Tiêu đề Feudalism 1.pdf ✅

116 Roman Republic z understand the debate surrounding the process of decline of feudalism and views of scholars about it, and z anaylze the different factors responsible for the decline of feudalism. 6.1 INTRODUCTION The feudal social formation contained Roman as well as Germanic groups. Feudalism as a form of political, economic and social system dominated Europe from around 9thto 14thcentury CE. However, during this entire period the political, economic and social structures were not static and uniform. A number of changes were taking place and new relations were emerging. The previous Unit (5) must have provided you a fairly good understanding of the feudal system in Europe. You must have also noticed that in the 14th century gradual decline of feudalism began and in due course of time it came to an end as a dominant system in Europe. In this Unit, we will analyze the varied views held by scholars about the dominant causes for the decline of feudalism. Our aim here is to put before you the entire range of debate pertaining to the question of decline of feudalism. It is not possible to include the views of all the scholars who have worked on this theme. To give a fair idea we have selected a few main views such as those of Henri Pirenne, Maurice Dobb, Kochuru Takahashi, Guy Bois, Marc Bloch, Georges Duby, Paul Sweezy and Robert Brenner. 6.2 TWO MAIN PHASES In order to appreciate complexities of the social and economic life in medieval Europe, feudalism has to be treated more as an evolving process than as a static structure. The idea of two evolutionary phases in feudalism owes much to the pioneering research of Marc Bloch. According to him, the first phase, that began with the establishment of the barbarian successor states on the collapsed political system of the Roman Empire and lasted until the middle of the eleventh century. This substantially preserved the basic social relations which characterized the Late Empire. This phase corresponds to the organization of a fairly stable rural territory where trade was insignificant and uncommon, coins were rare, and a wage-earning class almost non-existent. Ties of vassalage between the greater and lesser elements hierarchically linked the territorial aristocracies who monopolized both the social means of coercion and the regulation of jurisdiction. Most of the peasants were either completely unfree in the eyes of the law or so dependent in various ways on their lords that, if they were free, their freedom was a mere formality. In this phase the agrarian economy was producing very little surplus beyond what was necessary to support the power and position of the landed aristocracy. Production for market was low; rents tended to be in labour or in kind; there was little money in circulation; and there was little effective demand for the luxury commodities of international trade since upper-class incomes were received in kind (produce) rather than in cash. Consequentially, western European life was predominantly rural and localized. The second phase, from the mid-eleventh to the early fourteenth century, was the result of the substantial growth of population, large land clearances, considerable technical progress, revival of trade, diffusion of a monetary economy, and growing social superiority of the merchant over the producer. During this period, Bloch argues, the evolution of society and economy began to move in opposite directions: the former, which was slowing down, tended to hone the class structure into closed groups, while the latter, which was accelerating, eventually led to freedom from serfdom and the relaxation of restrictions on trade and commerce. In the specific context of Maconnais, Feudalism in Europe from the 7th to 14th Century