Serfdom and European history.

[Dinner]

I've been reading a lot on the history of the middle ages recently and it is amazing how different real history was from the stereotypes of the dark ages and middle ages which we where all taught in movies and even school. An example of such is the feudal system of lords, lesser lords, and peasant serfs; we are taught that all of western and central Europe (at least) utilized a mostly noncash economy called feudalism which was based on hierarchy, owed obligations of military service, and obligations of labor by the peasant classes and while that was the ideal of feudalism the reality was that the feudal system was not uniformly put in place and that facts on the ground often changed and/or modifed it to exempt people due to political, economic, or social realities.

For instance, Italy, even after the fall of the western Roman Empire, remained significantly urbanized (unlike most of western Europe) and so some 25%-40% of the population were actually free men or free holders instead of classic feudal peasants. Scandinavians were a fiercely independent lot in a society made up mainly of free men and their slaves and thus even after they converted to Christianity there never was a true feudal system in place as a large portion of the population remained free men, the slaves were made servants instead of slaves and were owed wages (normally taking the form of housing/land & labor in exchange for work) but even they could had the legal right to leave if their master was to harsh. Countries such as England under the Danelaw subjegated the native Celtic population but the Scandinavians were actually freemen while those skilled people of Roman (and/or Romano-Celtic) decent who had skills the Anglo-Saxons needed/wanted were allowed to remain outside of the feudal system. After the Norman invasion much of this changed as the French speaking Normans attempted to put in place an idealized feudal system but this was fiercely opposed. Scotland also never had a true feudal system as the people banded together into clans, shared (or supposedly shared) extended family units which fought together to maintain their freedoms and oppose feudal domination. In those countries the feudal system was always just a veneer put over the existing social order.

The countries most completely feudalized were the former lands of Charlemagne's Empire. France, Lothringia (Burgundy and the low countries), and what is now Germany. Were virtually everyone was forced to conform to the feudal ideal of lords of different ranks (from King to Baron), peasants, and Churchman with very few craftsmen or independent freeholding specialists. Even there though some continued to exist outside the feudal system especially in western Germany though as Germans expanded eastward the German lords were ruthless in putting the feudal yolk on their conquored Slavic subjects (especially in the Baltic region). The Northern part of Spain was part of Charlemagne's Empire and so the feudal system was ridgedly in place but as the crusades to reconquer Iberia progressed common people were often able to negotiate the status of freemen or special privileges in exchange for assisting the would be conquers. Thus you had a dichotomy of ridge serfdom in the north and relatively free holding society in the south. The Poles and Lithuanians were ruthless in subjectating the pagan and Orthodoxed people's of their Empires; attempting to imulate France's example of feudalism mainly because the lordly class was vastly outnumbered by an alien peasant class who spoke a different language and had different religions and so they attempted to repress the majority and force them to convert and switch languages.

The weird exception was Russia which was actually freer during the middle ages but regressed. As western Europe moved away from feudalism and towards a market economy Russia actually intensified feudalism and made more and more of the population serfs. Strange stuff.

[Dinner]

Oh, and the Hungarians were a semi-feudal society with a significant number of freeholders, at least initially but as the Hungarians became more and more under threat from outsiders they became more feudalistic especially since there was a shortage of gold and silver so a system of owed labor and military service in exchange for land became more and more appealing to the leadership caste. Austria was relatively feudal from the beginning but as they expanded the conquered areas were REALLY subjected to harsh feudalism.

The Byzantines always remained outside the feudal system though they did have a landowner/warrior class who promised to serve the Empire in exchange for grants of land. Most of those grants were relatively small though compared to the huge feudal possessions in the west effectively making them moderately sized freeholders. The economy also remained mostly cash which is the opposite of a feudal economy.

[Wernazuma III]

The Northern part of Spain was part of Charlemagne's Empire and so the feudal system was ridgedly in place but as the crusades to reconquer Iberia progressed common people were often able to negotiate the status of freemen or special privileges in exchange for assisting the would be conquers. Thus you had a dichotomy of ridge serfdom in the north and relatively free holding society in the south.

Actually, the northern Spanish regions can be characterized by a small scale agriculture, with large number of freeholders, or even complete non-feudality (Basques), while the south is dominated by large estates in hand of nobility. This is even true today, even though the Spanish Crown pushed for de-feudalization under the Habsburgs (too much power of feudal lords in the south and semi-feudal lords in the New world [that is, IMO, the true reason for the "Indian protection laws": to weaken local strongmen]).

[Wernazuma III]

Oh, and the Hungarians were a semi-feudal society with a significant number of freeholders, at least initially but as the Hungarians became more and more under threat from outsiders they became more feudalistic especially since there was a shortage of gold and silver so a system of owed labor and military service in exchange for land became more and more appealing to the leadership caste. Austria was relatively feudal from the beginning but as they expanded the conquered areas were REALLY subjected to harsh feudalism.

Again not quite.
There were few regions where actually Austrian nobles took over conquered lands within the empire. I can only think about Bohemia, where it was rather a matter of Counter-Reformation than distribution of conquered new land. Which, at the same time, was merely replacing one feudal lord for another. The same replacement of Protestant nobles by Catholic "heroes" of the 30-years war and other loyal nobles happened in the "heartland" (if you wish for that term) too: Styria, Carinthia.
Hungary, OTOH, was left in charge of the local feudal lords, mostly the Protestant nobility, who managed to fend off attempt of Absolutistic rul by the Habsburgs, cementing their very own feudal lands and rights over Hungarian peasantry.