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=                             Feudalism                              =
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                             Introduction
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Feudalism was a combination of legal and military customs in medieval
Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly
defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships
derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
Although  derived from the Latin word 'feodum' or 'feudum' (fief),
then in use, the term 'feudalism' and the system it describes were not
conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the
Middle Ages. The classic definition, by François-Louis Ganshof (1944),
'feudalism' describes a set of reciprocal legal and military
obligations among the warrior nobility revolving around the three key
concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs.

A broader definition of feudalism, as described by Marc Bloch (1939),
includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but also
those of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and
the peasantry bound by manorialism; this is sometimes referred to as a
"feudal society". Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's
"The Tyranny of a Construct" (1974) and Susan Reynolds's 'Fiefs and
Vassals' (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among
medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for
understanding medieval society.


                              Definition
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There is no commonly accepted modern definition of feudalism, at least
among scholars.  The adjective 'feudal' was coined in the 17th
century, and the noun 'feudalism', often used in a political and
propaganda context, was not coined until the 19th century, from the
French 'féodalité' ('feudality'), itself an 18th-century creation.

In a classic definition by François-Louis Ganshof (1944), 'feudalism'
describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the
warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords,
vassals and fiefs, though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment
related only to the "narrow, technical, legal sense of the word".

A broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch's 'Feudal Society'
(1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but
those of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and
those living by their labour, most directly the peasantry bound by
manorialism; this order is often referred to as "feudal society",
echoing Bloch's usage.

Outside of a European context, the concept of feudalism is often used
by analogy, most often in discussions of feudal Japan under the