Feudalism
gets a short thrift often in modern discourse. It is particularly maligned by
Hollywood and other aspects of the modern elite and intelligencia. And there
are aspects of it that many moderns will not be fond of, of course.
But without
feudalism the progress of the West towards advanced civilisation could not have
happened. Indeed, without it, the West would be stuck in the same backwards
state as many other parts of the world. As G.K. Chesterton explains,
“By a process very much more indirect even than that of the
Church, this decentralization and drift also worked against the slave-state of
antiquity. The localism did indeed produce that choice of territorial
chieftains which came to be called Feudalism, and of which we shall speak
later. But the direct possession of man by man the same localism tended to
destroy; though this negative influence upon it bears no kind of proportion to
the positive influence of the Catholic Church. The later pagan slavery, like
our own industrial labour which increasingly resembles it, was worked on a
larger and larger scale; and it was at last too large to control. The bondman
found the visible Lord more distant than the new invisible one. The slave
became the serf; that is, he could be shut in, but not shut out. When once he
belonged to the land, it could not be long before the land belonged to him.
Even in the old and rather fictitious language of chattel slavery, there is
here a difference. It is the difference between a man being a chair and a man
being a house. Canute might call for his throne; but if he wanted his
throne-room he must go and get it himself. Similarly, he could tell his slave
to run, but he could only tell his serf to stay. Thus the two slow changes of
the time both tended to transform the tool into a man. His status began to have
roots; and whatever has roots will have rights.”[i]
Feudalism
gave the west the decentralisation it needed to succeed, without which our
society may have stagnated as did China. Without a centrally controlling
bureaucracy the West was able to produce localized initiative across the
breadth of the European people’s, which increased the ability for western people’s
to succeed.
As we now
face the potential collapse of the Imperial bureaucracy which rules the current
western world, we should not forget that the legacy of the west was not just overcoming
this, but turning such a situation into an ability to get ahead of the rest of
the world. People scorn feudalism, but really we should be studying the originators
of the feudal system in the late Roman Empire and the early medieval world and
taking notes, because it may come in handy very soon. But even aside from that we
should recognize how decentralization enabled the west to become anti-fragile.
Where there was once one head, during the medieval era there became across the
western world a hydra of localities, societies and kingdoms which were continually
able to rise up and face the challenges which may have defeated their
neighbours. Also, the ability for the state to oppress was severely hampered
because of the lack of centralised control. This, and other blessings of
feudalism are part of the remarkable success of the history of Europe. Too often
we scorn what we should learn from instead.
[i] A
Short History of England (pp. 11-12). Kindle Edition.
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