Feudalism

[Arch-Angel]

Is their any (reasonable) way to keep feudalism to modern day and still have the world be full colonized (no land left to explore) and have at least late 19th century technology? I'm just curious and was pondering. The problem is the tech and exploration part. If the world stagnates its easy, but I was trying to get both.

 

[Sir Isaac Brock]

Is their any (reasonable) way to keep feudalism to modern day and still have the world be full colonized (no land left to explore) and have at least late 19th century technology? I'm just curious and was pondering. The problem is the tech and exploration part. If the world stagnates its easy, but I was trying to get both.

The tricky part is to precisely define what you mean by feudalism. Does their need to be a corvée? Can serfs own land, vote, and petition the courts? A kind of feudalism could persist whereby most land is owned by the state or wealthy landlords who employ peasants tied to the land, and there remain legally defined classes with different rights. However those class-based rights would have to get more and more generous over time to the lower class or revolution would be a danger. You also have to accommodate the emerging urban industrial classes.

Best place to start would be no French Revolution.

You could also just replace Western-style feudalism with the Russian type. Russian serfs were as often as not directly owned / controlled by the Tsar as by any intermediary noble or landlord. This pattern of state-owned farms of course continued right in to the Soviet era. That kind of thing could conceivably continue into the modern era if it had existed in the West.

 

[Arch-Angel]

The tricky part is to precisely define what you mean by feudalism. Does their need to be a corvée? Can serfs own land, vote, and petition the courts? A kind of feudalism could persist whereby most land is owned by the state or wealthy landlords who employ peasants tied to the land, and there remain legally defined classes with different rights. However those class-based rights would have to get more and more generous over time to the lower class or revolution would be a danger. You also have to accommodate the emerging urban industrial classes.

Best place to start would be no French Revolution.

You could also just replace Western-style feudalism with the Russian type. Russian serfs were as often as not directly owned / controlled by the Tsar as by any intermediary noble or landlord. This pattern of state-owned farms of course continued right in to the Soviet era. That kind of thing could conceivably continue into the modern era if it had existed in the West.

When I say feudalism I mean that some rich person (most likely with a title) owns a lot of land and has a number of people tied to the land that live and work it for the person. The serfs (for lack of a better word) have very few rights and protections. Though I could see some movements developing for the abolition or at least protections for the serfs. Furthermore, after thinking about it I guess I could see some nobles destroying the farms on their lands and establishing industrial parks. Of course we have to get there first.

 

[SRT]

In theory you might be able to have feudalism resurface somehow, through illegal immigration. A rich man sponsors some immigrants to come into the country and live on his land and work at his factory, in return for contracts or guarantees that say that they'll always work for him. He could keep this in place by paying for his children's schooling (this is assuming there's privatized schooling, which a lot of people want in the US anyway).

 

[HueyLong]

Arch-Angel, doesn't Decades of Darkness fit your vague description of feudalism?

 

[Sir Isaac Brock]

When I say feudalism I mean that some rich person (most likely with a title) owns a lot of land and has a number of people tied to the land that live and work it for the person. The serfs (for lack of a better word) have very few rights and protections. Though I could see some movements developing for the abolition or at least protections for the serfs. Furthermore, after thinking about it I guess I could see some nobles destroying the farms on their lands and establishing industrial parks. Of course we have to get there first.

Well, you have to explain why, as nation-states emerge, the state would let these private landowners have so much power over the population, when the trend was for the state to take control of labour directly for things like the army. Also why hasn't wage labour replaced the idea of the corvée (being tied to the land)? I know in early 20thC Canada one could do work building municpal roads in lieu of paying taxes, but that's not quite the same.

In theory you might be able to have feudalism resurface somehow, through illegal immigration. A rich man sponsors some immigrants to come into the country and live on his land and work at his factory, in return for contracts or guarantees that say that they'll always work for him. He could keep this in place by paying for his children's schooling (this is assuming there's privatized schooling, which a lot of people want in the US anyway).

If he sponsors them it's wouldn't be illegal, would it?
Actually, you've hit on an interesting point about the US immigration debate. Many migrant workers prefer to remain undocumented because they can quit a job any time they want and find another one. By contrast if you are sponsored by a specific company, and then want to quit, they might try to send you home, since your visa only entitles you to work for that one company. In this way the company has leverage over you, if you get out of line they just ship you back.