600 words writing 778
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/forget-negative-gea…
Feudalism and Manorialism
Feudalism refers to a combination of various activities such as legal, economic, military, and cultural customs that occurred in Europe during the 9th to 15th centuries. The system was also adopted in England and was used to determine the relationships around the society through a structure that was derived from holding and leasing land. The governance system made a pyramid where the king was the top, followed by vassals, knights, and nobles. The system reveals a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations that mainly revolved around the lords, vassals, and fiefs (Astarita 263). Generally, the lord held the land and granted possession to a vassal, while fief was the land. The vassal provides some sort of services to the lord in exchange for the use of the fief. The rights and obligations of the lord and vassal formed a feudal relationship (Fink 745). Mainly, the system emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire that lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure to allocate land to mounted troops.
On the other hand, manorialism is an economic system in the middle ages in Europe that relied on agriculture. It reveals how the land was distributed and the people who profited from the system. The king or a nobleman gave a piece of land to a lord and all its contents. The people who lived in the land were called peasants and had to work for the nobleman who owned the land. Therefore, the nobleman was able to support his family using the items he received from the peasants (Astarita 263). Additionally, the nobleman and the lord had legal powers since the peasants pay tribute to the lord. The payment may be made in terms of money through subsistence farming. There were three different classes of land such as free peasant land, dependent, and Demesne. The demesne class of land is directly controlled by the lord and its use to benefit his family. The free peasants’ land lacks obligation but is subject to manorial jurisdiction, while the dependent land obligates the peasant to supply specified labor services to the lord.
Feudalism reveals similarities with capitalism; under the feudalism system, the lord takes your goods, then gives the peasant some back for survival, then defends them and gives them somewhere to live. On the other hand, under the capitalist system, the capitalist gives workers a price and takes the surplus. These wages are enough to make the people sustain their lives, avoid starvation or homelessness. Therefore, we can conclude that the capitalist and the feudal divide the income of the activities and exploit the workers and exploit them by having control over their own labor (Fink 745). Manorialism reveals some similarities with capitalism since the lord and the capitalist have power over the peasants or the workers. Additionally, they have the right to collect the produce or income and later distribute it to the workers or the peasants. These systems are also a bit similar to communism in the sense that the head of the land owns the land, just like how the state owns the factors of production.
In conclusion, the feudalism system reveals a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations that mainly revolved around the lords, vassals, and fiefs. Generally, the lord held the land and granted possession to a vassal, while fief was the land. The nobleman was able to support his family using the items he received from the peasants. These systems are similar to the capitalism and socialism economic systems.
