Why and How Feudalism Declined in Europe - Medieval History DOCUMENTARY
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2024
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Kings and Generals animated historical documentary series on medieval history and economic history continues with a video on how and why Feudalism declined in Europe, as we try to deduce economic, political, social and scientific reasons why the nobles lost their supremacy over European society.
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This video has been also dubbed into Spanish using an artificial voice to increase accessibility. You can change the Audio track language in the Settings menu. Este video se ha doblado al español utilizando una voz artificial para aumentar su accesibilidad. Puede cambiar el idioma de la Pista de audio en el menú Configuración.
Very cool ;)
Would be nice to have a documentary on the battle of Tumu
America is a land of lies and oppression. Thank you for showing the true basis of capitalism.
I have a feeling that you messed the start of feudalism with the end of feudalism.
Feudalism started, depending on definition in mid 1300's, or 1502 when serfs became tied to land and became basically a part of knights inventory due to Statute of Piotrkow.
Feudalism in Central Europe ended gradually between 1846 and 1918. I still have documents of my great-great-great-grandfather from central Poland, issued 1885, obligating him to do 12 days of work per week for his feudal lord (it was done by emplying 2 workers and sending them to work at local nobile's palace.
even coming from spain i prefer it in english, what i recomend you is to make a second channel in spanish be cause people from this channel may be more used to lisent it in english. :3
Thank you for beginning an economic history series. Nothing against military history, but it accounts for 90% of history videos across UA-cam and almost everything else since the dawn of time seems to get ignored.
Also, economic history is so important for understanding economics! So many people accept economic theories as universal truths without any concept of the contexts from which they originated... We need more of this!
Your words are true.
Not to mention history is not built fully on wars; technology, religion, politics, and natural events all play as much, if not more, of a role in history and even affected warfare as much as any strategic map.
Also accounts for what 90% of what the general public is interested in
probably because it's exhaustive and overwhelming - if it's stressed about too much it's practically agreeable, as though the people who'd persist about it would be psychopathic manipulators. it's better to not focus on it in an individual way to notice and experience the better things in life. it's like the law of attraction.
i don't think people were lorded over willingly.
Who would’ve thought 10 years ago, a few men with a UA-cam channel would make history documentaries that surpassed anything the history channel produces.
And with only 1 add in the whole documentary.
People that believed in the potential of (uncensored) internet did.
Not only YT history videos are better quality than a TV documentary. History becomes less and less biased because with internet you can write to anyone and learn his viewpoint.
I would have thought. Me.
@@Paciat to an extent but the main platforms like UA-cam, and all company’s owned by Facebook heavily censor political or different views on history. The internet has become very censored.
@@Dylan-lw1xc Thats why I put (uncensored) in brackets. And I wouldnt call Western censorship heavy. Tho it is a bit less obvious than communist censorship was. The new Chinese, Arab, Russian and German narratives are even harder to detect.
We are working on Economic Lore videos, btw
Nice
And I’ll be there
The economy, fools!
Mithril value is much expensive than Vibranium 😁
Nice
You mentioned the longbow as part of the downfall of the knight, but this is also the period of the "infantry revolution" where the Swiss, Scotts, and various others used pikes/polearms to great effect against more traditional heavy cavalry armies
arguably the longbow didn't play a role at all. The English were one of the few we truly have records of where battles have been won by it. And even that isn't accurate since in these battles longbows often were just a usefull weapon for the specific situation, but did not change the battlefield in some revolutionary way. the infantry revolution you mentioned is however important as in that the knights didn't reign supreme vs common infantry soldiers anymore and thus less of a reason for the knightly warfare and lifestyle of nobles as elite soldiers to remain, which also in turn opened the possibility of standing armies under the kings/rulers control due the lower cost of equiping and training troops.
The Dutch and Spanish amongst others would agree.
Crossbow is much more important in this case than longbow, as you don't need years of training to use the crossbow. That's why pope tried to ban this weapon from use, as suddenly a knight in an armor could be killed by peasant/militia crossbowmen.
The reason why knights became useless was because of early firearms. They could easily penetrate quinched plate armor.
The longbow and polearms didnt cause the downfall of heavy cavalry.
Flintlock muskets, bayonets, and square formations of the 19th century ended the heavy cavalry.
The Knight is a class of men that were given land by the King in pay for their martial service.
The Knight is associated with heavy cavalry. Their role was like an officer leading troops. By 1800s, many had stopped wearing armor except for helmet and cuirass
I think you missed one of the most important factors in the decline of Feudalism: The fact that European kings (especially the French) spent the majority of the middle ages actively fighting against feudalism as a form of government. Trying to centralize power to the king alone, instead of having to share it with the nobility.
The French kings slowly but surely removed the influence and power that the nobility used to have, and the end result was the absolute monarchies of the 17th and 18th centuries.
People tend to forget how little power kings actually had during the middle ages. They often ruled on the mercy of their nobles, with even individual nobles sometimes controlling more land and wealth/power than the actual king.
I learned that the hard way in CK3
you can have centralized autocratic feudal states, its just that the feudal property relations would likely be in the form of a bureaucracy rather than a nobility (or both, some feudal states successfully bureaucratized the nobility while keeping the general system around)
@@RyRy2057 you have examples of these state's?
Which more easily led to centralized national and liberal democratic states once the singular figurehead was deposed?
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl imperial china would be the classic example, as nobles were gradually formed into or replaced by provincial governors but feudalism remained until the 20th century. but I like to claim even the economy of the Inka Empire was feudal despite usually being described as being totally state owned. It wasnt a palace economy like the bronze age societies, but based on extraction from certain areas owned by an aristocracy
The phrase "Goodbye" that we use today is a shortend version of the saying "God be with you". Which was said to merchants, soldiers and others who left the walls of a midevil settlement.
interesting
Same in romance languages... Adiós/Adieu neans "to god"
In southeastern Germany and at least parts of Austria some people still use "pfiat di/euch [Gott] („behüt dich/euch Gott!“)" - "May God protect you".
@@jacktravers5049 In Russian butterfly is бабочка. You're thinking of божья коровка which is a lady bug. I'm not as good with Russian as I am with Irish but I know a lot of it. The Irish word (I'm an Irish speaker, so hallo agus dia dhuit) normally used for butterfly is féileacán. As for a word for a similar creature with "God" in it there is dallán Dé for the magpie moth - but dallán more means something you use to plug or stop something with. Nothing about a cow. Also, I wouldn't recommend using "duine le dia" for disabled people in general, at least not in Irish speaking communities. For two reasons: One) it refers specifically to a mentally or intellectually disabled person; And two) It's an insult. Like saying someone is a "simpleton." So it's best you use a neutral term like duine faoi mhíchumas meabhrach. If you drop the last word - meabhrach - it's the neutral term for physically disabled people. By neutral I mean it is generally understood without negative nuances in most contexts.
@@jacktravers5049 well, "namaste" is _slightly_ different. Namaste is made by joining two words "namah" i.e. I bow down and "aste" is a verb for the gesture. But the word literally means "I bow down before the divinity that resides in you" as Hinduism is a pantheistic religion believing that every individual is fragment of God.
Fun fact: serfdom wasn't a thing in Norway during the middle ages, in feudalisms hayday. We had landlords who rented to peasants, sure, but they did not have the authority other feudals did on the continent. Yeomanry was quite common, In fact I believe at one point 1/3 of farmland in the country was owned by the farmers who worked it.
Good for the Norwegian peasants 👍🏻
I believe the same was true in Denmark and Sweden until the 16th century.
@@MrGksarathy Not quite in Denmark. We had serfdom of sorts up to 1788...
ok duuuude.
I believe the same was for Anglo-Saxon peasants till the Norman Conquest which introduced feudalism to England
It’s generally understood in political science that the state as we know it did not exist in Europe at least till the 15-1600s. The origin of the state was the centralization of power that took place during those centuries and the attempts of the monarch to handle the emerging conflicts between the emerging bourgeoisie, the now empowered peasants and the feudal nobility
Treaties of Westphalia hurr durr
I think that's generally accurate. If you want an interesting book on why states took different forms (French Absolute Monarchy, Holy Roman Empire's diet, and Italian city states) the Sovereign State and Its Competitors by Spruyt is quite good.
Edit: Also look into Weber's definition of a state which is interesting. The key points a state should have are: an imagined community, territorial integrity, a monopoly on violence, and international recognition.
Eurocentric take
@@BrezhnevStan Good point. I think Spruyt wrote another book recently (2020) detailing state formation in non-European contexts, which seems really interesting as well. It's called, The World Imagined, which talks about the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, China's tributary system, and Southeast Asian regional international societies. It looks like it engages with the idea that European state norms are considered default and how those states interacted with European ideas. I haven't read it yet, so couldn't say how good it is though.
That's an awful reading of the Peace of Westphalia. It's an often repeated historicism without careful reading. States did exist prior to that. What was recognized with the Peace of Westphalia was the concept of sovereignty, meaning other States couldn't interfere on the internal affairs of those states, as a product of the religious wars waged by Central and Western European States.
I don't remember who said it, but there's a quote about how nobody sets out to create a feudal system and rather it being what you get when other systems fail. A monarch would much rather have full control of the state than be forced to delegate a lot of power to feudal lords, so the decline of feudalism is inevitable as soon as the monarch has the means to make the feudal lords unnecessary.
Similar phenomenon is taking place now. Where a lot of large corporations in the services industries are slowing making middle management obsolete, as better systems (A.I.) are emerging as more efficient means of coordination.
Perhaps the whole concept of Democratic system is what we got when others failed. And just like Feudalism, it will eventually be replaced with something else.
That's a misconstrual. Despotism or anarchy is the result of failure. Feudalism is the natural extension of Germanic-style familial/relationship based politics all the way up to the national level.
Also think it was part of a gradual process of gaining power a land. Lords didn't immediately take control of all the lands of a country like England after conquest, they would take certain key locations. Most of the areas outside the gates of a town were basically like the wild west, there was no law. As a reward for their work, the King may give a newly created lordship over an area that didn't have one before or that was badly controlled. The new lord had to seize control of the area, then enforce taxes and levies.
It's a compromised system. Devolved governance is usually a stable middle ground to avoid endless conflict, but it is a balancing act.
One funny thing was that the Emperors of Austria had to spend centuries trying to convince their lords to allow their peasants to pay taxes and cash rent instead of obligation and labour. The lords wanted the power over others more than they wanted to be rich.
It's not about being rich or having power over others; obligations and labour ensured people fulfilled their duties towards the community, whereas cash taxes make people think chrematistically rather than piously
@@alejandror.planas9802 Yeah duty, to the local lord. Get the fuck out of here.
@@alexandrostheodorou8387 and now it's duty to your local politician and it's 40% or more from your money, wow such change, such enlightment 👏👏👏
@@metoo7557 To have power you need wealth; power begets from wealth as its a standard of resources. The life we live is immeasurably better than those centuries ago for it.
@@joaogirardi2943 Bruh, once upon a time something like 98% of the world lived in what can be considered "absolute poverty" where they can scarcely scrounge up living, let alone improve their lot in lives. These days that number has fallen to around 10% of the world. That is a historic drop when considering all of human history; idk why you're acting like things haven't improved. Would you prefer to be a serf where your lord can kill you whenever he damn well feels like?
In Germany there's an old saying: "Stadtluft macht frei." - "Town air makes free." The reason is a law that if you live in a city for more than a year, you become free from serfdom.
Also fun fact: City had a negative growth if you don't count country folk migrating in until the (re-)introduction of sewers.
This format is nice and could certainly be applied to other changes in history like let's say the Bakufu or various Chinese dynasties.
Edit: I also think you missed another important factor: universities. The establishment of centers of learning not under the control of the church and less and less of a feudal lord had a huge long term effect.
We have the same saying here (Netherlands): stadslucht maakt vrij.
@Projectile 1 Nope. It's Dutch. It's just a dialect of German - with an army and a navy. :p
I would love to see more of the history of banking, especially in the Italian States as they took a lead role in centralized banking during the Renaissance and I've always found it fascinating. 😀
This sounds great tbh
And double entry bookkeeping. Invented by the Italians in the middle ages. They obviously had so much money they needed a better way of keeping account of what they had.
History matters did an episode on that I believe.
@@jessefisher1809 I did find a short video about it, but it only covers the general info and doesn't go into much detail. How did the Medici's communicate between bank branches, etc etc
Banking can help an area create wealth as long as government is kept out of the business. Government ruins everything it touches and it touches everything.
Also, the black death increased the value of labour
Like Corona. Except instead of dying we just youtube and chill.
There's a clip from Horrible Histories on it. Worth a watch IMHO.
...they run out of people...!
Thanks K&G for another great video! There's a lot to cover for a topic such as this, and while stuff will always be left out, I think you did a remarkable job. I hope to see more documentaries on the topic soon
2 days after my exam in Middle Ages, this could have come in handy, just a little bit too late... But I do feel like this should be pointed out and think I'm qualified to mention this:
(TL;DR below) Modern historians criticize the use of the term "feudalism". It is argued that feudalism has had too many different interpretations to really mean anything anymore: Marc Bloch saw it as a way of land exploitation; Louis-Francois Ganshof saw it as a political system; Georges Duby saw it as time of anarchy and lawlessness. Not only is there conflict on what feudalism even means, but the use of the term also brings the danger of over generalizing the real life situation for millions of people. Medieval Europe was not one homogeonous system, rules and rights were different in every duchy and in every time period. Peasants in England had different rights than the ones in France; feudalism was different under Charlemagne than under Louis V the Fat, and it was different still under Philips IV the Fair (all of them being kings in France). Peasants in Italy had it completely different compared to the ones in Germany, as a lot of peasants in Italy where small private landowners who could sell their produce in the city-states, and even then it changes considering what time you look at. The definition given in this video, of a king giving land to nobles who let serfs work the lands, is not applicable to any system where the serfs or peasants own their own lands or have freedom of movement, or if the lands are under direct control of the king like when Philips II annexed Normandy from the English kings. In some cases, land was given to nobles as a loan, with the expectation that they would be returned upon the noble's death to the king, and sometimes it was given to a family in perpetuaty. Yet these systems are also implied to be feudal. Overall, the use of the term feudalism creates an unnecessarily oversimplified and negative view of life in the Middle Ages.
TL;DR: the term feudalism has many different meanings and overgeneralizes too much to be used when discussing social, political or economic medieval systems.
Anyways, good video as always, learned lots of stuff, but I felt like I had to point this out.
I think Fuedalism, at its basis is the promise of yourself to another higher up the chain. The serfs, promised themselves too,l their local local, local lords to their distant lords, and those Distant Lords to the King. With just that. Peasants were tied to the land, lords betrayed eachover, and the wheel turns.
Just a pyramid scheme one cannot escape in their lifetime:
@@alexandrostheodorou8387 That depends on the time and place. For example in Germany you could flee to a city and if you managed to live there for more than a year, you were now a free citizen.
The visuals/animation get ever more impressive with each passing video. Excellent channel.
This video gave me a better understanding of feudalism than every history class I had on it in school combined. Thank you.
Also, the same subject in the Eastern Roman Empire and Eastern Europe in general would equally interesting, if not more.
Eastern Roman empire largely didn't have feudalism during it's existence. It system was was somewhere between the modern conception of state, and the absolute monarchy the existed between 18th thorough 20th century.
@@sasi5841 they sort of did. It wasn't the classic serfdom you see in W. Europe, but they had something of their own.
@@sinoroman lol no. "Byzantium is not like what Hollywood thinks that happens in any civilization east of Italy and south of Russia. The Themata were some sort of semi-feudal society. Do some research on this, it's quite cool.
Bourgeois means exactly "those who inhabit the burgs" and burgs was one of the names that free cities could receive, together ironically with "commune".
But the name bourgeoisie comes directly from the medieval merchants being described by their place of residence.
I did not know that! But it totally makes sense.
Thank you for this. Very specific and properly explained. Love the visuals too. I would definitely like to see more content on economic history in addition to the political and military aspects.
“These peasants became smart businessmen and learned accounting and banking. With this new found financial security, feudal life began to decline”.
History of the Ferengi
Oooy veeey
@@Daniel-du7pv this, destruction of feudal system was from foreign elements. it is weird to think that serfs out of a sudden became businessmen and knew how to write or read, while, ehmm, peculiar merchants, did.
And with this we thank our sponsor Skill Share..
@@danielpena4625 banks have existed at least as far back as antiquity. It turns out being able to take out loans is prety useful in a market economy and si money lenders have been around as long as there were markets.
How I love your documentary videos, I've been following you since almost your first videos, and I'm always learning something new. Thank you for so much!
I'm hooked to this channel, which covers various aspects of topics not just one aspect so I'm really liking these economic videos
Me and you should run off to Mongolia and get married and adopt North Korean kids. We can have our honeymoon in Kazakhstan and live in Jamaica and while I get high and you make roti for me 🙂
small caveat: while feuds in practice were heredetary it was only by custom. At the core there was a personal oath to swear and the son needed to personaly meet their lord and swear that oath to gain the land the father reigned over.
Are you sure you mean feuds and not fealty?
@@kaltaron1284 yes. I am.
@@hansoskar1911 Huh, didn't know that feud can be used as a synonym for fiefdom. Never encountered that use before. I guess it makes some kind of sense as it's part of Feudalsim but I usually see it used in the other sense.
A very Anglo centric explanation. The Dutch had the first modern capitalistic society and our feudalism disapeared in a different way than that of England.
Well...
Low Countries were the first capitalistic society - if you conveniently exclude northern and central Italy (13-14th century lombards/tuscan merchant class) as well as Rheinland in the HRE.
Moreover, the process described in the video doesn't assert that England was the first modern capitalist. society.
@@elbentos7803 I said the first modern capitalistic society. Many modern capitalistic institutions find their origin in the Low Countries/Dutch Republic. Many historians assert this. Things like the stock exchange or modern companies. And no it doesn't say that England was the first capitalistic society, but it doesn't say much or anything at all about developments outside England and France, while pretending to talk about the whole of western Europe. They should have at least spend some time on the Low Countries
Whilst I would have liked to have heard more about the Dutch (maybe another stand alone video) it is worth noting that the history of the low countries is inexorably tied to that of France and Spain, as political overlords, and England as the main economic partner, as well as of course what would become Germany.
Therefore whilst the history of the economic innovations in the low countries is interesting, it didnt happen in a vacuum, rather more likely it was an ideal breeding ground for the new system, that arose to support the demand caused by the trend away from feudalism in England and France. If you see what I mean?
Whilst the Netherlands was capitalist earlier, this is likely because of the trend away from feudalism slowly occurring in her much larger neighbours, rather than in spite of or unrelated to. What happened elsewhere was creating forces and conditions that allowed the Dutch to exploit this economic advantage, albeit through considerable displays of fiscal ingenuity.
@@DeadBeat1azy While I see what you mean I have to disagree somewhat. Hollandic feudalism disapeared or didn't really exist due too its particular geography and history. Many Hollanders had only fairly recently settled there and reclaimed large parts of the land. That ment that the nobility was never as powerfull as in other regions. In Frisia the nobility also didn't have much feudal power. These things led to a country in which the climate was perfect to start a economic revolution. Although this is a bit of a simplification I would have liked it if they had spend some time on this
A very Dutch centric comment.
Good job! Well narrated! Nicely presented!
Love the subject,its awesome to hear you guys will do a series on it!
Really love that you decided to make these videos on this type of topic. Because it really gives more context to how society became the way it is today. Which should be valued by any student of history. Be that someone who watches UA-cam videos or someone who paid allot of money to go to University.
This is somewhat inaccurate in the fact that feudalism was first replaced by mercantilism as the dominant economic system, which was then replaced by capitalism over the course of the 19th century
Yes! I wanted to write this. I hate when channels talk bullshit
My economic history professor would have killed me for that mistake. Then again, I've met people who claim all exchange in human history was capitalism, so it can always be worse.
right from feudalism to mercantilism to capitalism and then back to mercantilism.
The great lines of historiography Kings and General exposed is the traditionnal way of seeing history through a dialectical materialist analysis. The "economic system" listed here are seen as "modes of production", and mercantilism could have been seen, in that traditionnal way of interpreting dialectical materialism, a transition period between two modes of production rather than a mode in itself.
Of course, as he said just after that, history is more complicated.
@@violetsonja5938 A lot of people assume that capitalism just equates to "people buying and selling stuff"; so that's where the confusion lies.
Love this video! I'd love to see deep dives into each of the subjects presented here!
Wow! Best explanation I have ever seen. Keep up the excellent work.
The Swedish kingdom had minimal amount of serfdom in early Middle Ages, this was abolished in 1325. There after you had yeomanry and tenants and when the first Swedish diets took place it had four estates.
Wonderful series! I like these explorations of the evolution of social and economic systems alongside of the military stuff.⚔🏹💰💲
Very interesting video, I really liked the tune towards the end of the video.
Absolutely love history videos on something other than war and nobility. I beg of you to do more. I’ll even become a member if they become a regular topic.
3:53 Henri Martin didnt observe shit, that literally what karl marx said about world history and the class struggle
Friedrich Engels "Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State" laid some groundwork for this.
It is a communist perspective.
@@adythedog yes, very true, although non-communists can certainly get something out of the book as well
Engel's perspective is useful. However, some people dismiss him because of their political bias against communism.
@@civilengineer3349 Political? Try History, Economics and Human Nature which are all against communism.
@@adythedog yeah communist framework is entirely realiant on historical materialism.
Incidentally the existence south Asian civilization is a giant middle finger to historical materialism, because that framework doesn't apply there in any way up until British imperialism.
Excellent , very clear, very interesting and well written . Thank you for posting .
As always greatly informative and accurate video!
I am doing a master's degree in Early Medieval History and I am very intrigued that you used the works of Henri Pirenne!
While his works are both admired and criticised by historians alike, he talks about some interesting points on long-distance trade in north-western Europe around the Early Middle Ages.
Pirenne suggested that long-distance trade vanished in (north-western) Europe after the Islamic conquests in the eight century. Between the eight and tenth century (before the rise of Feudalism) however, long-distance trade began to flourish again due to proto-urbanisation and the rise of the Emporia (early medieval towns situated near the coast or a river like Dorestad, Quentovic, Hedeby, Eorforwic, Gipeswic).
Inter- or intraregional trade, or to simply put it as "Local trade", can be seen as the most common form of trade during the age of Feudalism. However, long-distance trade actually did exist at this time in (north-western) Europe and some of the sources like those of Bede, Ibn Faḍlān, Othere, and Wulfstan, contain some information about long-distance trade.
I love your videos and this is just meant to share some of my knowledge :)!
Me and you should run off to Mongolia and get married and adopt North Korean kids. We can have our honeymoon in Kazakhstan and live in Jamaica and while I get high and you make roti for me 🙂
Being a student of medieval history myself, Henri Pirenne's work is mostly considered obsolete. My curriculum is focused on the medieval Mediterranean, and we had a class on the "Pirennian debate" about the "true" end of Antiquity and transition to the Middle Ages. Pirenne's thesis was that the Arab invasions cut off Mediterranean trade and caused trading routes to concentrate around northwestern Europe (i.e. Flanders and Frisia).
But my professor told us that had been proven obsolete by historians in the 60s to 90s who demonstrated that the 7th to 9th centuries hadn't been a period of constant warfare between the Islamic caliphate and Christian states. Instead it alternated between war and peace, and there were numerous sunken merchant ships that might be proof of trade between the Islamic world and Christendom. So while the development of northwestern European long-distance trade can be interesting to look at in this period, the cause may be misidentified.
It should be noted that Pirenne wrote his book "Mahomet and Charlemagne" at the end of his life (I believe it came out in 1937, a year after his death) based on an article he'd written earlier. He wasn't a specialist of the Mediterranean, but of northwestern Europe, the Franks and Flemish towns and cities, so he ventured into a new area with little expertise due to connections to his topic.
@@smokeyhoodoo Wrong reply section. Or you're completely off-topic.
Economic focused history is the kind of history I didn't understand I needed way more until these videos started coming.
Go read into historical materialism. It's basically how production influenced the way the society worked and looked.
@@vorynrosethorn903 lol
I've always wondered this. Great job, thanks.
That is REALLY interesting. I new take on the channel's history videos with focus on Economics. I really enjjoyed it. The translation feature is also incredibly welcome since it enable us easy access from Brazil (Portuguese Language) and other South American countries(Spanish Language). I've already referred the video for my mother who is a school History teacher but can't speak or understand English.
A lot of people seem to have forgotten that this is a general introduction to the topic. All of the other things people are talking about, either through classes or outside research, are things that require days and sometimes even entire semesters work of higher education to fully cover. This is a 20 minute UA-cam video that introduces people to concepts that large portions of the population are not aware of. Feudalism may not be favored in the modern academic world but is well known to the population as a whole. People also are largely unaware of the impacts of the past on our modern economic world.
People are quick to cry “these liberals are ruining history” while ignoring things that are actually said in the video and ignoring aspects of the past that are not so palatable to us. Remember what these videos are and how short they are. You can’t fit a semester worth of education in 20 minutes. It’s just not possible. If you disagree with what K&G said, go research the topic more on your own. Stuff like this should inspire you to learn more history. I’m sure that is exact what K&G wants you to do. Learn more.
I agree, it seems some have forgotten that public education, flawed as it can be, seeks to teach people concepts; while college and university classes seek to break those concepts down, tell and teach how those previous concepts are wrong, and then have the classes that come afterwards do the same.
Great Video!
Would love a Video on how the crisis of the third century and especially Diocletians reforms laid the ground work for serfdom in Europe, its so baffling to see how large of an effect these reforms had on western european societies.
Another excellent video from the Accountants and Academics channel.
Great documentary. Thank you Kings and Generals Team.
Hi Kings and Generals at 3:46 seconds it was mentioned that Feudalism made a decline into Capitalism. This unfortunately missed a mention of the economic system called Mercantilism and it's importance in Europe. The distinction is that trade generates wealth, stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances & resources that a nation bolsters, by utilizing its protectionism against competing nations. The distinction in Capitalism holds that a country's industry and trade is owned and controlled by private entities for profit rather than the nation for profit.
I agree, but I can also understand the Mercantilism can be viewed as a transitory stage of Capitalism so I don't think it's entirely wrong to skip over it for simplicities sake. Unless someone is already familiar with the differences between Mercantilism they seem very similar at face value and might add unnecessary confusion to an already complicated topic.
To add to what you already correctly said for anyone else reading this, a gross over-simplification of the difference is that a Mercantilist views exports as good and imports as bad. Imports to a Mercantilist is sending money to a foreign state, which they view a "losing" while exports are "winning" as they take money from their foreign competitor. A Capitalist views both exporting and importing as (in most cases) positive for all parties.
@@TheSmrtAlec Almost anything can be argued as a transition towards the next thing in history, that does not degrade its own identity as a economic system nor its immense importance. Mercantilism as a system became the dominant school of economic thought in Europe throughout the Renaissance, High Baroque period, towards economic wealth allowing for the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution in 1760's. It was this economic system accompanying Europe out of the Dark Age and to its early Modernity.
Yes nations under Mercantilism would prefer to be self sufficient, produce and thus sell/export their surplus overseas. it was common to import goods in demand.
Many years in the future, long past the time of medieval Feudalism, Capitalism emerged in the mid-18th century transforming the industrial revolution and was further popularized by Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations. Capitalism transitioned from the French laissez-faire, powerful French Controller-General a group of powerful French businessmen telling the nation of France to "laissez-faire" "Let Go'' of the nations wealth.
I'm always so happy to see this channel move away from military history. Your videos on social processes are so great!
interesting video, will need to research more on that
Great video! Thanks for sharing this knowledge !
This is the kind of Kings and General content I live for. It really does intrigue me with the history and socio-economics. The entire time I watching I was thinking of the present iteration of Capitalism and thinking rather than it being the economic system to end all systems. The end of history. And to believing and accept it with religiosity is fool hardy, eventually it will go the way of Mercantilism (or War Capitalism as Svan Beckerts's coined it in his book Empire of Cotton) and feudalism, it not to say with certainty it be replace with a Marxist system as many will so assume. Although we can't rule out nor can we rule out it criticism having influence on whatever the successor or itinerant form of capitalist system emerges.
Capitalism doesn’t really exist at this time. Business and government have merged. This is the definition of fascism. Good is organized crime and obsolete.
It seems to me that the world is likely to move in the direction of either social democracy or illiberal democracy with state capitalism. Those are the 2 most common emerging systems.
It's worth remembering that a "lack of rights" does not equal slavery or rampant abuse. One reason why medieval battles often resulted in minor peasant deaths was because levying your tax base and getting it killed tended to make you a poor Lord. Also, mistreatment of your tax base and manpower pool was not considered a good long term strategy. This is one reason peasant revolts in pre Norman England, for example, were less common than under central authority that imposed rules on them from miles away. It's also a major thing that differentiated Western Europe to Chinese or Korean Dynasties who were enormously centralised and frequently abused peasants leading to countless rebellions in that part of the world.
It's also worth saying that the Magna Carter was the codification of customs that came before it and not a major evolution of rights as sometimes portrayed. The reason it was introduced was because those customs were being broken (by King John) so they decided to write them down to ensure future Kings kept the customs, something that would never(and never did) happen in China which maintained an informal system of Confucian rule which never held the Nobility to account in the same way.
There were somewhat liberal customs in some places before the Magna Carter. Wales, for example, had fairly liberal ideas of women's rights prior to the Magna Carter and conquest by centralised England but it's economic weakness and lack of population prevented it from influencing Europe for the better on this subject.
Who is Magna Carter?
@@KingsandGenerals They are probably referring to the Magna Carta, the Charter of Rights signed between the English King and Rebelling Barons to ensure rights for the nobility.
This is extremely interseting, thank you for this documentary !!!
An expansion on this information would be most welcomed! Great video
Good that you are addressing the fundamental concepts of history
Why do the knights at 3:30 remind me so much of the "Me and the bois" meme?
Talk about getting to the heart of human history. Well done team👏🏽
Awesome video!
I'd like to see one on eastern europs and Russia especially.
I would like to see a video about feudalism in the Middle East, or its Islamic equivalents: iqta and tımar.
Especially Ottomans amaze me in that. They were pretty centralized and absolutist while Europe was feudal, but in later periods sultan had to give privileges to a feudal class (eşraf, mültezims, etc.) and this modern feudalism would continue in Anatolian countryside until it was crushed by Kemalists (like Dersim Massacre), which weirdly resulted in the rise of leftist oriented Kurdish seperatism. That's like the exact opposite of how feudalism progressed in Europe.
I don't think the Ottomans were ever really centralized. Their provinces always had a lot of autonomy. Just the early rulers were a lot better at keeping them in line and working toward a common goal than later ones.
@@kaltaron1284 In all empires provinces had some kind of autonomy, it will always exist as long as the monarch can't do everything on his own. Also, that's literally what centralization means. Keeping your subordinates in line. Autonomy Ottoman provinces enjoyed was mostly on things that the Ottoman sultans didn't care about or *chose to allow* instead of being forced to allow, like non-Muslim autonomies. Sultans could very easily prosecute those minorities (which we see happened a few times) but they mostly chose not to, because they thought these autonomies were beneficial for their empire. I think this is not decentralization, since even autonomy was given and protected by the sultan, who also could take it back at any time.
@@johnydope812 In theory yes, in practice not always. But I will agree that they were a lot more centralized than the Western Europeans of the time.
@@kmmmsyr9883 Interesting argument but I disagree. Centralization means that a central power makes the decisions and the subcompartments follow suit. Giving up that power weakens the centralization. Doesn't matter if you do it voluntarily or how easily you can take the power back. The power left the central.
@@sinoroman Firstly, how is this related?
Secondly, anyone who knows a little about Byzantine and Ottoman histories would know that it's exact opposite. Byzantine subjects in Rumelia mostly didn't resist Ottomans, because they were sick of heavy taxes taken from them by emperors and local governors and political instability, and they saw Ottomans as better overlords than crumbling Byzantine Empire, despite them taxing non-Muslims more than Muslims.
Also, despite Ottoman Empire having slavery, we can't really consider it a slave society. A slave society would be more like Ancient Egypt. Ottoman slaves were mostly devshirme soldiers or servants in palace, who lived in better standards than average peasant.
thx for amazing video as always :)
This was a excellent one! Concise and straight to the main points. These videos are so easy to watch, you are able to remember actually.
I think this video miss two very important parts. The new trade routes that the Age of Discovery bring and later the colonialism
Finally an analysis of class and the evolution of modes of production!!! History is not just "kings and generals", and seeing this constantly on this channel, though it's in the name, gives this "glorious" idea that history is a succession of events made by great men. It's good to see you explore political arrangements through history, since, as someone wise said once: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
im sorry, but the rebellious rich boy with daddy issues was most certainly not wise
Amazing video! Thank you for taking the time to teach us this!
Would love to see you do videos about the importance and control of the trade through places as the danish sound and the golden horn!
Short answer. Plague more than decimated the work force thus making manual and skilled labor scarce therefore increasing their value and power, leading to trade guilds, et al.
Against the historically anti-scientific use stage-ist conception of history:
“In general, the word "materialistic" serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce them from the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few people have got down to it seriously. In this field we can utilize heaps of help, it is immensely big, anyone who will work seriously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge - for economic history is still as yet in its swaddling clothes! - constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous.”
-Friedrich Engels, 1890 Letter to Schmidt
Good work y’all.
This is beautifully done.
Excellent video, congratulations !
Part of it I think is also that, as state centralization in Europe increased, monarchs would sometimes turn to capitalists for aid as a check against their powerful feudal vassals. Early capitalists did very well in many ways under absolutist/statist systems, with monopolies in certain areas and often being the ones to lead colonization missions. Lots of the colonization of the New World was led by/chartered out to "companies", after all.
That is not how captlisim work because capitalism depends on a free liberal competitive market with no government giving out monopolies to companies
And those chartered companies turned out to be more efficient in expanding lands than the crown itself for example the East India Company acquired more land than the British Crown during the time of its peak
It is also important to point out that the bubonic plague did not impact regions across the European continent the same way. For instance in Russia the black death actually ended up increasing feudal dependency and helped to pave the way for a serfdom resurgence in the 15th century.
Muscovy called itself "Russia" only in the 18th century.
in 15th century such state no existed.
@@user-ms4cm4qf5j *modern day Russia
Cant wait to see more from you on economic history
More videos like this on economic history! I loved this.
Hey king, I feel like you should have added Adams smith’s take on this as well... For example, in England feudalism benefited the boyars/nobles, the kings would encourage contractors who were free working men with skills to till land and other such works, which in time greatly increased in number. The kings did this to diminish the powers of the nobles as free men were not obligated towards and more so towards the king and also because the king got taxes directly from the freed working men instead of dealing with the nobles.
Capitalist propaganda should be suppressed
If only Rome could be saved with Political Science and Economics…
Emperor, where do we march to today?
Its ironic, they conquered the world but never understood inflation.
@@generalflix don't forget unintentionally poisoning themselves with their own piping since it was made of lead lmao
@@zhess4096 Could be, but the emperors were fully aware that they were reducing the value of each coin (lessening the silver portion for example) and thus more coins were needed to match the value of certain things. Debasing is basically the printing of money of ancient Rome.
@Felix
To be fair, they probably suffered inflation in part because of their expensive conquests
Me ha encantado este video tan explicativo e informativo!!!
A really great recent book on the subject is Patrick Wyman's The Verge. Highly recommended.
“The real cause of the great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations, such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Arabian Empire, is a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples .... The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought .... The present epoch is one of these critical moments in which the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of transformation.”
- Gustav Le Bon
No offense, but I must disagree that change in ideas were the prime reason for the fall of Rome or the rise of Islam. Or at the very least, we should consider what were the material conditions that allowed for the formation and spread of these ideas in the manner and moment they did
Was there feudalism in Islamic Iberia and the Ottoman Balkans?
Great work! Thanks for sharing 😇
Hind sight makes it easy for us to forget how painfully long changes and reforms truly are. Thank you for the very interesting video.
As always english-centered.
The key here was that Kings enemies were the aristocracy and their power. So the rising power of the merchants gave the Kings a powerful ally against the nobility. They will often push for common causes against nobles. This pushed more conceptions to the common people, special rights to cities etc which weaken the power of nobles and rised that of the kings. Examples like the Hansa, the Holy roman free cities, the Northern cities of Italy and, in Leon, you have the first modern parlament. On the other hand, towns booming, the plague and the rise of a different mind in the rennaissance was making serfdom obsolete.
You also missed to tell that Scandinavia and Iberia were two of the areas in Europe with less serfdom because of political and socio-economic needs. In Iberia the constant conquest made the movement of the peasants necessary for resettlement, making them virtual free folk and not serfs tied to the land. In Scandinavia the same story. Low population density and sparse land made serfdom of little use.
@@randalloshbough908 you can’t really pull that off since we have techniques for how old something is.
@@randalloshbough908 oh shut up
Some of these “anglo-centric” and “English-centric” comments are funny to me.
The player with the hat trick gets the post-game interview. That’s the way history goes.
@@theliato3809 And we also have cross referencing. We know some things happened because it has been researched through multiple cultures and viewpoints. Doing a single bullshit tablet will remain a single bullshit tablet unless you can make a big bullshit in multiple cultures and languages, yet successfully hide it from vast majority of people at the same time so they couldn't write about the progress and rise of your bullshit as it happens, and only then you'd be able to have some chance to fool the future researchers. And for what gain? To waste time of someone? Because eventually they would do cross referencing and determine what you have is a well crafted bullshit with no support outside itself.
you are going to have to suck it up and accept it was the Anglo and English who started most of it
I think you should mention the role of the Church and the Academia, since the "Feudal" society in Western Europe was not just consist of Feudal lords and their subjects.
Feudal lords in fact did not have "complete control" over their peasant/people living in their land. Both the lord and the people living in his land follow common religious laws and national laws. They have a *feudal contract,* with specified rights and obligation to each other.
The so-called "free tenants" or "free towns" did not "purchase their freedom". They simply modified their contract with their lord, replacing some existing obligation with a specified sum of money.
If the lord derived his authority from some infallible source of power, like "god" or a divinely ordained monarch with "mandate of heaven" or whatever, there would be no need for this. They could just take the money and offer nothing in return. Obviously that's not the case. Feudal contract was the foundation of the relationship between them and their subjects.
"Capitalism" already exist during "Feudalism", and during the ancient time when "Slavery" was common. So too the so-called "post capitalist" system.
IMO these are merely different forms or terms of the same social contract, all of them exist together since time immemorial.
For example the Greek merchants and mercenaries employed by Persian and Roman aristocracy in the ancient time, or Genoese and Venetian merchants and mercenaries during the Medieval time.
Economic history is underrated. It’s extremely fascinating.
An excellent video on the subject. Many people don’t understand the differences between feudalism and capitalism and this video illustrates them well!
Feudalism was followed by Mercantilism not Capitalism. Serfdom remained well into the 19th century.
at the risk of sounding too dialectic, one could argue it's a natural "evolution" of mercantilism to develop into capitalism. renowned Socialpsychologist Erich Fromm argues that at least the ideological foundation of capitalism has its roots in the 16th century mercantile age with strong connections to reformed protestantism. Diarmaid Macchulloch doesn't like that idea personally and says there really is no such link and they just happened side by side uncorrelated whilst simultaneously also aknowleding a vague protestant work-ethic. I dont really have a clear opinion on this. Fromm makes a compelling case in his Escape from Freedom but then again he's not a historian like Diarmaid.
I think that mercantilism doesnt apply on an individual level but on the state level. thats why K&G left it out
Serfdom survived, as explained, on the margins of the western World, that is Russia and eastern Europe as well as the colonial lands (mass slavery there, as well as indentured service).
@@maxion5109 I've always been surprises by the Idea (first presented by Max Weber) that capitalism stemmed from 16th century reformation.
These authors seem to conveniently forget that an age of proto-capitalism started to appear during late medieval Italy, mostly in Tuscany and Lombards where a merchant and banker class already parted with the interdiction of usury and interest loans. They quickly accumulated political power and fortunes used in financing further mercantile ventures.
What prevented them from succeeding on the great scheme isn't religious in nature but geopolitical : Italy was fragmented into bitterly rival states and, at the time, was the playground of french and aragonese/spanish monarchs.
@@maxion5109 one can make that argument, but I am pointing out that capitalism did not immediately follow feudalism as stated in the video, K&G makes good stuff and I assume they didn't want to get bogged down in the weeds on that
True answer: They gathered 800 food and 200 gold, and also builded a Blacksmith and a Market.
(You know what I mean)
cheee-HA!
@@Dimitris_Balf An Age of Empires reference.
👍 This was excellent. Thank you. 🙏
Definitely looking forward to more economic videos. I really look forward to seeing how you guys do it. A lot of history of Economics videos leave out key component of the story such as race
You've mixed feudalism with the serfdom of the manoral system. There is a distincitve difference between the manoral system (with serfdum) and the feudal system (how noblemen inacted with each other). The clear social hiearchy only existed in the English model and wasn't a clear as you cover. In Europe, the nobles were seen as much more equal to each other, meaning that the high nobles never had control over the lower nobility.
Why is it in Spanish? Is it because I'm Spanish?
Wow that Segway at the beginning was as smooth as ya boi Duke William's conquest of England in 1066. Keep up the good work, my favourite history channel!
I've been loving these economic history videos
Fun fact: The average feudal peasant worked around 120 days per year. Today the average wage labourer works around 260 days per year. Feudal peasants had about 4-5 months more free time each year than the average modern worker has.
@@maverick7291 Besides growing crops, feudal lords could have forced peasants into mass producing things like tools, weaponry, furniture etc. during their time off for export. The main reason this didn't happen was because the clergy knew that such practises would result in mass social unrest and revolts, so they mandated large amounts of free time for peasants to prevent that and breed complacency within the feudal system. Hence why peasant uprisings during the middle ages were virtually non-existent.
Today's workers have more than twice as much work days as feudal peasants not because it is necessary to maintain civil society or because work is no longer seasonal, but because the endless pursuit of profit at any and all costs has become the defining factor of the modern world, and that requires maximising work days as much as possible without triggering revolts.
@@maverick7291 During feudal times, the closest thing to a centralised authority was the church. The clergy had de facto mandate over the social and spiritual customs and traditions of feudal society, whilst political, military and economic power was mostly in the hands of the nobility. If lords were to push their peasants too hard, the peasants would firstly blame their suffering on the will of God due to the divine right of kings ideology, and so they would consult the clergy. The clergy generally didn't have good reasons for why God would want anyone to work themselves to death for the sake of enriching their master, due to Calvinist work ethic ideology not being implemented into Christian theology yet. The clergy were in this sense forced to mandate that it was the Christian way to not be greedy and exploit your subjects for profit, for the sake of maintaining stability within in the realm. In this sense, the church in many ways acted as a buffer of negotiation between lord and serf throughout the middle ages.
Those 120 days were spent farming. The other days were spent mastering their craft for trade with merchants passing by or serving their lord as servants. Only Holy days and Sundays were free
@@civilengineer3349 Not necessarily. Many peasants did use their free time to hone their crafts, but it was a choice, not a necessity to maintain their way of living. The 120 days was the mandatory minimum required to maintain their way of life. Any other type of work that happened outside of that was mostly hobbyist or to make a couple of extra bucks. The medieval calendar was filled with festivals and celebrations throughout the year, so most free time was spent socialising and participating in leisure.
@@SeriousPlastiek thats not true. Earning coin by trade was important for the purpose of paying rent to the lord and buying goods and services from merchants and other peasants. Relying on crop yields for paying rent, paying debt, and barter was risky because bad weather could make a poor harvest that would impoverish a man and his family immediately if he didnt save for winter and for a rainy day.
The workshops and their shopkeepers were essential to the village economy.
Feudalism doesn't have anything to do with serfdom though. It's about the law and property distribution
@@vorynrosethorn903 no, the video presents the marxist definition. Property doesn't have anything to do with serfdom, as most feudal countries existed completely without serfs, and in others serfdom began after feudalism ended, like in Russia. Feudalism is about law: there are different laws for aristocracy and common people, and property: property is distributed to vassals by a suzerain in order to provide order and military aid, as well as collect taxes.
Good stuff. Thank you, again.
Beautiful video!