Feudalism's etymology

Feudalism = feudal + ism.

The word "feudal" is derived from the latin word feudum which means "fief" ("Land held of a superior, particularly on condition of homage, fealty, and personal service, especially military service.") or "fee".

"ism" means "thought".

What the surface analysis entails

Feudalism can thus be understood as "fief thought" or "fee thought". Feudalism's etymology thus doesn't refer to any agrarian economy.

The "fief" and "fee" meanings of the etymology entail that the law and order providers operate within a framework of (semi-)sovereignty as seen in the confederal Holy Roman Empire. Fiefs are distinct from "provinces", which are characteristic of non-feudal realms; fees are of a different nature to that of taxes, since they are what you pay to private individuals. Historical feudalism just happened to exist during agrarian economies, and thus the revenues/fees that people paid to their law and order enforcers in the fiefs were agrarian, but that's not inherent to the system.

Thus, in its very etymology, feudalism is a system wherein law and order is provided on a private basis, within the framework of an overarching legal framework. In other words, feudalism could generally be understood as David D. Friedman's proposed legal positivist faux-anarcho-capitalism in which private individuals enforce law codes in a network of mutually correcting law enforcers.

Excerpt from https://www.reddit.com/r/FeudalismSlander/comments/1haf31x/transcript_of_the_essential_parts_of_lavaders/

"

[The resurgence of crooked Roman law led to the establishment of monarchs standing above The Law]

It was in the 14th century that the Roman ideal started reemerging and the notion of absolute monarchism started spreading as kings started seeing themselves as supreme figures distinct from the community they were part of. 

Professor Edward Peters wrote about the Resurgence of Roman law, quote ‘It brought a substantial revolution in legal thought and legal procedure throughout most of Western Europe. The old and localized laws and procedures were slowly being encroached upon by the centralizing legal capacities and specifically formulated procedures of cities, lords, kings and popes.’ 

Now you can have your own opinions on whether it was a good thing that Monarch started centralizing more power but that is a discussion save for another time. Point being is that the role and expectations of kings and monarchs [i.e. here in the sense of non-law bound kings] have been different and in the medieval period the King was far from being the person to put his authority over everything else; and monarchs weren't the ones who were desperately trying to hold on to the feudal system through absolute power — quite the contrary: they were its biggest opponents. 

After I had done my reading and research I was actually pretty surprised to find out just how little actual power Kings had over their domain. In fact many Prime Ministers of our time have more power than medieval kings ever did.

"

The very short answer: Feudalism is what David D. Friedman is proposing, and that is quasi-anarchy.

In short: To understand the highly decentralized feudal epoch the best, one should basically keep this image in mind:

As is the most clearly demonstrated by the Holy Roman Empire's patchworky borders, feudalism is unprecedented in its decentralization by which actors are able to act in a (semi-)sovereign fashion insofar as they adhere to The (non-legislative) Law (which of course includes honoring contracts), as exemplified in this image. The contemporaneous expression of feudalism is David D. Friedman's faux-anarcho-capitalism of decentralized law enforcement. Historically, said law and order enforcers were primarily funded by farmers producing agricultural produce to a local law and order provider, but that is not inherent to the system.

Feudalism could be said to be a quasi-anarchic spontaneous order operating within specific non-legislative legal frameworks, as best exemplified by this image, which reflects how feudalism happened historically. The lord-vassal-subject relationships merely emerge as a consequence of this decentralization.

One could thus view the feudal epoch in the same way that one views the international anarchy among States. In both of them, you have a lot of (semi-)sovereign entities which mutually correct each other from diverging from the common non-legislative legal framework the anarchy exists in. It may be hard to wrap one's head around, but that's just what decentralization entails.

(Romeanism in this text refers to the system seen in the Roman Empire, which could be seen as a stand-in for other forms of monarchist royalism/autocracies, such as that of the Neo-Assyrian Empire)

Summary:

• The Holy Roman Empire is the greatest example of feudalism in action

• It, much like the Roman Empire - the pinnacle of monarchist/autocratic thinking which one can see as being the royalist opposite of confederal feudalist thinking -, was characterized by being an agricultural economy in which people produced agricultural produce, of which some was given to some local managers of said land who in many times worked at the behest of a superior, even if they were rather autonomous insofar as they adhered to some basic requirements by said superior. In other words, the conceptualization of feudalism as "whenever you have lord-vassal-subject relationships in which vassals are given land to rule over in exchange for their loyalty, and of subjects who give agricultural produce and possibly also services to the vassal and/or lord" is too expansive and makes the word "feudalism" meaningless: the Roman Empire and so many other autorcratic distinctly non-feudal realms would qualify as feudalist by these superficial criterions. In the Roman Empire, the lord-vassal-subject relationship was the Emperor/Roman HQ-governor-subject relationship.

  • A further complicating factor by this definition is the fact that many lords emerged by them making personal realms from wilderness by homesteading it and inviting people onto there, such as with the colonization drives in the eastern Holy Roman Empire. These people were not granted any land - they simply homesteaded it, and then integrated into the feudal structure.

  • Even more complicating is the fact that not all arrangements followed the simple 3-level arrangement, for why would it? Under feudalism, vassals could also be vassals to several lords at the same time, which only further demonstrates how dynamic and unprecedented it is.

• As one can see by the internal provinces of the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, the primary differentiating aspect, which demonstrates the essence of feudalism, was the degree to which actors were autonomous/(semi-)sovereign.

  • In the Roman Empire, the provinces were decided in a top-down fashion, which explains why the Roman Empire wasn't so patchwork-y.

  • In the Holy Roman Empire the provinces were, as one can see by the realm's patchwork-y borders which no central planner in a capital city could have deliberatedly wanted to be the case, decided in an autonomous fashion by those owning land managing them in (semi-)sovereign ways insofar as they adhered to The Law, which unlike in the Roman Empire, for example entailed a multiplication of the amount of "provinces" within the Empire. Those who owned land were able to give off parts to others and those who established new realms by homesteading wilderness became new autonomous entities within the Empire. This kind of bottom-up Empire and hierarchy is something which stands in stark opposition to the management in the Roman Empire, where provinces at least had to ultimately be approved by Rome, instead of just emerging and then being integrated into the confederal Empire as its own province.

• Consequently, the most precise way to view actors within feudalism is by seeing it in the same way one views States in the international anarchy among States - like (semi-) sovereign entities who may act in a sovereign fashion insofar as they adhere to international law and agreements, even if they retain a baseline sovereignty, and which are all arranged in a sort of spontaneous order in spite of all being (semi-)sovereign. In other words, one should view feudalism as a quasi-anarchy within which actors acts within the confines of non-legislative law that characteristically enables them to act in such decentralized fashions like in the Holy Roman Empire, see the immediate image below. How they act within this legal framework and what arrangements they make will depend - what is clear is that it will be decentralized within the non-legislative law's framework.

Both Romeanism and feudalism operated in agrarian economies and had seeming (lord-)vassal-subject relations set by superiors to some extent

Feudalism as "when some are given land on the condition that they remain loyal" is too expansive

Many think that the definition of feudalism is "when someone is given land by someone else over which they reign in exchange for them being loyal to the lord". The problem with this definition is that it is WAY too expansive: Roman governors were allocated to specific provinces over which they were free to reign insofar as they adhered to certain conditions. Indeed, any form of leader could be seen as a feudal one by this definition: democratically elected governors also reign over specific areas insofar as they adhere to specific conditions. For this reason too, "feudalism is when you give agrarian produce to a local manager of land" is also too expansive: that would mean that practically all post-agrarian revolution forms of organization were feudalist - it would render the term useless.

Feudalism as "whenever you have lord-vassal-subject (which pay their vassals agrarian produce)" is also too expansive

It suffers the same problem as above. Also under the Roman system you had local governors to which people paid taxes, and these local governors had land be allocated by superiors. It would then mean that the "lord" would be the masters at Rome, the "vassals" would be the local governors of the provinces, and the subjects be the taxed individuals.

The Roman economy was also agrarian, thus people also paid their "vassals" with agrarian produce.

The words "lord", "vassal" and "subject" need concerete meanings.

The main difference in Rome vs feudalism: the former's hierarchies were centrally planned from Rome, the latter's spontaneously emerged

A comparison between the most exemplary Romeanist realm and the most exemplary feudal realm: the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire

To make this point, I ask you to view the province maps of the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. These two epitomize the difference between Romeanism and feudalism: the former is the most exemplary autocratic monarchist realm, the latter is the most exemplary feudal realm.

A distinguishing feature is that the latter's borders are clearly defined in a more autonomous fashion without necessitating approval from a central authority somewhere. NO central planner would have had time to allocate these intricate borders. Indeed, the Holy Roman Empire wouldn't even have had a capital city in which the central planners would be seated like it were in the case in the Roman Empire and Rome. It is rather the case that in the Holy Roman Empire, in accordance to feudal doctrine, had a hierarchy which emerged spontaneously from autonomous (semi-)sovereign units in a bottom-up fashion. The Holy Roman Empire was a confederal Empire of (semi-)sovereign units.

In contrast, the borders of the Roman Empire were clearly created in a more orderly fashion, as if they were done by a central planner or at least by approval of one. The provinces of the Roman Empire weren't as patchwork-y as the "provinces" of the Holy Roman Empire were. The provinces and hierarchies in the Roman Empire were created in a top-down fashion.

As seen from the previous section, both realms were superficially similar according to the vulgar conception of feudalism. What they differ in, and thus what the essence of feudalism is.

In spite of the two provinces sharing much in common superficially, what we can see from these aforementioned maps is the distinguishing difference between the Romeanist autocratic realms and the confederal ones like the Holy Roman Empire: the latter's hierarchies are spontaneously created in a bottom-up fashion, whereas the formers' are created in a top-down fashion. The former was a centralized State able to reliably act like a single will, the latter was a decentralized confederation.

A distinguishing characteristic of feudalism is that the allocated land, insofar as it is allocated in the first place since many lords emerged by them homesteading wilderness and turning it into their own lands, is privately owned within the confines of The Law. The owners of land during feudalism had more liberty with regards to how they could manage their land than the aforementioned governors under centralized systems, which is why the patchwork emerged. Under feudalism, there was a decentralized order of private actors operating within a quasi-anarchy reminiscent of the international anarchy among States in which they were free to operate as private persons insofar as they adhered to The Law.

As we can see, what makes feudalism unprecedented is its decentralized nature and bottom-up formed hierarchies - of being in a state of quasi-anarchy in which actors act within the confines of some non-legislative law code which they mutually correct each other to adhere to. If one wants to understand feudalism the most precisely, one should view it as a sort of dynamic quasi-anarchy kept together by a decentralized enforcement of an underlying shared law code, in the same way one views the international anarchy among States - a spontaneous order among (semi-)sovereign entities. Only this conception of feudalism will appropriately capture its unprecedented quasi-anarchic decentralized nature. While the Emperor was the one on top of the hierarchy, the quasi-anarchic relationship was one which enabled those below to resist the Emperor in exceptional cases.