Feudal Contract

If you’ve been taking AP World History, you’ve probably heard of feudalism. You may even know a thing or two about the feudal social and economic structure. But have you got the feudal contract down? It’s ok if you don’t—it’s the whole reason we’ve created this AP World History crash course for you!

The feudal contract was one of the smaller components that made up the entire feudal system and in this AP World History review we are going to put the contract into its feudal context. But that’s not all! We will trace the ways it has shifted over time, the tricky nature of feudalism itself, and most importantly how it might appear on your upcoming AP World History exam. So, join us on this AP World History crash course review trip through time and lets go back to the era of lords and vassals, peasants and kings.

A Historiographic Note on the Feudal Contract

Before we dive right into the historical details of the feudal contract, we want to make sure that you understand how historians themselves view the whole feudal system. What kind of AP World History review would this be if we didn’t let you in on the historian’s perspective, right? So, we are just going to come out and say it. There is no such thing as the feudal system. Kind of… Historians have begun to think of feudalism as a series of historical components that existed roughly between the 9th and 16th centuries. But there was never really a cohesive, unified structure that we can actually call feudalism. Although there were general similarities between the many and diverse political, social, and economic systems of European at this time, the degrees of difference actually might outweigh those similarities. In other words, historians recently have stamped the term feudalism on this system without fully questioning whether or not it should be applied throughout.

The Feudal System and the Feudal Contract

What is the feudal system and how did it come to be? What we have come to understand as the feudal system ultimately emerged as a result of the crumbling of the great European empires, especially the Carolingian empire (think France, Germany, the United Kingdom, etc.). What this meant was that the centralized political and especially military structures of these empires collapsed along with them. This left very a very powerful military class in its wake. These people had horses to fight with, land to produce goods, and people on those lands to tax. We know them as knights and you wanted them as your friends.

The Feudal Contract

Since there was no real infrastructure to dictate the will of the military or the political sphere, a new power structure began to emerge. Basically these mounted soldiers took over the social, political, judicial, and economic power of the era and convinced everyone that this power should be hereditary.

But there had to be some sort of order. That’s where the contract of the feudal system comes in. Get it? The feudal contract…

On the top of the feudal food chain was the lord. He had the most money, land, and power. The next was the warrior class, often called vassals. These vassals made agreements, or contracts, with the lords. They agreed to provide the lord with defense and other forms of military service, show up to ceremonial events, and promised to live up to moral code.

If the lord was a king, then things got a little more complicated. The vassal could be a count or baron with other non-military obligations. But either way, a binding contract was made.

And in exchange, the vassal got land. If you think this was a rip-off, just think about what it must have been like to be a peasant on one of these vassal’s chunks of land. That might change your mind.

The Rise and Fall of the Feudal Contract

Ultimately, the feudal system and thus the contracts that constituted it differed over place and time. We cannot get into every detail in the AP World History crash course review, but we will give you the gist you need.

In France for example, the feudal contract started out like we described above, But by the 11th century, things got weird. Greater and lesser lords began to scuffle over land and power. Than powerful families that had land over the years split off from the upper echelon of lord hierarchies, creating their own mini-political and feudal structures. It got so complicated and lasted so long that when the French Revolution began in the late-18th century, democracy and republicanism finally got rid of it.

Speaking of revolution, that partially explains the decline of the feudal contract, and make sure you remember this for your AP World History exam. Peasants kept revolting for more rights, autonomy, and access to better land from their vassals. These revolutions made the feudal system and its contracts very unpopular, leading to its decline.

A second reason for the decline can be attributed to the rise of kingdoms. As lords and vassals consolidated power, many of these people turned into kings and ruled over much larger areas. This also meant that the kingdom controlled the military and lords no longer needed to try to get vassals-turned-military together for their wars.

The Feudal Contract and the AP US History Exam

First, remember how the feudal system, and the feudal contract in particular, was created in order to deal with crumbling empires. Without the infrastructure for a central government or military, the contract acted as the replacement.

Second, the feudal system and its rigid hierarchies, not to mention the promise of hereditary land from the social contract helped to give rise of democratic notions regarding the normal person’s right to be part of the government and the military.

Third, think about the feudal contract and how it might relate to other political/social/economic models from across the globe and throughout history. Ask yourself, how did this differ from ancient Rome? Were there any similarities between the feudal contract and 17th century Japan? These are the types of things you want to be thinking about not only as you read through this AP World History review, but as you are covering other topics and time periods in your studies.