The History of the World Podcast, written and presented by Chris Hasler

Volume 4, The Medieval World

Episode 33, Medieval Feudalism Oh, yeah. Feudalism in Europe was a popular means by which a nation could be governed on both a national

and localised level through a form of agreement between the monarch or the ruling class and the local chiefs

and governors.

It was a popular method of political organization between the 10th and 13th centuries and particularly in England and France.

Often localized rule would be in the hands of a nobleman who was granted his lands by the monarch, typically a king, who allowed

this arrangement after the nobleman swore an oath of fealty to the king by pledging support to him, for example militarily should the king need to form an army.

Feudalism generally is not a uniform manner by which kings ruled their country.

In fact it can vary from kingdom to kingdom, but often the individual arrangements were strict and

sealed in writing, and the term feudalism refers to the style of governance, where theman swears an oath of fealty to their king rather

than the specific rules.

So it is quite a general term that we like to apply to this style of governance retrospectively.

Where the term feudalism can somewhat be quite complex, it is also to do with the fact that local lords themselves could apply the same kind of arrangement to a subservient freemen who would be entrusted to manage their land holdings in return for protection and money.

The freemen might then be obliged to manage the land well enough to return a supplement of produce for the landlord.

It is all for these reasons that feudalism is hard to definitively describe, and should be viewed more as a concept.

For us the History of the World Podcast Community we can travel back in time to the days of the Roman Empire and see a similar

initiative when the barbarian tribes were threatening the borderlands of the empire.

When looking at the Goths and the Franks, for example, of the

lower lands of the

the the late Roman Empire felt that it would be more beneficial

to come to an agreement with some of these tribes as opposed to simply chasing them out of Roman territory.

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