Feudalism and Manorialism

Feudalism is a way to govern a large state when the king is poor and not very powerful, and when there aren't good roads so it is hard to communicate with people who live far away at the other end of your kingdom. Society in much of medieval Europe was organized into this system, which was based on the allocation of land in return for services to the king. The king gave grants of land or fiefs, to his most important noblemen (barons and bishops) and in return each noble promised to supply the king with soldiers in time of war.
The king divided his land into fiefs and gave them to other rich men or women, who were called lords. In exchange, the lord had to swear fealty to the king - they had to promise to come help the king whenever he asked them, and to do whatever the king told them to do. Each lord held a large amount of land, so they divided their fiefs into smaller fiefs, ruled by counts or countesses or barons or baronesses. In exchange, the counts had to swear fealty to their duke or duchess. Few kings had enough wealth to keep a standing army and depended on their barons to provide knights and soldiers. Lords were also the warriors of medieval society. As trained knights, they were bound by oath to serve the great nobles who granted them their fiefs, and could be called to battle at any time. Kings had to work hard however to keep the barons under control. In many cases, especially in France and Germany, the barons grew very powerful and governed their fiefs as independent states.
These counts still held pretty large amounts of land, so they would divide their fiefs into farms, and give the farms out to their own followers. In exchange, the farmers had to swear fealty to the counts. So the feudal system was like a pyramid with the king on top, then a few dukes, then a lot of counts, and then a lot of farmers at the bottom. When the king wanted to get an army together, he sent messengers to his dukes telling them to come with a lot of men, and the dukes sent messages to the counts, and the counts sent messages to each village telling men to come serve in the army. But often the lords would decide that they were as rich as the king, and didn't have to do what he said. When the king told them what to do, they would just ignore him. Sometimes the king was so weak he just had to let that happen. Other times, the king would fight a war to try to force the duke to do what he wanted.
Manorialism is the other side of the feudal coin. You could say that the economic base of feudalism was manorial agriculture. The reason for this is to be found in the climate and the topography. Agricultural techniques were quite different in northern Europe from Mediterranean lands. It is no surprise that feudalism and manorialism never really developed in the south of Europe. In the north you could sow grain both in fall and the spring. So the work could be more evenly distributed during the course of the year. Because the land was much more fertile in the north you could have larger farms in the north than you could in the south.

In England the average farm contained 30 acres, but in Greece the farming unit at the most consisted of 10 acres. Oats and rye could be grown up north. This was important for cattle-raising and also the human diet. These crops gave lower yields per acre than wheat and barley but they required larger fields, which were available up north. In the south they had to depend on the traditional olives and grapes.

The moldboard plow created a revolution in agriculture. It makes deep furrows and thus provides the necessary drainage for early use of the land. The moldboard plow was invented in Germany probably long before the invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries. It came into gradual use in the area between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers. In the Romanized areas of southwestern Europe there were certain social obstacles to the use of the moldboard plow. In these regions formerly a part of the Roman Empire, Roman ideas of private property in land and slaves prevented the development of private farming. Few individual farmers could own the necessary number of draft animals to pull this heavy plow. It took anywhere from four to eight oxen to pull a full-sized moldboard plow. There was also the problem of turning several teams and a rather cumbersome plow around when you got to the end of the field. This led to strip farming, or long-acre farming in the north. Each strip was roughly one acre in size. The Romans had always used square fields, which were somewhat smaller. These sorts of tradition were hard to overcome. In south of Europe, there was therefore no change in agriculture.

Manors usually had four parts to them: arable land, meadow land, waste land, and the village. Each part had a specific purpose and none could be dispensed with if the manor was to survive.

The arable land was utilized by the three-field rotation system which prevailed in most of Europe. This meant that one third of the arable land always remained fallow in order not to exhaust the soil. There was plowing the year round, except when the ground was frozen or at harvest time. This made maximum use of the most important tool the serfs had, the moldboard plow. The value of manor was determined for the most part by the number of plows and teams of oxen it possessed. Each individual pleasant strip was about one acre in size. It took about one day to plow a single strip. Crops and peasant field assignment were scattered in 3 fields throughout the manor. Plowing and planting was fixed by custom. There was also uniform cropping. Thus no innovation was possible. It kept things the way they were for almost one thousand years.

Meadow land was as important as arable land. It was necessary to feed the draft animals. The idea of sowing and harvesting hay to feed the animals had not yet occurred to them. There was thus a chronic shortage of winter fodder. This meant that there was a constant danger of losing the cattle and sheep. It was never successfully overcome.

The waste land was used for summer pasture for animals of the whole manor, watched by children or lowly attendants. So-called wasteland also provided wood for fuel and building materials for peasant huts. In addition it provided an important part of the food supply: nuts, berries, honey, rabbits. So, it should be obvious that the manors were relatively small clearings among large stretches of forest and wastelands. The vast expanse of the fertile European plain was never fully exploited and helps to account for the backwardness of medieval economic life. Most of central and northern Europe was blanketed with a vast forest of tall trees or unhealthy swamps.

The village itself was usually located in the center of the arable land, somewhere near the most convenient water supply: rivers, natural lakes or drained swamps. The cottages where the serfs lived were made of mud brick reinforced with straw and had earthen floors and thatched roof. Usually they consisted of single rooms not very large in floor space or height. There were usually small adjoining gardens where some vegetables and fruits were grown. Little time and ground was wasted on flowers or decorative shrubs. Chickens, dogs, and ducks maintained a precarious existence in the streets.
The vast majority of the European population lived on land far into the 19th century. For most of that time they farmed the soil cooperatively. In a way you could say that European peasants are no strangers to a form of primitive socialism. Until a hundred years ago all food came from fields tilled by peasants in this manner. Only in Poland and England was pattern of cooperative village farming broken early. So northern Europe provided a fundamental distinction from the grape-olive-grain farms of the Mediterranean lands. This in fact means that agriculture was adjusted to the geographic conditions that prevailed in northern Europe. This also meant that northern Europe surpassed the Mediterranean countries in wealth and power.