notes-history-feudalism

Feudalism is a political/social/economic system.

The most salient properties appear to be:

• a lord/vassal relationship in which the Vassal pledges military service to the Lord, and in return the Lord pledges military protection to the Vassal; the Vassal might also have obligations beyond military service, and in 'late-stage feudalism' the Vassal might have only these other obligations, and no military service obligation.
• Often, the Lord also loans land (a 'fief') to the vassal
• I'm not sure, but i get the impression that the lord/vassal relationship, including the loan of land, cannot easily be cancelled without cause by either party; in fact in many cases it was hereitary
• the formal division of people into hierarchical classes, with the lower classes denied what would in some other systems be regarded as universal human rights
• manorialism, a system in which the Lord of the Manor holds both economic and legal (including judicial) power over the manor, and a relatively large number of other people live in the Manor and have obligatory contributions to the Lord

Interestingly, looking at the etymology of various feudal titles, it appears that many of the names for later nobility and important offices derived from words earlier used to mean describe either companion (eg Count see also comes) (also possibly there are examples of a band of warrior-companions who travelled with and were permanently attached to the Lord (see eg the gedriht in [1] for a sense of what i mean, also [2], although mb this shouldn't be in the list b/c the name didnt appear to carry thru), or mercenaries employed to personally defend the Lord eg possibly baron), or household attendents/non-warrior employees of the Lord (eg. Chamberlain), or servant in general, possibly including either household or military, personal or remote eg thegn, or military commanders eg "duke", people who could afford to equip themselves with various expensive military equipment, eg "knights", who had to provide a horse

Sometimes, even pre-feudally, council or their members were named after words associated with old age and/or wisdom, eg. ealdorman, gerousia, Witenagemot.

I forgot which webpage i saw this on, it was something about the etymology of things like Chamberlain, but apparently the early English or French royal court (i forgot which one) was mobile, and in modern terms was essentially a band of thugs and their servants which had conquered a large territory and would ensure their continued dominance by roaming around demanding free accomodations and food from the local rules, taking whatever they wanted.