How did feudalism begin?

If you mean a Marxist interpretation of rural means of production in the ownership of a military elite who arrogate governmental power based on said ownership, you will find it almost anywhere.

I use "feudal mode of production" to point to this. There are still problems differentiating this from other pre-Industrial modes of production; but, I like to gesture at complex reciprocal and traditional forms of collective ownership of the peasantry and land—with freedom-of-person generally existing for the peasantry and serfs. This relative freedom, communal subjectivity of the labouring class, and expanded freedom from immediate supervision, differentiates both the working relations and the ownership structure from the mode of production in antiquity.

yours,
Sam R.
 
While I would agree that Josephus is wrong about this, Heather is not the best source. He is correct about things like the general state of the imperial economy in the fourth century and the role of Constantinus "III", and horribly wrong about fairly fundamental things like "how migration worked" and "what the Goths et al. actually were". He is also, either implicitly or explicitly, a Tory anti-immigration shill.

What? I'm not familiar with his views on present-day politics, but he seems naturally disgusted with Roman anti-immigrant practices, when he refers to Roman concentration camps, and the like. I disagree with some of his theories about immigration in antiquity, but having read some studies of immigration in the present to try to evaluate neo-migrationism, I think too many studies are anti-immigrant bullcrap, all about state security and state power and downright hostile towards humyn rights, and his work comes off as relatively sane.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Is this really that controversial?

Feudalism arose out of the slow decline and collapse of central Imperial authority in the middle and late Merovingian/Carolingian state system. As the system of dependent landing holdings gradually turned from appointive to hereditary former Imperial officials became great land owners with wide personal leverage over the residents on their own territories. These great concentrations of landed property eventually morphed into the system of inter-personal relationships that defined mature feudalism as security needs became more and more paramount over the course of the Middle Ages.

It's actually a relatively simple PoD in the short run: No Charles Martel confiscating large amounts of church property in order to fund his new military elite means you get to at least delay the development of western European feudalism by a couple decades or more. Delaying it indefinitely might be more difficult, because the prevailing system of self-sufficient manors is going to have a decentralizing tendency regardless of whether the large precaria and benefices of OTL develop, but it's going to be of slightly different character if delayed.

It's actually pretty amazing the massive differences small PoDs in the 600-800 AD period can have virtuallyy anywhere in the world.
 
We're not talking about the same thing here. When someone refers to feudalism, I don't think of the details of the ruling class, I think of serfdom, and maybe manorialism. Now it's debatable whether late medieval feudalism serfdom was a long continuation or a revival of late Roman feudalism serfdom, or something new, but it was not sui generis.

And if we each define feudalism in reference to different features, many of these features emerged at different times for different reasons...
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
We're not talking about the same thing here. When someone refers to feudalism, I don't think of the details of the ruling class, I think of serfdom, and maybe manorialism. Now it's debatable whether late medieval feudalism serfdom was a long continuation or a revival of late Roman feudalism serfdom, or something new, but it was not sui generis.

And if we each define feudalism in reference to different features, many of these features emerged at different times for different reasons...

I'm sorry, but in the academic community feudalism refers most technically to a society dominated by the feudal contract, or more broadly to the entire set of things. Serfdom and manorialism are the words used to refer to serfdom and manorialism.

In this broad definition, serfdom is the natural outcome of a feudal society whose population density increases past a certain point based on the availability of arable land, plus a few other factors which help explain why serfdom arose in some areas and not in others (and in some areas later than in others). Manorialism, on the other hand, is the more direct result of the collapse in security and trade surrounding the Third Century Crisis and the continuing decline in both over the next couple hundred years. A self-sufficient manor starts making a whole lot of sense when 'long distance trade' consists of taking goods to the next village over and 'security' means a stone castle and well trained, well armed men willing to defend it.
 
What? I'm not familiar with his views on present-day politics, but he seems naturally disgusted with Roman anti-immigrant practices, when he refers to Roman concentration camps, and the like. I disagree with some of his theories about immigration in antiquity, but having read some studies of immigration in the present to try to evaluate neo-migrationism, I think too many studies are anti-immigrant bullcrap, all about state security and state power and downright hostile towards humyn rights, and his work comes off as relatively sane.
True, I suppose he doesn't go all out with the barbarians are evulz theme, and he's definitely not as bad as most. But he does basically say that immigrant pressures resulted in the demise of the (western) Roman state, no? The implicit message is that immigrant management policies are necessary to ensure state stability, right?

The part of his understanding of migration that bugs me the most is his apparent presumption of a sort of hive mind on the part of the migratory group. The "Goths" were not merely a "people", but a coherent entity with consistent aims projected over decades. They had wagons, women, and children, ergo they were a whole mass of ethnically and politically well-organized humanity intent on settling in a new location. Which is pretty silly.
 
True, I suppose he doesn't go all out with the barbarians are evulz theme, and he's definitely not as bad as most. But he does basically say that immigrant pressures resulted in the demise of the (western) Roman state, no? The implicit message is that immigrant management policies are necessary to ensure state stability, right?

He describes immigration as, in part the product of Roman power and wealth. Basically, that as long as one has an empire, one is going to have large-scale immigration, more into the empire than out of it. And he argues that unpredictable Roman policies, sometimes including trying to enslave or massacre immigrants, prompted people to choose armed immigration instead of unarmed immigration.

Now there are major problems with his specific arguments - for example, he doesn't seem to consider whether immigrant groups might have different land-use patterns than previously-present groups. Most of the known Roman settlements in Moesia Secunda and Scythia Minor are in the lowlands, and most of the known Gothic ones are in the highlands, and I think the same goes for early Slavic ones.

As to the state stability issue - I tend to think of states as inherently unstable institutions, depending on violence from those in power against those out of power. So that affects how I interpret these topics.

The part of his understanding of migration that bugs me the most is his apparent presumption of a sort of hive mind on the part of the migratory group. The "Goths" were not merely a "people", but a coherent entity with consistent aims projected over decades. They had wagons, women, and children, ergo they were a whole mass of ethnically and politically well-organized humanity intent on settling in a new location. Which is pretty silly.
Actually, I don't see this in his text. I think identity could be more instrumental, and more flexible, than Heather does; in particular Heather doesn't leave much room for acculturation from subordinate groups into dominant ones; for example, Wulfila was not of Gothic descent but his parents had adopted enough of a Gothic identity to give him a Gothic name; I'm not sure whether the sacrifices mentioned in the Passion of Saint Saba [Sava] were only demanded of certain villages or of all villages, but it seems to imply that one [presumably Germanic] pagan religion was dominant within these villages, which, depending on how many villages were affected, may also imply acculturation. But Heather strongly emphasizes individual motivations, and regards the larger groupings as functional coalitions, not descent-groups. Also, I don't think the events of 376 [or 405+] can be used as a model for the events of 395+ or vice-versa. I think there are different kinds of events involved.
 
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