was the supreme governing body.

Debates

One of the earliest models on the rise and decline of feudalism was forwarded by the Belgian
historian Henri Pirenne. He explained the dynamics and crisis of feudalism on the basis of economic
factors, i.e., trade and commerce. According to him, the impact of Islam in the 7th-8th centuries
destroyed the flourishing economy of antiquity. A growing “economy of exchange” was replaced by a
new “economy of consumption” in Western Europe. This was the ‘feudal’ economy, where land was
the sole source of wealth and the most important institution was “the Great Estate”. It was a closed,
self-sufficient economy. Thus, he explained the emergence of feudalism as arising out of the
disappearance of trade and towns.

Similarly, for Pirenne, the eventual revival of the economy resulted in the death of feudalism. There
was a re-emergence of trade around the 11th century during the Crusades, when the Europeans
moved into the Middle East to reclaim it; and with the beginning of active trade with northern
Europe. The maritime commerce soon penetrated inland, and with the revival of markets, agriculture
also underwent changes. This process was related to the rise of medieval towns and cities in the
12th and 13th centuries.

These towns forced exchange and consequently, the opening up of the Estate. The new group of
independent merchants and artisans that emerged absorbed the landless peasants and the younger
sons of peasant families. On the basis of these changes, Pirenne argued for feudal decline. Such a
theory implies that feudalism is stagnant and can be uprooted only by an external change.

Perry Anderson concentrated on changes taking place in spheres other than economy, focusing on
various facets of social existence. He stated that the feudal mode of production that had emerged
allowed the peasantry minimal scope to increase the yield at its own disposal, given the harsh
constraints of manorialism.

Land reclamation was thus started by the peasantry, beginning in the 11th century, who wanted to rid
themselves from the economic burdens and buy their freedom. So, Anderson pointed to a dual
process of enfranchisement and commutation of dues. By 1300 A.D. then, there was the formation of
a free-labour market and an increase in the surplus. Increased agricultural productivity, according to
Anderson, contributed to the survival of urbanization. This trend lasted till the 14th century, when
crisis struck the entire continent.
Rural reclamation over-reached limits of both terrain and social structure. An increase in population
was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in yields, because the reclaimed land usually
contained poor, wet or thin oil. Since fertilizers had not been used, the top soil exhausted quickly.
Also, animal husbandry suffered as the grazing ground contracted on account of the advance of
cereal acreage, and with it, the supply of manure for arable farming. Further, the diversification of
feudal economy with the growth of trade had led, in some regions, to a decrease in corn output at
the expense of other branches of agriculture being expanded, such as vines, flax, wool and
stock-breeding. As a result, there was an increased dependence on imports as well.

Disasters, such as the famines in 1315-16, further added to problems. From 14th century onwards,
the scarcity of money affected banking and commerce. This was because silver mining ceased to be
practical or profitable in the main zones of Central Europe due to the increase in ground-water levels
and lack of ways of sinking deeper shafts or refining impure ores. A decline in population led to a
decrease in demand for subsistence commodities, hence grain prices slumped after 1320. In
contrast, urban manufactured luxury goods became more expensive.

To complete this picture of devastation, there was the invasion of Black Death in 1348. The plague
travelled through Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, England, and the Low Countries,
Scandinavia and Russia. With the demographic resistance already weakened, the Black Death wiped
off a quarter of the inhabitants of the continent. The indebted nobles were now faced with the
serious problem of acute shortage of labour. They attempted to regenerate a surplus by tying the
peasantry to the manor or battering down wages in both towns and countryside. For example, the
Statues of Labourers in England in 1349-1351 and the French Ordinance of 1351 were passed. This
action on the part of the landlord is called “feudal reaction”.

This was met with stiff resistance when the peasants refused to bear the cost of the crisis. Most such
resistance movements were spontaneous and carried out at an individual level. Peasants would
refuse to pay the dues demanded from them; they might abandon their fields and even flee to some
other parts of the country. At the same time, there were a large number of organized peasant revolts
in 14th century as well, which played a decisive role in breaking the hold of the lords over the serfs.

An aggregated view of these rebellions will show a common thread running through all these
instances of peasant discontent. Most revolts were directed against three social groups – the top
Church leadership, nobles and the big merchants. Everywhere, peasants saw themselves as
defending customs and accused lords of breaching customary relations. All revolts were against
heavy taxation and against withdrawal of concessions which had been granted to them. But they
were fighting from a conservative standpoint, defending the system under threat, and also lacked any
cohesive political orientation. Though these revolts were politically repressed, they did change the
balance of the class forces on land and thus, undermined feudalism in Europe.

Anderson located this significant outcome within the dual articulation of the feudal mode of
production. For him, it was the urban sector that could and did decisively alter the character, course
and outcome of the class struggle in the rural sector. Most of the great peasant revolts were located
in zones with powerful urban centers. The presence of cities led to the spread of market
relationships into the surrounding countryside, weakening the traditional seigniorial order. Further,
many of the towns even actively supported or assisted the rural rebellions. They offered
discontented peasants a flight from serfdom.

Postan and Ladurie, following the Neo-Malthusian model, argued for demography being the driving
force in the middle ages. There was a decline in population in 14thcentury Europe. The economic
trends visible in the Early Medieval Period – the rise in prices and rents, extension of area under
cultivation, and growth of towns and rise of population – were not only halted, but put into reversal
by the 14th century.

Initially the rate of decline of population was slower than that of the decline of medieval economy.
As a result, the standard of living, measured according to per capita income, also declined. Also, a fall
in demand for land resulted in a fall in rents, accompanied by a shortage of labour force. Thus, even
to Barbara Harvey, ‘the feudal crisis’ of 14th century was associated to the crisis of the economy due
to decline in population.

Postan and Ladurie have further argued that agriculture was not only the primary source of
livelihood, but also the dominant sector of medieval European economy. Hence the crisis which
started in the sector of agrarian production soon engulfed the urban and commercial sectors,
assuming the proportion of a ‘general crisis’.

Postan and others, however, have been criticized. They have also been accused of discussing the
symptoms of the crisis, rather than its causes. According to Brenner, this theory can be critiqued as
demography cannot be the only determinant for patterns of income distribution and serfdom; the
qualitative character of landlord-peasant class relations was also important. Thus, this model is also
inadequate.

The ‘monetarists’, led by J. Day and J.H. Munro, have argued that rural influences were not the
determinant factor in the medieval economic life. Rather, specialized sectors exemplified in
long-distance trade, large-scale transactions, and monetary, credit and exchange systems, termed by
Pirenne as “the Great Commerce”, played a detrimental role. A major component of the medieval
European economy, according to the ‘monetarists’, was the urban market sector, which required a
continuous money supply. However, from the last quarter of the 13th century, there was a decline in
mint production and money supply was no longer able to sustain the chain of transactions holding
together the mercantile economy. This resulted into a general economic crisis.

Georges Duby is of the opinion that historians have unnecessarily romanticized the idea of a ‘general
crisis’ and have ignored the considerable progress made in the urban sector and in the cultural fields
to propagate their theory. Perry Anderson, however, argued that the major crisis in the agriculture
had gripped other sectors of the economy and society as well.

In 1946, the feudalism debate was given a new dimension by Maurice Dobb, who contested
Pirenne’s argument that the self-sufficient system of feudalism declined because of the pressures of
trade and urbanism in the 14th and 15th centuries. Dobb shifted the focus from exchange relations to
social relations and analysed the internal dynamics and nature of feudalism as a mode of production
to explain the crisis.

He argued that the primary reason for feudal decline was the inefficiency of the feudal mode of
production. This was accompanied by the growing needs of the ruling ‘parasitic’ class for revenue,
which were expanding because of natural growth of rural families, subinfeudation and multiplication
of retainers, and extravagance and war. All this had to be supported by the surplus labour extracted
from the serf population. Thus, the main cause of the decline of feudalism was over-exploitation of
the labour force, resulting in its exhaustion and disappearance in some cases, undermining the very
system that it had nourished.

Paul Sweezy, in his critique of Dobb argued that class struggle is not enough to explain the decline of
feudalism. According to him, the factors suggested by Dobb that led to the growing demands of the
ruling class take place outside the system of feudalism. He doubted that there was a significant
relative growth in the size of the ruling class since warfare took its toll mainly on the upper orders
and held that the increase in the size of the ruling class was matched by a growth of the serf
population. He regarded the growing needs for revenue of the ruling class as a consequence of the
expansion of luxury trade in the 11th century.

Moreover, he highlighted the important role of towns in aiding the decline, pointing out that the
serfs would not simply desert the manors, no matter how exacting their masters might have become,
unless they had somewhere to go. Instead, this was a calculated move with the object of emigrating
to rapidly growing towns, since they offered freedom, employment and an improved social status,
acting as a powerful ‘urban magnets’ for the oppressed rural populace. He further sought the prime
mover for the decline of feudalism in an external factor, i.e., the expansion of trade. Growth of
long-distance trade from the 14th century onwards facilitated the establishment of local trading
centres, and acted as a creative force that brought into co-existence a system of production for
exchange alongside production for use. This transformed the existing socio-economic relations in
society, bringing about a decline in the feudal mode of production.

In his reply, Dobb challenged the notion of the feudal economy as static, stagnant and incapable of
movement from within. Further, he clarified that holding just one cause, whether external or
internal, as the prime mover would be an oversimplification of the issue. The causes of change must
be seen in interaction with each other. But he dismissed Sweezy’s explanation of feudal decline in
terms of an internal conflict or an external force as being much too mechanical and simplistic.

Brenner, forwarding a social interpretation of the crisis, emphasized on the structure of property
rights in the middle ages. He assigned broadly two main features to the medieval society – first, the
base, consisting of un-free peasants, who were the direct producers; and second, the aristocratic
superstructure, which was supported by the rent extracted from the direct producer. It was this
excessive rent extracted from the peasantry, and not an increase in population, that prevented the
sustained growth of the economy. The late medieval crisis was thus a crisis of decreasing seigniorial
revenues, and was thus not merely concomitant to the general crisis, but was in fact the central
cause of it.

Recent research has, however, indicated that pauperization of the peasants did not alone lead to
such far reaching socio-economic changes, but there were more factors involved. Most peasant
uprisings were in those areas where there was more prosperity than poverty. Peasant rebellions in
England and Flanders were examples of discontent among the well-off and prosperous peasants of
Europe.

In 1953, Rodney Hilton came up with his arguments against Pirenne’s orthodox view. Hilton believed
that trade and urbanization allowed for more efficient exploitation within feudal mode of
production. He focused on how in the late 10th century and early 11th century, the demographic
increase, peasant resistance to labour services and the breakdown of the Carolingian Empire resulted
in decentralization of feudal power and its automatization in the hands of the vassals. Trade and
commerce thus grew from the logic of rent maximization and due to a shift from labour to money
rent, as the need for money increased. So, Hilton argued that the appearance of money may have
helped increase feudal exploitation. The character of feudal relations did not necessarily change –
the lord still appropriated rent – only the form of exaction changed. So, feudal power did not decline
but the variables constituting it were altered.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is clear that the crisis of feudalism had many aspects and factors that contributed to
it. Moreover, the debates on it are wide ranging. While scholars like Pirenne focused on economic
factors, others like Postan and Ladurie focused on demographic factors. Perry Anderson examined
aspects of social existence while the ‘monetarists’, like by J. Day and J.H. Munro, have argued that
specialized sectors exemplified in long-distance trade, large-scale transactions, and monetary, credit
and exchange systems were responsible for the eventual crisis of feudalism. Besides these, we have
also explored the views of Maurice Dobb, Brenner, Paul Sweezy and Rodney Hilton. Thus, it has
been elucidated that society was moving towards a new kind of social formation as the earlier feudal
mode of production could no longer be sustained. This was the reason for the end of feudalism and
the eventual rise of capitalism.