The birth of feudalism in Western Europe. The Genesis of Feudalism in Western Europe (8) Processes of the Genesis of States in Western Europe

The fact that, within the framework of pre-industrial civilization, relations arose and existed for a long time, traditionally and not unreasonably called feudal, none of the researchers doubts. To begin with, let's define concepts at the most abstract theoretical level.

Feudalism is a socio-economic system based on:

On conditional land ownership;

The hierarchical system of suzerainty and vassalage, the economic basis of which is rent relations;

Attachment of direct producers - communal peasants or individual peasant families to the land or the personality of landowners;

Legislative registration of feudal dependence in the norms of serfdom;

Predominantly subsistence type of feudal economy at the micro level;

Extremely slow development of productive forces and, accordingly, low labor efficiency of direct producers.

Naturally, the feudal system is much more complex and multidimensional than can be accommodated in a meager set of " brief definitions". For the sake of completeness, we also mention that:

The political structure of a feudal society corresponds to a class monarchy or, more rarely, an oligarchic republic;

Under feudalism, relations of a corporate type—neighboring communities, city communes, craft workshops, merchant guilds, monastic and knightly orders—are widely spread;

In this society, tradition played a huge role and the religious worldview dominated.

We have already shown that in the III and IV centuries. the European slave economy is undergoing a systemic crisis. The great migration of peoples, which began in the 5th century, led to the fact that the "barbarian" neighbors of Rome not only made military raids on the territory of the empire, but also carried out a kind of "reverse colonization" of the outlying provinces. In the V-VI centuries. a mass of free "barbarians", primarily German, settled on the lands of Gaul. Germanic tribes, among which stand out francs, revived the communal system in Gaul. The Germans owned the lands not personally, but through family unions - genealogiae (family union), cosanguinei (consanguineous). But consanguineous unions are by this period in a state of decay: in written sources, “comrades” (socii) and “neighbors” (vicini) are already mentioned. By the way, free Franks-communists are called in the sources of the end of the 5th century. painfully familiar term "leudes" - "people"!

The final fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 led to a rapid agrarianization of economic life. The German conquerors were not interested in the city life of the Romans. From the point of view of the development of productive forces, the period of "barbarian" conquests can be called a time of decline, a certain civilizational rollback. The developed forms of commodity-money relations, characteristic of the ancient economy, were replaced by the naturalization of economic life, mainly rural. But at the same time, this is a period of great historical synthesis of Roman economic culture and the communal system introduced from outside.

Nothing in history disappears without a trace. The German (and Slavic) conquerors of the early Middle Ages (late 5th - mid-11th centuries) turned out to be very receptive to the culture of the conquered peoples. To paint this period in dark tones of the destruction of civilization and culture is historically unfair. This kind of attitude towards periods of conquest by foreigners is a tradition of the conquered peoples. The Germans and Slavs actually brought to Western Europe "fresh blood", the energy of freedom and a kind of communal democracy.

But it would also be an extreme exaggeration to describe this period as a time of some kind of cultural renewal. No, conquerors came to the territory of the former Roman Empire, appropriated the land and the accumulated wealth of the Romans. The conquerors turned into a new landed aristocracy, their leaders became the kings of new states and empires, and the inhabitants of the conquered territories became forced, dependent, and often disenfranchised members of new communities. So it was in the kingdom of the Franks in the territory of Gaul, so it was in Britain, conquered in the middle of the 5th b. Germanic tribes of Angles and Saxons. The new ruling class was thus predominantly foreign origin. The “best families” of the future France are the descendants of the German conquerors, who speak thoroughly corrupted Latin, which did not prevent their language from turning into magnificent and rich French later. By the way, the “best families” of aristocratic England are the descendants of the French and Norman conquerors, who came here with William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066, confiscated the lands of the Anglo-Saxon rulers, appropriated them, and at the same time introduced them into the custom and into British culture French.

Since the Germanic tribes came to Western Europe as conquerors, economic relations were formed in accordance with a peculiar occupation regime, not as cruel as in the 20th century, but no less difficult. The fact is that the Germans, primarily in Gaul, created new settlements not so much as rural neighboring communities, but as military squads. The conquerors needed land not to "cultivate it, but to receive income from it mainly in kind. And working on the land is the lot of people who lived here before the arrival of the Franks: former citizens of the empire, dependent columns, former slaves and the descendants of the tribes settled in this territory, who came here before the Franks and were conquered by them.

Social inequality and class differences appeared and developed in the Frankish kingdom not because the Franks themselves had already advanced along the path of class stratification, but because they conquered and subjugated other peoples and tribes in which class contradictions were already a historical custom.

But even here one should not fall into exaggeration and think that all the Franks became landed aristocrats and did not work on the land at all. The fact is that the German community - the brand - was already quite stratified by the time the Roman Empire was conquered. But this was not yet a class stratification. The more successful and authoritative warriors were more wealthy and powerful, that's all. They became rulers of the conquered territories, military leaders and civil administrators. It was here that the experience of the empire, with which they were familiar, came in handy, having long been on its lands as colonists-border guards. It was not difficult to become a new aristocracy, if only because the Franks made up only 2-3% of the population of the conquered territories. So even a simple warrior could become a large landowner. But not all conquerors succeeded. The less fortunate and noble "sat on the ground", became farmers and cattle breeders. The process of class stratification accelerated after the creation of the Frankish kingdom. Frankish society was infected with the virus of class antagonisms characteristic of the conquered territories.

The Frankish state was formed and took shape as a kingdom on the territory of Gaul in 481. The King of the Franks Clovis Meroving, who ruled from 481 to 511, immediately became a major landowner, since the entire imperial domain passed to him. Part of the conquered lands had to be given to the church, since in 496 the Franks adopted Christianity in the Catholic form.

The forms of land tenure and the social structure of the Frankish society are reflected in one of the first German judicial codes - “Salic Truth” (Lex Salica), dated by researchers to the beginning of the 6th century. and, therefore, reflecting the relations of an earlier period. Judging by this document, supplemented by the Frankish kings in the 6th-9th centuries, the society of this entire period can hardly be called feudal in the literal sense of the word. At best, this is an early feudal society, and more correctly, a transitional to feudal society. The bulk of the Frankish population are free community members with a communal form of land ownership. Private property - allodium- applies to a house, estate, garden, but not to the main body of arable land. The strength of community traditions is manifested in the fact that the inheritance of the allod is carried out only through the male line, so that the family property does not pass to another clan. Female offspring were excluded from the inheritance of the land; in the absence of sons, the land passed to the neighbors. The document is silent about how the fate of the unmarried daughters of the community member developed. True, arable land was in the individual use of families, but was considered communal property. In any case, all arable plots after harvesting turned into a common pasture, " open field» until the next season of spring field work. In the community, there were not only relations of mutual assistance in extreme situations, but also - the flip side of the coin - mutual responsibility, when more prosperous community members had to participate in paying a fine (wergeld) imposed by the court on a poorer relative. It is clear that the latter circumstance weighed heavily on the wealthy community members, and they could renounce their kinship in court (at the risk of not receiving assistance in case of possible extraordinary situations in the future). Only in the second half of the 6th c. in the Frankish kingdom, the allod is fixed as private land property: the land becomes the object of sale, purchase, pledge, donation and inheritance.

In the 5th century The Merovingians granted lands for service, but these awards were vague and chaotic, not legally formalized, which led to the triumph of Roman concepts of complete unconditional private ownership of land. Large land grants were also called allods, but these are not small forms of ownership of ordinary community members, but territories inhabited by several villages, and sometimes commensurate with some modern small European states.

Thus, the allod among the Franks is private landed property. Large landownership was formed at the expense of royal land grants and due to the ruin of allodist peasants, who were forced to surrender themselves under the patronage of large landowners-seniors (this process of voluntary dependence was called comments and has been known since Roman times). It is clear that commendations led to land dependence and already limited the freedom of community members.

The church became a major landowner in the Frankish state. Church institutions received land in various ways: as a grant from the king, through purchase, as a result of clearing the territory from the forest by the forces of monks and parishioners, and - most importantly - through contributions, which were a latent form of selling or pledging land. It was on church lands that various forms of conditional land tenure appeared earlier than on the lands of secular owners, i.e. essential forms of feudal relations.

Catholic church institutions, especially monasteries, gave away their lands precarists. Precarium - temporary and conditional possession of church land. The precariotes could be: persons of the church clergy who received land instead of a salary; persons who invested their land in a church institution and received it back in the form of a precaria, for which they paid dues mainly in kind; persons who sold the land to the church and remained on it as a quitrent; finally, by order of the king, which was often disputed by the church. The precarist had certain rights enshrined in laws, he could challenge his rights in court if the owner violated the contract. For example, in 567, the church council in Lyon forbade bishops to take away the precaria given by their predecessors to members of the church clergy.

As a result, it was the Catholic Church that began to form proper feudal relations in Europe, based on conditional land ownership.

The widespread assertion of feudal relations occurred later, in the 8th and 9th centuries. In the 8th century in the state of the Franks, the so-called mayordoms became the real rulers. The distribution of lands by Clovis and his successors and the endless feuds between heirs and their rivals weakened royal power. Large palace officials took advantage of this, maiordomus - managers of the palace economy and at the same time large landowners and military leaders. One of these Pipinid mayordoms, Charles Martell ("Hammer"), who ruled from 715-741, made a real revolution in land relations.

The essence of this revolution was that the main form of land tenure was benefice- conditional land holding. The fact is that the king (more precisely, the mayor) had to quickly solve several vital tasks:

To create a layer of service people, opposing them to the large landed aristocracy, the owners of allods, against the background of the exhaustion of the "free" land fund;

On this basis, to resolve the problem of professional military officers and officials who are able to more effectively protect the interests of the supreme power;

Release the king's meager treasury from cash payments to the service people; ensure the replenishment of the army with people armed at the expense of the beneficiaries;

To transfer to conditional holders the responsibility for collecting taxes from the population and for the peasants to perform various labor duties.

Let's pay tribute to the ingenuity of Karl Martel: the task was solved brilliantly. Karl practically stopped the distribution of allods. Now the lands complained in the form of beneficium (good deeds) on the terms of lifelong use for service in the army, the state apparatus, and the judiciary. It is clear that the beneficiaries themselves did not take care of the household, they served. They received from the land inhabited by peasants of very different origins and varying degrees of dependence, land rent, in kind and in cash. Yes, and their own service was a kind of rent to the complainant of land ownership. In no case should benefices be considered private property - this is just a private use of the overlord's land. The beneficiary owned the land while he served. In the event of termination of service, the land was returned to the owner. A beneficiary, unlike an allod, cannot be sold, pledged, or inherited without inheriting service functions. Only over time, in the 9th-10th centuries, military and civilian beneficiaries were able to inherit their positions, and with them land ownership. Such inherited conditional possessions became known as fiefs(in France), ililenes(in Germany). The heritability of a feud or fief cannot be understood in such a way that the son of a feudal lord necessarily occupies the position of his father, although this often happened. No, the heir could hold an equivalent or even lower position, but this became the basis for the overlord to leave the fief to the new vassal.

The heyday of the actual feudal (fief) land tenure fell on the XI-XII centuries. How was the land fund intended for beneficiaries and fiefs formed?

Initially, even under Charles Martel, lands were distributed, confiscated from political opponents, rebellious aristocrats, and partly due to the secularization of church lands. But later, during the period of the Carolingians (751-843), and especially under the empire of Charlemagne (768-814), a somewhat different system of formation of the land fund for conditional grants developed. This system arose in connection with the complex hierarchical structure of suzerainty and vassalage. Now not only the king could distribute lands belonging to the state or personally to the king as his domain. Large royal vassals from their feud granted lands to their vassals, and those, in turn, to theirs. As a result, a pyramid-shaped system of vassal dependence was created. With a certain degree of conventionality, it can be depicted as a hierarchy: the king - the dukes - the counts - the marquises - the barons - the chevalier. At the same time, the lower vassal received, along with the land, significant, and sometimes complete immunity from the intervention of royal officials in the affairs of the landed aristocracy. Judicial, administrative, police and fiscal functions were transferred to large vassals and their administrations. The hierarchy took hold rather quickly and became a custom. Under Charles and his son Louis the Pious, even bans were introduced on appeals to the king, bypassing the lower authorities and the immediate overlord. Having initially played a positive role in solving primarily military problems, immune rights contributed to strengthening independence from the central government and subsequently led to the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire. This is how a system developed, the aphoristic characteristic of which we remember from the school bench: "the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal."

In fact, feudal relations were not as simple as it looks in a pyramidal structure. Let's say that each subject of the hierarchy, in addition to conditional holding, beneficiation or feud, could also have its own allod. For special merits, the suzerain could grant land not only in conditional, but also in unconditional possession. Thus, a military or official could have an allod, or might not have it, but, as a rule, he had a benefice or feud. Otherwise, he could not have served, because monetary rewards for service were more like bonuses than regular payments.

Many nobles had several beneficiaries and were vassals of more than one lord. It could also be that the two lords were each other's vassals in relation to separate possessions. Such intricate relations often led to conflicts and clashes, so it is not for nothing that the feudal era is considered a period of lawlessness and cruelty.

It is clear that on the lowest floor of the hierarchical building were those who directly produced social wealth, supported the feudal lords of all stripes, the royal court and the emperor himself, the church and monasteries.

Despite a certain complexity of social relations, all social functions in feudal kingdoms are quite clearly demarcated: secular feudal lords (nobles) fight, priests pray, and peasants work. Although the categories of workers are also diverse and complicated, even among the peasants it is easy to distinguish between two macrocategories - free and dependent. In a huge period from the VI to the XII century. in the state of the Franks (and in France) there are three types of allotments (manses) of direct rural producers: slave, lithic (litas - dependent free, descendants of the predominantly Gallo-Roman population) and free holders with duties of varying severity. Free holders for old times' sake were called columns. In the VI-X centuries. there were, according to some expert estimates, ten times more than non-free ones. The not free - serfs, ancillas, mancipia - already in this period were real serfs on allotment lands, who did not have freedom of movement. Some of them in the documents of that era are directly called servi casati - imprisoned slaves. True, the serfs were already significantly different from the slaves of the Roman Empire. Servos had the right to have a family; it was impossible to separate families during the sale; murder was punishable by excommunication. Many serfs were vacated by will. In fact, the serfs are already serfs. The softening of the position of slaves and the decrease in their number was accompanied by an increase in the number of semi-free columns and freedmen.

The personal dependence of producers was formalized by law. In the VIII-IX centuries. the king directly participates in the establishment of serfdom with his capitularies (decrees), establishing a developed system of fines and punishments for failure to fulfill feudal duties. Charlemagne decreed that every free man must look for patrons and intercessors. But the relationship between the commandant and the patron could be interrupted in cases of violence of the second or after the death of one of the parties. It was under Charles that the title of seigneur was established for the patron, and that of the vassal for the commandant. This is evidenced by the most important document of the era - "The Capitulary of the Villas", which describes the economic life in the land holdings of Charles himself.

The feudal system, relations of dependence and subordination also affected fiscal relations. So, Charlemagne freed free people from direct taxes (indirect taxes, "hidden" in the price of goods, everyone paid), all fiscal duties were assigned to the feudal-dependent population. But the landowners were responsible for their execution.

The Frankish kingdom and empire are a classic example of the fact that feudal relations are based on the cash dependence not only of peasants on feudal lords, but also of feudal vassals on their overlords. If the feudal lords were conditional land holders, more or less subordinate to their lord, then the peasants were conditional holders of allotment lands, obliged to rent payments in the form of corvée, dues and other traditional and extraordinary duties and payments.

By the 11th century practically throughout Western Europe, the principle “there is no land without a lord” was in effect. The brand community did not disappear, but turned into a community of enslaved peasants. True, to identify a French dependent peasant with a Russian serf, say, of the second half of the 16th or 18th century do not do it. With all the severity of feudal exploitation, often leading to peasant uprisings, the serf of the 11th-12th centuries. was less humiliated, had more economic independence, at least in family matters he solved his problems himself. In general, it is not entirely correct to represent the European feudal era as a series of endless class struggle. The system of vassalage and suzerainty assumed that the subjects of relations had mutual obligations. And if the peasant was obliged to work for the landowner, then the lord is obliged to protect the vassal from the claims of other lords and even from the too greedy claims of the royal fiscal.

These mutual obligations became an important component of feudal relations in the 12th-13th centuries, when the majority of French feudal lords completely abandoned the lands of the lordly domain and distributed these lands for the use of the peasants. Receiving a rent in kind, and later in cash, the lord was forced to take care of a certain level of well-being of the peasant, who was able to reproduce his economy - the main source of the lord's income.

Such a system existed in France during the entire period of fragmentation (from the end of the 10th to the middle of the 12th century). Political fragmentation is both the result and the cause of the feudal independence of the landowners. The Catholic Church also played its role in the process of fragmentation of the country, achieving at the end of the 10th century. complete independence of monasteries - large landowners - from secular authorities and bishops and subordinate only to the pope. Already in the XI century. large abbeys and monasteries are transformed into independent landowners. The formation of a spiritual-feudal hierarchy begins.

From the end of the XI century. in the economic relations of France, new phenomena are implicitly beginning. First, quitrents in kind are gradually converted into cash payments. This is an important symptom of the limited subsistence economy, if only because the needs of the aristocracy were growing, and the social status implied the growth of prestigious consumption, the lords increasingly wanted to acquire luxury goods, including those of foreign origin. For this, money was needed. But in order for the peasants to be able to pay money rent, they must also receive a certain economic freedom, at least the freedom to sell their products on the market. Indeed, the twelfth century became a period when the estate system, based on personal ties, increasingly turned into a system based on land ties. Peasants begin to redeem themselves, accumulating funds on market trade. The cash rent paid by the peasant began to be called the qualification, the land allotment - the qualification, and the peasant himself - the censor. To personal freedom, the position of the free Villana, participation in the crusades "for the glory of God" that began in 1096 could also lead to. Already here let us pay attention to the fact that the period of the feudal system proper, at least in France, was very short. Therefore, to represent the entire Middle Ages as a period of continuous torment of the peasantry is not entirely fair. It is historically reliable that in the XIII century. villans already quantitatively predominate over serfs, and personal attachment has finally been replaced by land dependence. In the XIV century, the servage was actively declining, there are examples of the liberation of peasants by entire villages. But attachment to the earth for several centuries was objectively necessary. “A small closed commodity-economic world,” wrote

N. Rozhkov, - could have perished if agriculture in it had not been provided with a certain permanent composition of workers - hence the attachment to the land followed.

However, it would be wrong to paint the situation of the French peasants in a rosy light. Historians count in the XI-XII centuries. more than twenty "waves of hunger". But here is the question: were the real cause of crop failures and famine social relations or natural disasters that periodically occurred in Europe and in later times?

Peasants, having personal freedom, were even more intensively stratified socially. In the XIV and XV centuries. in France, it became possible to sell or mortgage property rights, which led to the emergence of a stratum of impoverished peasants - rural wage workers. And the rich peasants had the new kind peasant holding - sharecropping from their neighbors and even from the feudal lords.

Political issues and endless wars (which is worth only the Hundred Years War of 1337-1453), epidemics (for example, the plague of 1348-1350) led to attempts to return to the personal attachment of peasants to feudal lords. The resistance of the peasants resulted in powerful social movements, popular uprisings, the largest of which was Jacquerie (1358). As a result, by the end of the 14th century, 2/3 of the peasants became personally free holders, mainly on the basis of hereditary leases with a fixed payment for land. And this situation persisted until the Great Revolution of the 18th century.

European feudalism is the result of three variants (types) of the genesis of feudalism. The first type was born directly from the primitive communal system of the barbarians, bypassing the stage of a developed slave-owning society. In Europe, an example of such an option is England, Scandinavia, North-West Germany, as well as Rus', Poland, and the Czech Republic.

The second type was formed on the basis of a synthesis of elements of feudalism, ripening within a slave-owning society, with feudal relations, which were formed at the last stage of the development of the primitive communal system of the barbarians. Moreover, both those and other elements equally formed the basis of the future medieval society. This type of genesis of feudalism found its embodiment in Northern Gaul, among a number of South Slavic peoples.

The third type was born on the basis of a synthesis of elements of late antique society with feudal relations that formed in barbarian societies, with a clear predominance of ancient principles. This path was characteristic of Byzantium, Southern Gaul, and the countries of the Central Asian region.

Eastern feudalism, which developed on the basis of the "Asiatic mode of production", inherited all of its character traits: the predominance of state feudal land ownership, the preservation of specific forms of communal organization of the peasantry; special forms of organization of the feudal estate and the realization by them of their monopoly, mainly through food rent; high degree state centralization.

The feudal system in Western Europe went through several stages in its development.

5th–9th centuries - the era of the genesis and development of feudalism, the time of the gradual formation of large landed property, its monopolization by a minority of the population, the transformation of free farmers into dependent peasants, the establishment of vassal-fief relations.

X-XV centuries - the flourishing of feudalism in the countries of Western Europe, marked by an economic upsurge based on internal colonization - the development of new lands, an increase in the collection of crops, the development of animal husbandry; the revival of cities that have become centers of handicraft production and trade. The development of commodity production and commodity-money relations was accompanied by rent switching, the emergence of fairs, credit, and banks. At this time, technical innovations were introduced - a windmill, a blast furnace, artillery, printing, etc., centralized states were formed.

Late 15th–17th centuries - the time of decomposition, the crisis of the feudal system and the emergence of capitalism. Commodity-money relations expanded, the personal dependence of the peasants was destroyed, the process of initial accumulation of capital, the development of manufacturing production began, and, as a result, social contradictions escalated, developing into bourgeois revolutions.

Changes took place not only in economic but also in political life. In the early feudal period, the state was a large but fragile association (for example, the empire of Charlemagne). In the X-XII centuries. small political formations prevailed - principalities, duchies, counties, which had significant political power over their subjects. Sometimes they were completely independent, sometimes they were nominally united under the rule of a weak king (the so-called period of feudal fragmentation). In the XIII-XV centuries. in many countries there was a process of centralization of the state, culminating in the formation of an estate monarchy. In these states, relatively strong royal power was combined with the existing class-representative assemblies. Only in Byzantium did a strong centralized state survive during the Middle Ages. Finally, in the XVI-XVII centuries. the feudal state assumed its last, most centralized form of absolute monarchy.

The formation of the feudal economic system in Western Europe is traditionally considered on the example of the Kingdom of the Franks, which arose in Northern Gaul in 486. Franks – one of the confederations of German tribes, along with the Anglo-Saxons, Lombards, Vandals, Ostrogoths, etc. In the IV-V centuries. The Germans conquered the Western Roman Empire and formed several so-called barbarian kingdoms. In the V-VII centuries. The Franks were ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, from the end of the 7th to the middle of the 9th century. - Carolingian dynasty.

Basic information about the economy of the Franks in the era of early feudalism is contained in the textbook "Sallic Truth". From this document it follows that the Franks were sedentary farmers, they sowed crops, used a two-field system, used a plow with an iron plowshare, a harrow, and bulls and horses as a draft force. The right to dispose of the land in the village belonged to the community - brand. The Franks cultivated the land individually, in large families. The communal lands were in the indivisible use of the peasants. The economy of the Franks was natural. The Franks had not yet formed classes, but property stratification was already noted.

One of the most important prerequisites for the development of feudal relations was the dualism of the Frankish community. Community dualism – it is a combination of communal land ownership with private peasant farming. Already from the V-VII centuries. it became land, territorial, neighborly, and the land more and more often turned into an allod. Allodium - freely alienable individual-family land property, i.e. private ownership of an allotment of communal land. The peasants appropriated the allotments received from the community into private ownership as soon as the opportunity arose for this. Clearing and harvesting of forest areas were used most often.

The appearance of the allod, deepening the property and social differentiation of the Franks, became a prerequisite for the formation of large feudal property.

The process of concentration of landed property, social stratification was facilitated by the intervention of state power. The state land fund, which consisted of the surviving estates of Roman slave owners, state lands, lands of rebels confiscated during numerous civil wars, was distributed by the royal government to close associates, combatants, and the church in the form of an allod. The state land fund was rapidly declining, so the principles of land salaries had to be changed.

In the 8th century in the Kingdom of the Franks were held important reforms. Under Charles Martel (715–741), as a result of the military reform, the peasants were removed from military service. The basis of the army was the knightly cavalry. The armament of a mounted knight was expensive. The cost of maintaining the troops and equipping the knights fell on the shoulders of the peasants. Military reform required changes in land grants. A beneficiary system was introduced. Benefice - a form of land ownership of the feudal lord, due to certain duties(payments and military service) and term(usually for life). Relationships vassalage: the vassal depended on the lord who granted benefices, took the last oath of allegiance and performance of service. The lord, while retaining the right of the supreme owner to the granted land, could take it away if the vassal violated the contract.

Military service became feudal monopoly. During the distribution of beneficiaries, previously free people who inhabited these lands often became subjects of vassals: they turned from subjects of the king into peasants dependent on private individuals.

In the ninth century beneficiaries turned into fief, or fiefs, representing conditional grant to a vassal, which was inherited. Military service remained the main condition for owning a fief, although the latter was transferred to hereditary use. linen system – a developed form of feudal land tenure, on its basis a vassalage, a feudal hierarchy of the nobility was formed.

All the conditions that contributed to the formation of large landownership (feudal civil strife and wars against other tribes) led to the loss of freedom by the communal peasants.

Devastated by war or crop failure, the peasant, finding no protection either from the community or from the royal power, was forced to seek the patronage of local strong and rich people. Receiving a plot of land from them, he lost his freedom and turned into a dependent or serf. In turn, a large landowner provided his own economy with the working hands of people dependent on him, who paid for land and assistance with their work (corvée) and food (tire).

With the low level of development of the productive forces of that time, a lot of land and labor were required to provide a sufficient amount of agricultural products. The ruling class was not interested in seizing land from the peasants, but in a sufficient number of workers. The seizure of land by a feudal lord consisted in the fact that the allodist lost his ownership of this land and turned into a holder on the basis of feudal law, i.e. became obliged to pay rent for it and to bear duties established either by custom or by agreement. This change in the position of the allodist was the content of the concept of the supreme ownership of the feudal lord over certain lands.

The seizures of communal land and peasant allotments by feudal lords were acquired from the beginning of the 9th century. massive character. The feudal lords brought the peasants to ruin in every possible way, forcing them to either sell or transfer the land to a large landowner.

The most common form of establishing the dependency of the poor on the large landowner was the practice of transferring him to the category of so-called precariae. precarium - literally “transferred at the request”, conditional land holding, which a large land owner transferred either for temporary or for life holding to a landless or landless poor with the obligation of the latter to bear duties and dues in favor of the owner. There were three types of precariae: a) the holder received all the land from the owner; b) the peasant gave his own land to a large landowner and received it back, but not as his own, but as ceded to him by the landowner for the obligation to bear corvée and dues, and at the same time receiving protection and necessary assistance in case of need; c) by giving land, the holder received more land.

The precaria system assumed the dependence of individual peasants on the feudal lords, and the form and degree of dependence were established individually each time.

A peasant settlement could immediately become dependent if the village was part of the beneficiation. The king, granting beneficiaries and demanding military service for him, transferred to the beneficiary the income of the inhabitants of the territory, which, in subsistence farming, was the only way to reward service. Residents became people dependent on the beneficiary, if they had not previously become dependent. With the transformation of the beneficiation into a feud, the dependence of the inhabitants of the beneficiation strengthened, became permanent. Natural economy – simple reproduction of all business conditions; handicraft labor is combined and subordinated to agricultural labor; feudal rent is collected in kind; economic ties with territories outside the patrimony were rarely carried out.

The result of the growth of large landownership was the gradual concentration in the hands of large landowners of judicial, administrative, fiscal and military leadership functions. These functions receive their legal form in the form of so-called immunity. Immunity – this is a privilege that protects the lords and their lands from interference by the king and his representatives in the affairs of the feud.

Immunity was confirmed by an immunity certificate. Immunity rights landowner included: judicial power over the subject population; exercising the functions of a sovereign in an immune territory; the right to collect all fiscal amounts (taxes, fines, etc.).

The basis of the economic organization of the Frankish society in the VIII-IX centuries. became a feudal fiefdom - senoria, its dimensions varied. The land of the patrimony consisted of two parts: the land that was in the household of the feudal lord himself (domain), and peasant allotments (holds). The land of the domain was, as a rule, no more than 1 / 3 of all peasant holdings. The composition of the domain was mainly not arable land, but forests, wastelands, swamps, etc. At a low level of productive forces, necessary labor, or labor expended on the reproduction of the labor force of the direct producer and his family and other production conditions, absorbed most of the labor time peasant and surplus labor could not be large, and consequently, the scope of its application, i.e. lordly smell, could not be great.

The feudal lord could not receive income from his land except by transferring this land in small allotments into the hands of the peasants. The receipt of feudal rent depended on the well-being of the peasant economy and the peasant community. The consequence of this was the relative economic independence of both the individual peasant economy and the peasant community as a whole from the economy of the feudal patrimony. Moreover, the patrimony assumed the existence of a brand community, as an organization (corporation) of manufacturers. Production in the community formed the basis of production in the patrimony. The dominal lands lying interspersed with peasant allotments under two and three fields were included in the corresponding wedges of the village-community and were subject to forced crop rotation on an equal basis with peasants. The feudal lord did not interfere in the economic decisions of the community.

The production process was carried out with the help of individual tools of labor, the production itself remained small, regardless of the size of the estate. Progress in agriculture was expressed in an increase in the cultural area through land reclamation, clearing forest areas, which was processed by the same tools of labor. Under the dominance of small, inefficient production, obtaining a surplus product from an economically independent owner is possible only with the help of non-economic coercion, and personal dependence is in this case a means of non-economic coercion.

In the Middle Ages, there were three types of submission peasant seigneur - personal, land And judicial. A serf in Western Europe was a person who depended on the same lord in three respects at once. By my roots personal addiction goes into ancient slavery. A slave planted on the ground remained a serf. He did not have the right to inherit the allotment, without paying the seigneur a special contribution, he paid a "universal tax", all other duties were not fixed and were collected at the will of the seigneur.

land dependence stemmed from the fact that the peasant allotment belonged to the seigneur. The allotment land was part of the patrimony, whereby the peasant had to bear various duties in proportion to the size of the allotment and in accordance with the customs, which were fixed by tradition and were accurately listed in the cadastres of the patrimony.

Judicial dependency of the peasant followed from the immunity rights of the lord. This dependence was expressed in the fact that the population had to be sued in the court of the immunist, and all judicial fines, as well as those duties that used to go to the king, were now paid in favor of the lord.

As a result of the development of vassalage, the structure of the ruling class of feudal society was hierarchical ladder. Each large landowner was considered a vassal of the king, and each feudal lord could have vassals by ceding to one or another person part of his land with its population as a fief. A large feudal lord, transferring a benefice or fief to a vassal, also transferred to him the feudal rent (or part of it) with the population of the feud, which thus became dependent on the new lord, without losing dependence on the superior.

The establishment of vassalage, on the one hand, acquired the character of distributing feudal rent among various strata of feudal lords, and on the other hand, made direct producers dependent on many seigneurs, and dependence on each of them was expressed in the obligation to pay a certain type of duties and payments. Since the economic conditions did not change for a long time, the feudal holder and his descendants carried the same duties in favor of the lord, sometimes for centuries. The very size and nature of duties became a custom. These duties were considered by both peasants and lords as legal, and deviation from them as a violation of custom. Such immutability gave rise to another phenomenon characteristic of feudalism: the transformation of certain relations between people, in this case the relationship between the lord and his holder, into the legal quality of the holding itself. For the allotment given to the serf, all the duties characteristic of the Servian holding were assigned. They were preserved when the land was transferred, for example, personally to a free person. Conversely, a serf could have a freehold. These relations became even more complicated with the development of commodity-money relations, when land and certain duties of feudal-dependent people became the object of sale and purchase.

In 843, the Carolingian Empire broke up into the West Frankish kingdom, the predecessor of France, the East Frankish kingdom, which laid the foundation for Germany, and Middle France, which included Italy and the regions along the Rhine and the Rhone. The collapse of a huge and powerful state was evidence of the completion of the process of feudalization of Frankish society. Any country in Europe in the Middle Ages was a system of fiefdoms, each of which was essentially a "sovereign" state. Feudal fragmentation is the most important feature of the formed feudal system. Feudalization – this is the transformation of an allod into a hold; the disappearance of free community members and the appearance of their dependent or serf holders; the formation of feudal ownership of land and the emergence of a ruling class of feudal landowners-warriors.

Review questions

1. Name the economic and socio-political foundations for the formation of the feudal economic system.

2. What is allod, beneficiation, feud and what is the difference between them?

3. What forms of peasant dependence on the feudal lord existed in the Middle Ages?

4. Define subsistence farming.

5. What are the immune rights of the feudal lord and what role did they play in the history of feudalism?

Introduction

Conclusion

Introduction

Feudalism - a type of society based on the feudal mode of production. In the IV-V centuries in the advanced countries of Europe there is a transition to feudalism.

The Middle Ages is a centuries-old period of the birth, domination and decay of feudalism. In Europe, it lasted 12 centuries. The remains of the Middle Ages in some countries have not disappeared so far.

This topic is important for research, since it was feudalism that marked the progress in social development. The peasant, endowed with land, was interested in the growth of labor productivity, and this interest increased with the development of feudal relations and the weakening of personal and land dependence. The era of feudalism was marked by the flourishing of small commodity production in the cities, which became the center of freedom and centers of culture.

During the Middle Ages, ethnic communities and state formations changed radically. Tribes merged into nationalities, and modern nations began to form from them. Instead of primitive barbarian states and isolated seigneuries, large centralized states were formed on a national or international basis. Culture has risen incomparably.

The object of research is the feudal economy.

The subject of research is the formation, types and features of feudal systems.

Purpose: to analyze the formation and development of the feudal economy.

To achieve the goal, you need to solve the following tasks:

.To reveal the main types and features of feudal systems.

2.Analyze the genesis and development of the feudal economy in the Frankish state.

.To characterize the classical model of the feudal economy in France.

.To reveal features of feudalism in Russia, England.

To achieve the goal and solve problems, the following methods of scientific knowledge were used: comparison of the opinions of several authors on one issue; historical (historical-genetic) for a comprehensive study of the feudal economy; analysis of educational and scientific literature; generalization of the results of the analysis.

feudalism western europe russia

1. The birth of feudalism in Western Europe

1.1 Main types and features of feudal systems

The period that followed slavery was called feudalism. Feudal relations developed unevenly in various regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Unified in its essence, the process of the genesis of feudalism in each region of the globe had its own local features. But the main criterion for distinguishing the main types of feudalism is the intensity of maturation of feudal elements in the bowels of the previous stage of development and the formation of its basic institutions.

The rise of feudalism in Europe proceeded in two ways.

The first path consisted in the formation of feudal, socio-economic and political institutions on the basis of a synthesis of elements of late antique society with feudal relations that arose among the barbarian peoples. At the same time, synthesis means not just a gradual merging of two structures, but also interaction, interpenetration, transformation of elements of a slave-owning society and the communal-tribal system of barbarians. Byzantium, Gaul, the countries of the Mediterranean region passed this way.

The second way was based on the transformation of tribal relations. This is how most of the peoples of Northern Europe, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, and the Slavic peoples developed.

In both cases, the genesis of the feudal system ended with the formation of two poles - landowners-feudal lords, headed by the supreme feudal lord (king, tsar, emperor, caliph, etc.) and dependent landowners attached to the land who paid rent.

The main wealth in pre-industrial societies was land. Therefore, all social relations, including economic ones, revolved around land relations. Under feudalism, the land was at the complete disposal of the feudal lords, who concentrated in their hands not only economic, but also political, military and religious functions.

During the period of early feudalism, the nature of production was natural, the low level of development of the productivity of forces is associated with the use of primitive tools, the absence of cities. With the development of cities, the improvement of tools, trade began to develop in the XI-XV centuries. commodity production began to predominate. By the end of the XV-XVII centuries. With the development of technology, scientific knowledge, great strides have been made in production. Massively manual labor was replaced by machine. production growth, geographical discoveries led to the expansion of trade relations.

The producer of basic material values was a farmer, a peasant. He was not the owner of the cultivated land, but only its holder on terms that were formalized legally or were the result of "customary law" - unwritten laws, traditions, customs, etc. On this land, the farmer independently ran a household: he had a house, livestock and tools, with the help of which he not only cultivated the plot of land at his disposal, but also the land of the feudal lord. Thus, the material basis of feudal society was the work of the farmer and his small farm.

At the beginning of the feudal period, the positive role of the feudal lords as the ruling class was that, being a class of warriors, they protected the economy of small producers from robberies by other feudal lords and foreigners, maintained order, which was a necessary condition for regular management.

The economic dependence of the farmer on the feudal lord was expressed in work and payments in favor of the owner of the land, i.e. in the form of rent. Three types of rent are known.

Labor rent is a form of economic dependence, in which the farmer worked for a certain time on the land of the feudal lord and performed some duties in his favor. Grocery rent - a part of the crop harvested by the farmer, which was given to the owner of the land for the use of the plot. Monetary rent - the money that the farmer gave to the feudal lord for the use of land.

Under feudalism, the owner of the land and the direct producer acted as mutually interested partners, although they were in an unequal position. Without the peasant, the land of the feudal lord would be dead capital. Self-management of the economy and the availability of their own tools of labor gave the peasant relative economic independence.

Only with the help of non-economic coercion, i.e. violence, the owner of the land could force the farmer to work for himself. Non-economic coercion is a means by which the feudal lord implemented rental relations. Its degree in different periods and in different societies varied - from serfdom, a rigid form of personal dependence to class inferiority, i.e. restrictions on property and personal rights.

The characteristic features of feudal land ownership were its conditional character and hierarchical structure. The first form of land ownership in Western Europe was the allod - freely alienable individual-family private property on an allotment of communal land. It was replaced by benefices - a form of land ownership of the feudal lord, due to certain obligations (payments and military service) and a term (usually for life). Then it was replaced by a feud (or fief - from the German Lehn) - a conditional land grant to a vassal, which was inherited. The land was transferred to the vassal as a reward for military service and the fulfillment of certain obligations in favor of a superior lord. The feud was considered a privileged, "noble" possession. On this basis, a hierarchical structure was formed among landowners, connected by vassal-fief relations. It was formalized in the form of a personal contractual relationship. However, this type of relationship is typical for societies with dominance of private land ownership over state ownership.

A distinctive feature of feudal societies was their class organization. A person could exercise his rights only as a member of any estate: a peasant - the right to hold and own tools of labor - within the framework of a rural community; feudal lords - conditional (hereditary) property within the framework of vassal ties of their community - the feudal estate; artisan and merchant - the right to work and ownership of tools - within the framework of the workshop and guild.

Another important feature is the sectoral structure of the feudal economy. The basis of feudalism as a system was the agrarian economy (a combination of agriculture, cattle breeding and various crafts). From the XI-XV centuries. such industries as handicrafts (clothing, metallurgy, gunsmithing), and trade began to appear.

The corporatism of feudal society was reflected in the social structure of society. Each estate, i.e. feudal corporation, had a certain social, legal and legal status, secured its position and rights in the form of written charters. A man of feudal society exercised his legal, political and economic rights through class affiliation. The corporatism of property was a characteristic feature of feudal society.

Most researchers (G.B. Polyak, M.V. Konotopov, T.M. Timoshina) distinguish two main types of feudal systems: European and Eastern feudalism.

In the textbook M.V. Konotopova it is said that the most important feature of European feudalism was the gradual strengthening of the role of the state in public life. At all stages, it performed two functions - violence and maintaining order. The implementation of violence was connected with the interests of landowners. The state provided them with a monopoly on land, the status of nobility and "nobility", which were secured by special political and legal privileges. Through state institutions, taxes that came to the treasury from the taxable population were distributed in favor of the ruling class. As a guarantor of social peace and order, the monarch entered into a dialogue with various social forces. These functions were closely intertwined in the politics of the feudal states.

During the period of developed feudalism, the state began to outline the features of a formulated and consistently implemented economic policy- state patronage of the handicraft industry and trade, which was dictated by the needs of the treasury, since they served as the most important sources of income.

A distinctive feature of Western European feudalism was the legal formalization of social, including economic, relations. Significant influence was exerted by the legal norms that developed in the Roman Empire. Various normative documents that appeared already in the period of the early Middle Ages not only fixed the formed relations, but also established the legal norms of emerging social relations. They showed a combination of the public, i.e. public and private law. In the era of mature feudalism, developed forms of legal registration of economic relations appeared in the form of royal (imperial) legislation: ordinances in France and England, privileges, patents and mandates in Germany, short stories in Byzantium. These laws were binding on all subjects.

The second type of feudalism is Eastern feudalism. This form developed on the basis of the "Asiatic mode of production" and inherited a high degree of state centralization, specific forms of communal organization of the peasantry, the predominance of state land ownership, and special forms of organization of the ruling class. The rulers and people involved in power lived off rent - a tax from the farmer-producer. Feudal lord in the Western European sense, i.e. a person separated from the state was not here.

In the East, the state opposed the private owner, seeing in its excessive strengthening a threat to its existence and the stability of the structure as a whole. Therefore, measures were taken aimed at a clear regulation of relations everywhere was unambiguous - the state is primary, and the private is secondary, moreover, it is mediated by the same state.

In accordance with this, an Eastern mentality was formed, similar to that which existed in the ancient Eastern despotisms. The desire for wealth was nipped in the bud, and the initiative, enterprise, and innovation behind it had no ground for manifestation.

In all non-European societies, the state represented the highest and unlimited power. His authority was supported by force and tradition. Ultimately, a strong state was necessary for the society itself, accustomed to conservative stability. A number of institutional factors contributed to the development of such behavior and psychology. The system of social corporations (family, clan, caste, workshop, etc.) adapted to the needs of the state. It was no longer early forms of religion that stood guard over these norms and stability, but developed religious systems.

Official Confucianism, medieval Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism in various modifications contributed to the strengthening of conservative stability. Religiously sanctioned ethical norms were the law for "medieval" Eastern society. The law itself was also religious in this society.

Summing up the above, we can single out the main features of feudal systems: the basis of the feudal economy was Agriculture; all land is at the complete disposal of the feudal lord; the producer of basic material values was a farmer, a peasant; the material basis of feudal society is the labor of the farmer and his small farm; the nature of production was natural, but by the XI-XV centuries. commodity production began to predominate; sectoral structure of the feudal economy; land ownership is conditional and hierarchical; class organization of feudal societies.

1.2 Genesis and development of the feudal economy (on the example of the Frankish state)

The feudal system in Western Europe was formed over a long period of time and went through several stages in its development.

Early Middle Ages (V-X centuries, in some Asian countries II-XI centuries) - the period of the formation of feudal relations in a multi-structural economy, the formation of large landed property, its monopolization by a minority of the population, the transformation of free farmers into dependent peasants: the establishment of vassal-feudal relations and classes of feudal society.

The classical (mature) Middle Ages (X-XV centuries, in some Asian countries until the XVI century) - the rise in labor productivity in agriculture and crafts, a significant increase in population, the emergence of cities as trade and craft centers. Europe is turning into one of the most economically and culturally advanced regions of the world.

The late Middle Ages (the end of the 15th-17th centuries, in the East until the end of the 18th-19th centuries) - the gradual disintegration of feudalism and the emergence of capitalist elements. This is the era of the primitive accumulation of capital and the first bourgeois revolutions.

The foundations of the feudal economic system in Western Europe were laid in the kingdom of the Franks, created in Northern Gaul in 486. The Franks are one of the confederations of German tribes. In the 5th century The Germans conquered the Western Roman Empire and formed several so-called barbarian kingdoms.

Basic information about the economy of the Franks in the era of early feudalism is contained in the Sudebnik "Sallicheskaya Pravda". From this document it follows that the Franks were settled farmers. They sowed grain crops, used a two-field system, used a plow with an iron plowshare, a harrow, and bulls and horses as a draft force. The right to dispose of the land in the village belonged to the community - the brand. The Franks cultivated the land individually, in large families. The communal lands were in the indivisible use of the peasants. The economy of the Franks was natural. But the Franks were marked by property stratification.

One of the most important prerequisites for the development of feudal relations was the dualism of the Frankish community, the combination of communal land ownership with private peasant farming. Already from the V-VII centuries. it turned into a territorial, neighboring community, within which the land of an individual peasant family was assigned to private property. Such a land allotment was called allod. The appearance of the allod became a prerequisite for the formation of large feudal property.

In the 8th century important reforms were carried out in the Kingdom of the Franks . Under Charles Martel (715-741), as a result of the military reform, the peasants were removed from military service. The basis of the army was the knightly cavalry. The armament of a mounted knight was expensive. The cost of maintaining the troops and equipping the knights fell on the shoulders of the peasants. Military reform required changes in land grants. A beneficiary system was introduced. Relations of vassalage arose: the vassal depended on the lord who granted benefices, took the last oath of allegiance and performance of service. The lord, while retaining the right of the supreme owner to the granted land, could take it away if the vassal violated the contract.

Military service became the monopoly of the feudal lords. During the distribution of beneficiaries, previously free people who inhabited these lands often became subjects of vassals: they turned from subjects of the king into peasants dependent on private individuals.

In the ninth century beneficiaries turned into fief, or fiefs, . Military service remained the main condition for owning a fief, although the latter was transferred to hereditary use. linen system - a developed form of feudal land tenure, on its basis a vassalage, a feudal hierarchy of the nobility was formed.

All the conditions that contributed to the formation of large landownership (feudal civil strife and wars against other tribes) led to the loss of freedom by the communal peasants.

The most common form of establishing the dependency of the poor on the large landowner was the practice of transferring him to the category of so-called precariae. Precarium - literally "transferred at the request", a conditional land holding, which a large land owner transferred either for temporary or for life holding to a landless or poor landless person with the obligation of the latter to bear duties and dues in favor of the owner. There were three types of precariae: a) the holder received all the land from the owner; b) the peasant gave his own land to a large landowner and received it back, but not as his own, but as ceded to him by the landowner for the obligation to bear corvée and dues, and at the same time receiving protection and necessary assistance in case of need; c) by giving land, the holder received more land.

The precaria system assumed the dependence of individual peasants on the feudal lords, and the form and degree of dependence were established individually each time.

A peasant settlement could immediately become dependent if the village was part of the beneficiation. The king, granting beneficiaries and demanding military service for him, transferred to the beneficiary the income of the inhabitants of the territory, which, in subsistence farming, was the only way to reward service. Residents became people dependent on the beneficiary, if they had not previously become dependent. With the transformation of the beneficiation into a feud, the dependence of the inhabitants of the beneficiation strengthened, became permanent. Natural economy - simple reproduction of all business conditions; handicraft labor is combined and subordinated to agricultural labor; feudal rent is collected in kind; economic ties with territories outside the patrimony were rarely carried out.

The result of the growth of large landownership was the gradual concentration in the hands of large landowners of judicial, administrative, fiscal and military leadership functions. These functions receive their legal form in the form of so-called immunity. Immunity - this is a privilege that protects the lords and their lands from interference by the king and his representatives in the affairs of the feud.

Immunity was confirmed by an immunity certificate. Immunity rights landowner included: judicial power over the subject population; exercising the functions of a sovereign in an immune territory; the right to collect all fiscal amounts (taxes, fines, etc.).

The basis of the economic organization of Frankish society in the VIII-IX centuries. became a feudal patrimony - senoria, its dimensions varied. The land of the patrimony consisted of two parts: the land that was in the economy of the feudal lord (domain), and peasant allotments (holdings). The land of the domain was, as a rule, no more than 1/3all peasant holdings. The composition of the domain was mainly not arable land, but forests, wastelands, swamps, etc. At a low level of productive forces, necessary labor, or labor expended on the reproduction of the labor force of the direct producer and his family and other production conditions, absorbed most of the labor time peasant and surplus labor could not be large, and consequently, the scope of its application, i.e. lordly smell, could not be great.

The production process was carried out with the help of individual tools of labor, the production itself remained small, regardless of the size of the estate. Progress in agriculture was expressed in an increase in the cultural area through land reclamation, clearing forests, which was processed by the same tools. Under the dominance of small, inefficient production, obtaining a surplus product from an economically independent owner is possible only with the help of non-economic coercion, and personal dependence is in this case a means of non-economic coercion.

In the Middle Ages, there were three types of submission peasant seigneur - personal, land and judicial . A serf in Western Europe was a person who depended on the same lord in three respects at once . Rooted in personal addiction goes into ancient slavery. A slave planted on the ground remained a serf. He did not have the right to inherit the allotment, without paying the seigneur a special contribution, he paid a "head tax", all other duties were not fixed and were levied at the will of the seigneur.

land dependence stemmed from the fact that the peasant allotment belonged to the seigneur. The allotment land was part of the patrimony, whereby the peasant had to bear various duties in proportion to the size of the allotment and in accordance with the customs, which were fixed by tradition and were accurately listed in the cadastres of the patrimony.

Judicial dependency of the peasant followed from the immunity rights of the lord. This dependence was expressed in the fact that the population had to be sued in the court of the immunist, and all judicial fines, as well as those duties that used to go to the king, were now paid in favor of the lord.

As a result of the development of vassalage, the structure of the ruling class of feudal society was a hierarchical ladder. Each large landowner was considered a vassal of the king, and each feudal lord could have vassals by ceding to one or another person part of his land with its population as a fief. A large feudal lord, transferring a benefice or fief to a vassal, also transferred to him the feudal rent (or part of it) with the population of the feud, which thus became dependent on the new lord, without losing dependence on the superior.

In 843, the Carolingian Empire broke up into the West Frankish kingdom, the predecessor of France, the East Frankish kingdom, which laid the foundation for Germany, and Middle France, which included Italy and the regions along the Rhine and the Rhone. The collapse of a huge and powerful state was evidence of the completion of the process of feudalization of Frankish society. Any country in Europe in the Middle Ages was a system of fiefdoms, each of which was essentially a "sovereign" state. Feudal fragmentation is the most important feature of the formed feudal system. Feudalization - this is the transformation of an allod into a hold; the disappearance of free community members and the appearance of their dependent or serf holders; the formation of feudal ownership of land and the emergence of a ruling class of feudal landowning warriors.

The origin of the feudal economy took place in Western Europe in the kingdom of the Franks, created in Northern Gaul in 486, in several stages - the Early Middle Ages (V-X centuries), the Classical (mature) Middle Ages (X-XV centuries) and the Late Middle Ages (late XV-XVII centuries, in the East until the end of the XVIII-XIX centuries). The evolution of feudalism is considered on the example of Northern Gaul, since the historical document of the ancient Franks "Sallic Truth" has been preserved, which contains information about the economy of the Franks in the period of the 5th-7th centuries. From the V-VII centuries. the Frankish community turned into a neighboring community, within which the land of a separate peasant family was assigned to private property. Such a land allotment was called allod. As a result of the military reform under Karl Mertel, the beneficiary system was introduced, and in the 11th century. beneficiaries turned into fief, or fiefs, representing a conditional award to a vassal, which was inherited . A system of vassal relations was formed. As a result of the development of vassalage, the structure of the ruling class of feudal society was a hierarchical ladder. In 843, the Carolingian Empire collapsed, which meant the end of the process of feudalization of Frankish society.

2. Features of feudalism in individual countries

2.1 The classical model of the feudal economy in France

It is recognized that feudal relations had the most complete, classical character in France. Feudal estate - seigneury in the IX-XII centuries. - personified the feudal subsistence economy. Expanded area under wheat crops. The land was cultivated with a heavy plow, the horse became the draft force. Viticulture and horticulture, the cultivation of industrial crops, have received further distribution. Mechanical processes were introduced in winemaking. From the end of the XII century. Mills were used more and more widely. Despite the distribution of fertilizers, the yield did not exceed sam-5 (that is, five times more than what was sown). For the French estate, a characteristic feature was the existence of banalities, when such means of production as mills, furnaces, and presses belonging to the feudal lord could be used by dependent peasants for a special fee (flour, grapes, etc.). A special fee was charged for the passage of cargo on the bridge, for the dust raised on the roads by cattle, etc.

Feudal estate - seigneury in the IX-XII centuries. - personified the feudal subsistence economy. Seigneurs, following the example of the king, surrounded themselves with a large retinue, consisting of service people of different categories: squires, mounted knights (chevaliers). Gradually, a stable vassal hierarchy ("ladder") developed in France. At the top of this "ladder" stood the king, who was the supreme lord of all the feudal lords. Below were the largest secular and spiritual feudal lords, directly dependent on the king. They included dukes, counts, archbishops, etc. Formally, they all obeyed the king, i.e. were his vassals, but in fact they had enormous powers: they could wage war, issue money, and exercise judicial functions within their possessions. They, in turn, also had their own vassals - large landowners who had the titles of barons, marquises. And although they were of a lower rank, they also enjoyed a certain administrative and political power in their estates.

Below the barons were small feudal knights. They, as a rule, did not have their own vassals, but only peasants who were not part of the feudal hierarchy. And if in the 9th-11th centuries the term "knight" meant simply a warrior who carried out military (usually equestrian) service with his lord, then in the 12th-13th centuries this term acquired a broader meaning and began to mean people of noble birth, unlike ordinary peasants.

Each feudal lord was a lord for a lower feudal lord, if he received land from him on the rights of holding, and a vassal of a higher feudal lord, whose land holder he himself acted. The same hierarchy developed among the spiritual feudal lords, where vassalage was determined by the rank of the occupied church position.

Within the vassal subordination, the rights and obligations of the subjects included in it were clearly delineated. The transfer of a fief from a lord to a vassal was called an investiture. This was accompanied by a solemn ceremony of entering into vassal dependence, or bringing homage (from the French homme - a person), during which the dependent feudal lord took an oath of allegiance ("foie") to his lord.

The vassal hierarchy in France turned into an exemplary system of government for the whole of Europe, embodying a peculiar form of political and military organization of the feudal state. During the Early Middle Ages, only the feudal hierarchy was able to ensure relative stability in society and the preservation of the signs of the state.

It is known that the political and administrative center of France was traditionally located in the north-east of the country. For a long period, the royal court did not have a fixed location and moved from one city to another. Later, the city of Lan became the capital, and only at the end of the 10th century the status of the capital of France was assigned to Paris.

In the X-XI centuries. in France (as well as throughout Western Europe) a large number of castles were built. This process is called "incastellamento" ("locking"). Large feudal lords built stone castles for themselves, which, if necessary, turned into fortresses, with thick, high walls, towers and a dungeon where one could hide from enemies. In addition, the castles were the political, judicial, military and administrative centers of the feudal estates. All this inevitably led to a weakening of the central government and increased fragmentation of the country.

By the end of the 11th century, the number of feudal lords increased markedly, among which were both large seigneurs (mainly descendants of the Carolingians) and small feudal lords, mostly from among the servants and vassals of the king. All of them needed to further strengthen the feudal monopoly on land. To this end, the royal government proclaimed the principle "there is no land without a lord." This meant that all power should belong to secular or ecclesiastical feudal lords and that there was no longer any place for free peasant farms in the country.

In the XI-XII centuries. in the French countryside, the system of majorata was established - the seigneury began to be inherited either entirely or two-thirds by her eldest son, which strengthened the monopoly of seigneurs on land.

France in the 11th century various categories of dependent peasantry were reduced to the main group of serfs - serfs, who belonged to the estate. By inheritance, as a dowry, as a gift, by will, the serfs, together with the estate, could be transferred to the new owner, although they had land allotments and ran their own economy. Their duties were varied and numerous, they were determined by land and serf (personal), as well as judicial dependence on the feudal lord. These included the payment of a general tax, marriage and inheritance duties, corvée and quitrent in kind. They paid judicial, market, bridge, road and other duties and fees.

With the establishment of the feudal system, the exploitation of the peasants intensified, new duties were added. The feudal lords seized communal lands, imposed a fee for their use. Banalities were used more and more widely.

In this historical period, the dominal economy (or the so-called master's plowing) played an important role, which was mainly supported by serfs. The serfs worked at the expense of the corvée in the master's fields with their tools and working cattle under the supervision of the senior managers.

In general, in the 13th century, notable successes were achieved in French agriculture: crop areas expanded, fertilizers began to be used, the three-field system spread everywhere, the number of crops grown increased, and new tools were introduced.

As early as the second half of the 12th century, France began to involve new lands (wastelands, deposits) in the economic circulation, and forests were cleared. Thus, internal colonization took place in the country.

During this period, in France, despite the political fragmentation of the country, crafts and trade began to develop. Craft workshops and workshops were formed. Economic specialization led to the strengthening of internal economic ties.

Under Louis IX, a unified monetary system of the country was approved. The development of cities and trade led to the destruction of the economic isolation of individual regions. This contributed to the formation of a political and economic alliance between the cities and the king, since the cities sought the protection of their liberties from the royal power, and the king needed money that could be obtained from wealthy citizens. On the other hand, the feudal lords (especially small and medium ones) were also interested in solid state power in order to legislate the impending changes in relations with the peasants (transition to the quitrent system).

By the end of the 15th century, the process of political unification of the country was basically completed. Under Louis IX, Burgundy, Provence and other territories were annexed to France. By this time, a single French language had developed on the basis of the Parisian dialect. In the second half of the XV century. the influence of class representation on the life of the country gradually began to decrease. The estates-general met on a case-by-case basis, and in 1484 they were convened for the last time. The nobility for the most part ended up in the military service of the state and almost ceased to be engaged in farming. appeared in the political arena new form state system - an absolute monarchy, which finally deprived the sovereignty of all historical provinces. The royal power completely subjugated the economic, political and military spheres of the country's life.

The economy of France is considered to be the classic model of the feudal economy, since it was here that the basic principles of feudalism were fully implemented (1. There is no land without a lord and there are no lords without land.

The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal.), the implementation of which gave rise to a clear system of vassalage within the feudal hierarchy as well. In the XI-XII centuries. a system of primacy developed - the lordship began to be inherited either entirely or two-thirds by her eldest son, which strengthened the lords' monopoly on land.

By the 11th century various categories of dependent peasantry were reduced to the main group of serfs - serfs, who belonged to the estate. The serfs were in a terrible position. They were legally disenfranchised, could be executed or convicted, all sorts of duties were imposed on them. Banalities were used more and more widely.

2.2 Features of feudalism in Russia

A number of peoples passed immediately from primitive to feudalism. The Slavs also belonged to such peoples. Kievan Rus - this is how historians call the state of the ancient Slavs from the 9th to the 11th centuries, with the center in the city of Kyiv.

The formation process in Kievan Rus main classes of feudal society is poorly reflected in the sources. This is one of the reasons why the question of the nature and class basis of the ancient Russian state is debatable. The presence of various economic structures in the economy gives grounds to a number of specialists to assess the Old Russian state as an early class state, in which the feudal structure existed along with the slave-owning and patriarchal.

In Rus', patriarchal slavery also existed, but it did not become the predominant form of management, because the use of slaves was inefficient. In the XI century, along with the princely, boyar estates began to form. This happened in several ways:

the prince complained to his warriors on certain period territories for collecting tribute - food. Over time, these lands became the hereditary possessions of the boyars;

the prince rewarded combatants for serving with state land;

the prince could give his close associates part of his possessions.

From the 11th-13th centuries, a hierarchical structure of land ownership was established in feudal land ownership. At the head of the hierarchical ladder was the senior prince, who was the supreme owner in relation to the feudal lords. The heirs of the senior prince, who received full ownership of the land, became specific princes, and their possessions were called appanages. Under this system, the main privileged form of landownership was still the boyar estate as a large, independent economic unit. The patrimonial farms remained almost completely subsistence, all basic needs were met by products that were produced within the patrimony. The main form of economic dependence of peasants on landowners was quitrent in kind. ( product rent). Church land holdings were not inferior in size to the boyar estates. Churches and monasteries, as well as feudal lords, seized communal lands and attacked the rights of peasants. During the period of the dominance of the patrimonial economy, an increasingly prominent place began to be occupied by the estate, or conditional land tenure.

In the XIV century, the social division of labor intensified, the craft began to be more and more separated from agriculture, which led to a more active exchange between the urban and rural population, to the emergence of the Russian internal market. But the creation of the internal Russian market was hindered by feudal fragmentation, since in each principality a large number of travel and trade duties and taxes were established. The development of domestic trade inevitably led to more active monetary circulation. As in the Old Russian state, during the period of feudal fragmentation of Rus', internal trade played a less prominent role than external trade. Already at the end of the XIII - early XIV centuries, foreign economic relations revived again.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the process of unification of Russian lands into a single state intensified, which ended mainly in the 16th century. The main reason for the strengthening of unification processes in Rus', in contrast to the West, was the strengthening and development of feudal relations, the further strengthening of patrimonial and local land tenure. The development of the Russian economy in the 15th-16th centuries is associated primarily with the gradual enslavement of the peasants who lived on the lands of the feudal lords.

The enslavement of peasants can be divided into 4 stages:

The first stage (the end of the 15th - the end of the 16th centuries) - part of the rural population lost their personal freedom and turned into serfs and serfs. The Sudebnik of 1497 streamlined the right of peasants to leave the land on which they lived and move to another landowner, confirming the right of the owner-owning peasants, after paying the elderly, to be able to leave on St. George's Day. However, in 1581, in the conditions of the extreme ruin of the country and the flight of the population, Ivan IV introduced reserved years, which prohibited the peasants from leaving the territories most affected by disasters.

The second stage (the end of the 16th century - 1649) - a decree was issued on the widespread enslavement of peasants in 1592. By a decree of 1597, fixed years were established (the term for detecting fugitive peasants, initially determined at five years). After a five-year period, the fleeing peasants were subject to enslavement in new places, which was in the interests of large landowners, large nobles. The final enslavement of the peasants was approved by the Council Code of 1649.

At the third stage (with mid-seventeenth V. until the end of the 18th century), serfdom developed along an ascending line. For example, according to the law of 1675, the owner's peasants could already be sold without land. Largely under the influence of the socio-cultural split caused by the reforms of Peter 1, the peasants began to lose the remnants of their rights both in their social and legal status approached the slaves, they were treated like talking cattle.

At the fourth stage (the end of the 18th century - 1861), serf relations entered the stage of their decomposition. The state began to take measures that somewhat limited the arbitrariness of the landlords, moreover, serfdom, as a result of the spread of humane and liberal ideas, was condemned by the advanced part of the Russian nobility. As a result, for various reasons, it was canceled by the Manifesto of Alexander 11 in February 1861.

As in other feudal states, agriculture was the main branch of the feudal economy in Russia. For centuries, it was agricultural production that determined the level and degree of economic and socio-political development of the country.

The state of agricultural production, especially in early stages, largely depended on natural and climatic factors, which in general were not favorable. Summer for the Russian peasant is a period of extreme exertion of forces, requiring the maximum concentration of labor efforts and their great intensity.

Throughout feudal history, the main branch of agriculture was grain farming, since the main share in the food structure was baked goods. The leading place was occupied by rye, wheat, barley. They were supplemented by oats, millet, buckwheat, peas and other agricultural crops.

From the middle of the XVIII century. dozens of new plant species were mastered; experts count 87 new cultures. The introduction of potatoes, sunflowers, and sugar beets was especially important.

The main form of arable farming in all areas inhabited by the Eastern Slavs was a two-field system. In the XIV - XV centuries. the transition to three-field land began, dividing the arable land into three parts (spring - winter - fallow). Widespread transition to a three-field crop rotation - biggest achievement agriculture in Russia. Its introduction revolutionized agricultural technology and land use.

Other branches of agriculture were of an auxiliary nature. In the 17th century progress in animal husbandry. It was expressed in the allocation of areas where this industry became predominant, most adapted to the market (Arkhangelsk province, Yaroslavl, Vologda counties).

During the early and mature feudalism in Russia, the following forms of landed feudal property existed: "black" lands under the authority of the monarch; palace lands; lands of secular and spiritual feudal lords. In the same period, large landowners were monasteries, which from the second half of the XIV century. began to turn into independent feudal farms with large land holdings. In total there were 150 such monasteries.

Secular feudal lords have long and enviously looked at the vast land wealth of the church, dreaming of taking them into their hands. The Council Code of 1649 confirmed the government's policy of freezing the growth of the possessions of the clergy. However, during the 17th century the church increased the land fund somewhat.

According to the type of feudal landownership, patrimonial and local lands were distinguished. A patrimony was a land holding, an economic complex owned by the owner on the rights of full hereditary property. Local - inalienable land property, due to the service to the ruler. The formation of landownership falls on the end of the 15th century.

The Council Code of 1649 authorized the established practice of transferring the estate in whole or in part from the father to the children.

The decree of Peter I of March 23, 1714 marked the merger of the estate and patrimonial forms of land ownership, turning the landed property of the feudal lords into hereditary property.

In ancient Rus', in addition to agriculture, handicraft production was widely developed. As an independent industry, it began to take shape in the 7th-9th centuries. The craft centers were ancient Russian cities such as Kyiv, Novgorod, Polotsk, Smolensk, Suzdal, etc. Among them, the first place was occupied by Kyiv - a large craft and trade center.

The level of handicraft production in Ancient Rus' was quite high. Skillful blacksmiths, builders, potters, silver and goldsmiths, enamellers, icon painters, and other specialists worked mainly to order. Over time, artisans began to work for the market. By the XII century. Ustyuzhensky district stood out, where iron was produced, supplied to other areas.

Feudalism contributed to the development of the economy, industry and trade. The development of trade caused the appearance of money. The first money in Rus' was cattle and expensive furs.

At the beginning of the XVII century. the first manufactories were built. Most of them belonged to the treasury, the royal court and large boyars.

Palace manufactories served the needs of the royal court. State manufactories were created for the production of weapons (Cannon Yard, Armory) or for state needs (Money, Jewelery Yards).

In the XVII - XVIII centuries. the construction of construction and textile manufactories continued, progress was observed in railway construction and the development of communication lines, and a river shipping company arose. The first steamboat appeared on the Neva in 1815. By 1850, there were about 100 steamboats in Russia.

Russia's access to the Baltic Sea increased the volume and expanded the scope of Russian foreign trade. Great importance in foreign trade acquired the ports of St. Petersburg, Riga, Tallinn. A prominent place in Russian exports of the XVIII century. occupied industrial goods: linen, canvas, iron, ropes, mast timber, and in early XIX V. corn. Russia imported cloth, dyes, luxury goods. Trade continued to develop with the countries of the East - Persia, China, Turkey, Central Asia.

It can be said that the economic development of feudal Russia took place on the whole in line with those processes that were characteristic of other European countries. At the same time, it possessed a number of features and characteristics associated with external and internal political development, mentality, traditions, a vast territory, and a multi-ethnic population. The later entry of Russia into the era of industrial development predetermined its lagging behind the leading countries of Europe.

2.3 England's feudal economy

Feudal relations in England developed at a slower pace. By the 11th century here the military service class was still weak. Most of the peasants remained free landowners. However, the Norman Conquest in 1066 accelerated the process of feudalization. The seizure of land by the victors led to the growth of large-scale landownership and the enslavement of the peasants. And in the XII century. the predominant part of the peasants found themselves in the position of having lost their personal independence: they were called villans. Another common category of the dependent population was the cotters, who did not have a field plot and worked duties on the lands of the landlord (feudal lord). In contrast to France, in England a significant stratum of freeholder peasants remained, personally free, although dependent on the feudal lord in terms of land. Here the peasant community and communal order were more stable than in France.

Under William I and his successors, Danish raids and feudal civil strife ceased; a "royal peace" was established in the country, which made it possible to establish economic life more calmly. With the beginning of the Norman period in England, cities began to develop as centers of crafts and trade. Trade routes became so safe that, as chronicles of that time wrote, one could carry a bag of gold along English roads and not be afraid of attack and robbery.

Through port cities (Dover, Brighton, Portsmouth, etc.), trade relations were established with continental Europe (Italy, Germany, France, and especially Flanders), where wool, tin, lead, livestock, and later bread and skins were exported from England. Moreover, not only feudal lords, but also peasants participated in trade. In the XI-XIII centuries. fairs in Winchester, York, Boston, where both English merchants and merchants from other European countries. At the turn of the XI-XII centuries. London became the capital of England (since 1707 - the capital of Great Britain).

A feature of the English cities was that since almost all of them were on the lands of the royal domain, their lord was the king himself. Cities were required to pay the king a sum of money (firm) collected from all residents. Gradually, the townspeople managed to buy out some functions of self-government (in particular, judicial ones), as well as the right to create trade guilds. At the turn of the XI-XII centuries. there was a widespread association of urban artisans in workshops.

During this period, a clear system of state administration was created in the country. At the head of the counties were sheriffs who performed administrative, judicial, tax and other functions. At the beginning of the XIII century. a special royal body began to play an important role - the Treasury, which was in charge of collecting income and checking the financial activities of sheriffs in the counties.

From the 13th century the manorial system began to flourish. The classical manor consisted of several parts. More than half of the land of the manor was occupied by the domain economy, the other part - by the allotments of villans and a number of allotments of freeholders. The lord acted as the owner of the manor.

The main thing in the manor was the close connection between the master and peasant farms. The peasants cultivated the master's land with their tools, using their own livestock.

It can be noted that the manor was a typical example of subsistence farming. Trade relations with other estates were rare and limited. The manor was dominated by corvee and quitrent in kind, on the basis of which stocks "for household use" were created. The peasants had no money, so they worked out the corvée and paid dues in food. But if the villan evaded the performance of duties, the feudal lord could demand payment of their monetary equivalent.

For various categories of villans, the nature of working off depended on the area of the allotment. So, there were villans - virgatarii, who had a full allotment - virgata. These peasants had to work on corvée two or three days a week. Villans - semi-virgatarii performed these duties at half the rate. Kotters were obliged to work on the corvee every day, using the master's working cattle and tools.

Field work was considered strictly obligatory for all categories of peasants; even villans could not avoid them. No reasons were taken into account, even such as illness, bad weather or holidays. During haymaking or grain harvesting, the number of working days on the master's fields doubled for the peasants.

In the XIII century. the general level of development of the economy, and above all agriculture, has risen substantially. A three-field crop rotation (along with a system of open fields) was widely used, a heavy plow was used, which was set in motion with the help of oxen. Regional specialization of agricultural production became noticeable: grain crops were mainly grown in the south, east and center of the country, while livestock farming flourished in the north and west. A significant part of the production was exported to the market. An increase in demand for agricultural products led to an increase in prices for wool, bread, etc. A wealthy elite formed among the Villans, who sought to pay a ransom and become free.

These economic trends led to the fact that the XIII century. was marked by the rapid growth of English cities. By the end of the century, there were about 280 urban settlements in the country, and many of them became very rich.

The strengthening of economic ties inevitably led to the strengthening of the role of the state in all spheres of life. During this period, the state apparatus grew noticeably, which led to an increase in taxes and fees from both peasants and townspeople. Such steps have caused discontent among the population. The large landowners, who advocated the preservation of their immunities and isolation, were also dissatisfied. In relation to objectionable feudal lords, repressions were used, and their possessions were confiscated in favor of the king. All this led to social tension in the country, especially during the reign of John the Landless. As a result, he was forced to compromise with the feudal nobility and sign the Magna Carta in 1215.

After the adoption of the Great Charter, the intensity of contradictions in society did not decrease, and as a result of the establishment of this document, they were never put into practice, and after the death of John the Landless, many of its provisions were completely canceled.

From the end of the XIII century. the English countryside was undergoing major changes caused by the crisis of the manorial system. At the beginning of the XIV century. in England, as in other Western European countries, a massive transition to rent in kind and cash (rent commutation) began. By the middle of the XIV century. monetary rent became predominant among all forms of duties. This was beneficial for strong peasant farms, who already had connections with the market and could receive personal freedom for ransom. The poor peasants hardly paid off the lords and remained dependent on them for a long time.

At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. most of the villans, having paid a ransom, were freed from corvée. Thus began the abolition of many elements of the personal dependence of the peasants.

At the beginning of the XV century. The English economy has entered a new era. Its main features include the collapse of the domain economy, the strengthening of the rights of peasants to land, and the strengthening of the value of monetary rent. Simultaneously with the destruction of the corvee system, the old large nobility was ruined, unable to adapt to new conditions. Many of the feudal lords hoped to receive assistance from the state, in connection with which there was a difficult struggle between the barons at court, and they also expected to enrich themselves through robbery in France against the backdrop of the Hundred Years War then taking place. But all this could not provide them with the former standard of living.

As the English economy changed, contradictions between the old and the "new" nobility grew in the country, which led to a civil war that went down in history as the War of the Scarlet and White Roses (1455-1485). It seemed that the war broke out because of the succession to the throne, but the true reasons lay much deeper.

At the height of the war, the York dynasty came to power. But the York dynasty was on the throne for long. As a result of the tragic events associated with the reign of Edward IV's brother, the cruel King Richard III, power passed to the Tudor dynasty, which relied entirely on the urban bourgeoisie and the "new nobility". At the turn of the XV-XVI centuries. in England all the conditions were ripe for the transition to market relations.

In the XII century. the predominant part of the peasants found themselves in the position of having lost their personal independence: they were called villans. Another common category of the dependent population was the cotters, who did not have a field plot and worked duties on the lands of the landlord (feudal lord). Unlike France, England retained a significant layer of peasants - freeholders, personally free, although dependent on the feudal lord in terms of land. Here the peasant community and communal order were more stable than in France. From the 13th century the manorial system began to flourish. The Manor was a typical example of subsistence farming. Trade relations with other estates were rare and limited. The manor was dominated by corvee and quitrent in kind, on the basis of which stocks "for household use" were created. At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. most of the villans, having paid a ransom, were freed from corvée. Thus began the abolition of many elements of the personal dependence of the peasants.

Conclusion

To achieve this goal, an analysis was made of the formation and development of the feudal economy.

Using research methods, the following tasks were solved:

the main types and features of feudal systems are revealed. The following main features of feudal systems can be distinguished: the basis of the feudal economy was agriculture; all land is at the complete disposal of the feudal lord; the producer of basic material values was a farmer, a peasant; the material basis of feudal society is the labor of the farmer and his small farm; the nature of production was natural, the level of productivity was low, but by the XI-XV centuries. commodity production began to predominate; sectoral structure of the feudal economy; land ownership is conditional and hierarchical; class organization of feudal societies.

By type, feudalism is divided into European, which does not deny private property, legal norms begin to play an important role during this period. In Eastern feudalism, the state is centralized, denies the private, seeing it as a threat to its existence and stability in general, adheres to traditions and does not welcome innovation.

An analysis of the genesis and development of the feudal economy in the Frankish state is made. The origin of the feudal economy took place in Western Europe in the kingdom of the Franks, created in Northern Gaul in 486, in several stages - the Early Middle Ages (V-X centuries), the Classical (mature) Middle Ages (X-XV centuries) and the Late Middle Ages (late XV-XVII centuries, in the East until the end of the XVIII-XIX centuries). The evolution of feudalism is considered on the example of Northern Gaul, since the historical document of the ancient Franks "Sallic Truth" has been preserved, which contains information about the economy of the Franks in the period of the 5th-7th centuries. From the V-VII centuries. the Frankish community turned into a neighboring community, within which the land of a separate peasant family was assigned to private property. Such a land allotment was called allod. As a result of the military reform under Karl Mertel, the beneficiary system was introduced, and in the 11th century. beneficiaries turned into fief, or fiefs, representing a conditional award to a vassal, which was inherited . A system of vassal relations was formed. In 843, the Carolingian Empire collapsed, which meant the end of the process of feudalization of Frankish society.

The characteristic of the classical model of the feudal economy in France is given. The economy of France is considered to be the classic model of the feudal economy, since it was here that the basic principles of feudalism were fully implemented (1. There is no land without a lord and there are no lords without land. 2. A vassal of my vassal is not my vassal.), The implementation of which gave rise to a clear system vassalage and within the feudal hierarchy.

The features of feudalism in Russia and England are revealed. The economic development of feudal Russia took place on the whole in line with those processes that were characteristic of other European countries. Features of feudalism in Russia:

Russian feudalism did not inherit slavery; it's inefficient.

The role of land ownership is great, the strong power of the state over the individual, as a result of which there was no clear system of vassalage within the feudal hierarchy.

The development of feudal landownership proceeded from the estate to the estate. The decree of Peter I of March 23, 1714 marked the merger of the estate and patrimonial forms of land ownership, turning the landed property of the feudal lords into hereditary property.

The long process of enslavement of the peasants (XV-XVII centuries) .5. Severe and varied forms of personal dependence of the peasants.

The main feature of feudalism in England consisted in a much greater centralization of government than in France. The reason for this was the conquest (1066) of the country by feudal lords gathered from all over France under the leadership of the dukes of Normandy, who occupied the English throne. Another feature concerned the technological base of the English estate. Thanks to the coastal ecology, sheep breeding flourished there and a large amount of raw wool was produced. Wool improved the life of English peasants (clothes, mattresses, etc.) and served as an important industrial raw material. In the XII century. the predominant part of the peasants found themselves in the position of having lost their personal independence: they were called villans. Another common category of the dependent population was the cotters, who did not have a field plot and worked duties on the lands of the landlord (feudal lord). Unlike France, England retained a significant layer of peasants - freeholders, personally free, although dependent on the feudal lord in terms of land. Here the peasant community and communal order were more stable than in France. From the 13th century the manorial system began to flourish. The Manor was a typical example of subsistence farming. Trade relations with other estates were rare and limited. The manor was dominated by corvee and quitrent in kind, on the basis of which stocks "for household use" were created. At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. most of the villans, having paid a ransom, were freed from corvée. Thus began the abolition of many elements of the personal dependence of the peasants.

At the beginning of the XV century. The English economy has entered a new era. As a result of the growing contradictions between the "old" and "new" nobility, Civil War. At the turn of the XV-XVI centuries. in England, all the conditions for the transition to market relations were ripe.

In conclusion, it can be noted that each of the countries had its own characteristics of the development of feudalism, but the main industry in each of them was agriculture, the main wealth was land. All social relations, including economic ones, revolved around land relations.

List of sources used

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Eastern feudalism, which developed on the basis of the "Asiatic mode of production", inherited all its characteristic features: the predominance of state feudal land ownership, the preservation of specific forms of communal organization of the peasantry; special forms of organization of the feudal estate and the realization by them of their monopoly, mainly through food rent; high degree of state centralization.

The feudal system in Western Europe went through several stages in its development.

The formation of the feudal economic system in Western Europe is traditionally considered on the example of the Kingdom of the Franks, which arose in Northern Gaul in 486. Franks – one of the confederations of German tribes, along with the Anglo-Saxons, Lombards, Vandals, Ostrogoths, etc. In the IV-V centuries. The Germans conquered the Western Roman Empire and formed several so-called barbarian kingdoms. In the V-VII centuries. The Franks were ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, from the end of the 7th to the middle of the 9th century. - Carolingian dynasty.

Basic information about the economy of the Franks in the era of early feudalism is contained in the textbook "Sallic Truth". From this document it follows that the Franks were sedentary farmers, they sowed crops, used a two-field system, used a plow with an iron plowshare, a harrow, and bulls and horses as a draft force. The right to dispose of the land in the village belonged to the community - brand. The Franks cultivated the land individually, in large families. The communal lands were in the indivisible use of the peasants. The economy of the Franks was natural. The Franks had not yet formed classes, but property stratification was already noted.

One of the most important prerequisites for the development of feudal relations was the dualism of the Frankish community. Community dualism – it is a combination of communal land ownership with private peasant farming. Already from the V-VII centuries. it became land, territorial, neighborly, and the land more and more often turned into an allod. Allodium - freely alienable individual-family land property, i.e. private ownership of an allotment of communal land. The peasants appropriated the allotments received from the community into private ownership as soon as the opportunity arose for this. Clearing and harvesting of forest areas were used most often.

The appearance of the allod, deepening the property and social differentiation of the Franks, became a prerequisite for the formation of large feudal property.

In the 8th century in the Kingdom of the Franks were held important reforms. Under Charles Martel (715–741), as a result of the military reform, the peasants were removed from military service. The basis of the army was the knightly cavalry. The armament of a mounted knight was expensive. The cost of maintaining the troops and equipping the knights fell on the shoulders of the peasants. Military reform required changes in land grants. A beneficiary system was introduced. Benefice - a form of land ownership of the feudal lord, due to certain duties(payments and military service) and term(usually for life). Relationships vassalage: the vassal depended on the lord who granted benefices, took the last oath of allegiance and performance of service. The lord, while retaining the right of the supreme owner to the granted land, could take it away if the vassal violated the contract.

9. Formation of feudal relations in Rus'.

The development of production and the strengthening of ancient Russian statehood led to qualitative changes in the sphere of social relations. According to most historians, it was in the XI century. in Kievan Rus, the formation of feudalism - a special complex of socio-economic and political relations.

The formation of feudal relations in Russia proceeded on the whole according to the pan-European type: from state forms to seigneurial (patrimonial) ones. But unlike Western Europe, where the traditions of private property in antiquity led to the rapid growth of senior landownership, in Russia this process was much slower.

Until the middle of the X century. the nature of socio-economic relations was determined by tributary relations. The method is the collection of tribute during the polyudya. On the basis of the collection of tribute, the institution of feeding arises. Tribute entered the prince's treasury, then the prince redistributed part of the tribute among the combatants in the form of gifts, feasts. In addition to tribute, the treasury received various kinds of fines imposed in the form of punishment on offenders, as well as court fees.

Socio-economic relations also determined the social structure of ancient Russian society. We can judge the nature of this structure on the basis of studying the code of laws of that time - “Russian Truth” , the first part of which was compiled on the initiative of Yaroslav the Wise (1019-1054). According to Russkaya Pravda, there were two groups of the population in Kievan Rus: “people who served and those who did not serve,” “people who sat down as princes” and ordinary people. The former personally served the prince in the military, civil or economic field. The latter paid tribute to the prince, forming rural and urban tax societies. Among the princely husbands, the boyars stood out - the top of the nobility, and among the common people - smerds, purchases and ryadovichi.

Many articles in Russkaya Pravda are devoted to slaves known as servants or serfs. Most historians are inclined to believe that “servants” is a term of an earlier period, which is used along with the new name “serf”. The serfs were completely powerless - a serf who hit a free man could be killed with impunity. They did not have the right to testify in court, for their murder the owner was subjected only to church repentance.

In addition to serfs, Russkaya Pravda names purchases, ryadoviches and outcasts. A purchase is a bankrupt community member who has gone into debt bondage for a loan (kupa) taken and not repaid. The status of Ryadovich is not entirely clear, although the name comes from a certain agreement (row). An outcast is a person who has lost his social status (people who have broken with the community, serfs who have been set free). Ryadovichi and outcasts, as well as purchases, were subjected to corporal punishment, had no full rights in court and were not responsible for some crimes themselves (the owner paid a penalty for them). In the economy of Ancient Rus', the feudal structure existed along with slavery and primitive patriarchal relations. A number of historians call the state of Rus' a country with a multiform, transitional economy. Such historians emphasize the early class nature of the Kievan state, close to the barbarian states of Europe.

1. Genesis of feudalism in Western Europe. Economic development of the Frankish state

1.1. The Genesis of Feudalism in Western Europe

The period of feudalism is a great and important milestone in the history of human society. The transition to feudalism did not occur immediately. Several centuries passed before the new, feudal mode of production proved its superiority over the old slave-owning production. In Western Europe, feudalism arose on the basis of the collapse of the Roman slave-owning society, on the one hand, and the decomposition of the tribal system among the conquering tribes, on the other; it was formed as a result of the interaction (synthesis) of these two processes.
Feudal society in its development went through three main stages, according to which the history of the Middle Ages is divided into such periods:

1. The early Middle Ages (V-X centuries) - the era of the establishment of the feudal mode of production, i.e., the creation of feudal land ownership and the gradual consolidation of free communal production by the feudal lords. The characteristic features of this period are the low level of development of productive forces, the complete dominance of natural economy, the weak development of the social division of labor and, as a result, the absence of cities.
2. Developed feudalism (XI-XV centuries) - characterized by a general growth of productive forces, which led to the separation of crafts from agriculture. The consequence of this was the formation of feudal cities, the development of the internal market, a significant aggravation of the class struggle, which caused the strengthening of feudal states.
3. The late Middle Ages (end of the 15th-middle of the 17th centuries) - the era of the decomposition of feudal society, in the depths of which a new capitalist mode of production begins to take shape. Feudal production relations are characterized by private feudal ownership of land and the exploitation by feudal lords of peasants dependent on them. The purpose of feudal production is to obtain a surplus product in the form of feudal rent through the exploitation of the peasantry.

The main features of feudal production relations:

1. The dominance of natural economy. Commodity relations were very weak and began to play a more or less prominent role during the heyday and decay of feudalism.
2. The direct producer (peasant) was endowed with land and had some tools at his disposal. Thanks to this, a certain interest of the peasant in the results of his labor and in the improvement of tools and methods of agricultural production was achieved.
3. The feudal system is characterized by this or that degree and form of non-economic coercion.
4. Low, routine state of technology.

The feudal lords and the peasants dependent on them were the main classes of feudal society. Craftsmen, merchants and the entire urban population were also more or less dependent on the feudal lords.

The economic domination of the feudal lords was based on their actual ownership of the land, although this land was given to them for military service and nominally belonged to the state in the person of the king or other supreme ruler. Large-scale landed property of the feudal lords was created in the period of early feudalism not only through grants from the king to his vassals, but also through direct seizures of peasant lands. As the feudal system grew stronger, individual feudal lords sometimes became economically more powerful than their kings. The conditional nature of their landed property was thus extinguished.

The peasants who were on the land turned into serfs or dependents in one form or another and were obliged to pay their master labor (corvée), natural ( quitrent) or cash rent.

Feudal relations of production created a relatively greater scope for the development of productive forces than slave-owning ones, because the serf, who had his own farm, gave the feudal lord only a part of his product of labor and, consequently, was interested in expanding production and improving the tools of labor. Therefore, already in the early period of the development of feudal society, after some regression associated with a period of devastating barbarian wars, the productive forces began to develop more intensively than in the slave-owning society during its greatest prosperity. Much more widely than in the period of the Roman Empire, the heavy plow began to be used, the water mill, the press for squeezing grape juice were improved, and the draft power of working cattle began to be used more widely.

The feudal system arose in different countries in different ways. In the countries of Southern Europe and France, it was a direct result of the synthesis of the colony and the decomposition of the tribal system of the conquering barbarians. In Germany, England, the Slavic states, it arose in the course of the decomposition of the primitive communal system: these countries did not go through the stage of a slave-owning society, because during the period of the formation of their classes and the state, slavery had already historically outlived itself.