David M. Perry: And yet 50 years later … — Subium • Bluesky web client

an email: Subject: OF COURSE FEUDALISM IS REAL!!! TEXT: Send me a pdf. I will keep an open mind. --- response: No.

Ok but *I* would read your assigned reading on this so can I have it?

I believe this is the reading in question. academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europeacademic.oup.com Elizabeth A. R. Brown; The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe, The American Historical Review, Volume 79, Issue 4, 1 Octob

Yep! I’ve sent out a few hundred pdfs of it to various folks :) but not that person.

It's a bona fide classic.

And yet 50 years later …

See, I never have to worry about this. All I care about is the iqta’ system. chicagostudiesonthemiddleeast.uchicago.edu/igarashi.html

Chicago Studies on the Middle Eastchicagostudiesonthemiddleeast.uchicago.edu

if you haven't read the brown article, it's a masterpiece of argumentation. you have to skip through the historiography bit to get to where it picks up.

I remember reading it in my first grad class in Medieval history. It was a real eye-opener. Got me thinking about the many constructs I've accepted as real things.

Yeah, well, there are still people who would argue the Civil War was about "states' rights" and it's been 90 years since "Black Reconstruction."

Brown succeeded to the extent that medievalists almost never speak of "feudalism" (emphasis on the "ism") outside of Marxist theory, where it means something quite different. She was pushing at an open door, and it's a straw man that any medievalist believes in an all-encompassing "feudal system".

Where there has been legitimate push-back against Brown and Susan Reynolds is on the use of the word "feudal" to describe a tenurial relationship predicated on holding a fief (feudum), and its wider implications. Reynolds rightly noted that this was not presented in the Carolingian era...

... as Ganshof and Mitteis thought (they believed beneficium = early medieval feudum), but it's not illegitimate to use "feudal" in a narrow, carefully defined way for specific legal customs, socio-political ties, and forms of tenure in post-1100ish France, Germany, and northern Italy.

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