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Ari's Updates en-US Thu, 28 Nov 2024 17:14:00 -0800 60 Ari's Updates 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review6658472996 Thu, 28 Nov 2024 17:14:00 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari added 'Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6658472996 Fiefs and Vassals by Susan Reynolds Ari gave 3 stars to Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Paperback) by Susan Reynolds
There is a crackpot theory that the middle ages mostly didn’t happen and that several centuries of European history, 614–911, were fabricated. “Fiefs and Vassals: the Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted” has slightly that mood to it. The book’s main claim is that the central dogma of medieval history is basically false. But Reynolds is not the least bit a crackpot or a crank. She is an eminent medieval historian, and the view she is articulating appears to be the scholarly consensus.

It's not even a new consensus. Already in the late 19th century, Frederick Maitland, the most prominent English legal historian of his era, remarked that feudalism was brought to England by the 17th century antiquarian Henry Spelman and reached its peak development about the middle of the 18th century. Medieval historians have been snarking intermittently ever since.

It turns out nobody, including specialists, is especially precise in explaining what feudalism means and where it might happen. The theory Reynolds would rebut is that medieval society was essentially fractal and personalized, and held together by loyalty owed between lords and their men in which the men (vassals) would promise obedience in exchange for land (fiefs) held from the lord. That land ownership started off as temporary assignments from above in exchange for loyalty and gradually became permanent.

Reynolds shows, at great length, that this basically did not happen. In her account, most medievals (and most medieval legal documents) treated land as property in more or less the way that we do and the Romans did. They did not perceive a close association between landholding and feudal service. Lords would demand services and fees from landholders in their domain, true enough. But they made those claims to anybody they could, without even claiming that the people being shaken down held their lands through the lord. The counts of France thought of themselves as territorial rulers exerting governmental power, without any concession that these rights were the result of prior grants or agreements from the people below. People whose land was described as "alods" paid the same as those who held fiefs.

Royalty everywhere claimed the authority to directly demand service and revenue from the population at large. Especially in England, the monarchs had pretty effective means to raise troops and revenue from the whole population. They did not waste any time asking their tenants-in-chief to raise their vassals who would raise their knights, etc. No. The king, directly, demanded the knights. Almost immediately the kings in fact are demanding cash. And they demand it directly from the tenants on the ground; they do not go through the pyramid of land claims.

The weakness of the book is that it vacillates between being a medieval history and being a historiography. She does both, but without a very clear structure or separation. It's a slog to read.

She has a number of error theories to explain why people saw a feudal system that wasn’t there. Some of the doctrines of the theory are quite old. Italian lawyers of the 13th century would make assertions about feudal grants from centuries before; they had almost no access to primary sources and were very much making up just-so-stories to justify the laws of their own era. Subsequent lawyers, antiquarians, and others fleshed out the story -- again, more motivated by explaining the law of their era than by honest inquiry into the distant past. Once this story became entrenched, people read the primary sources through that lens, without checking what the sources really were saying.

Also, Reynolds points out that church records are highly influential but also highly atypical. Kings and nobles would coerce the churches to give land to people the ruler wished to benefit. Officially, churches were not supposed to ever alienate land and so the church would give a restricted or temporary benefice (for life, or for a few generations) as a workaround. Church land might’ve been a third of all land, was much better documented than anything else, and was competitively easy for the government to grab, so this generated a lot of what looked like subinfeudation, but in fact was a soft confiscation by royalty.

I think the basic claim about feudalism is clearly right, and there are several other lines of evidence, not in the book, to show this. The philosophy and literature of the middle ages hardly acknowledges feudalism. The Knights of the Round Table do not appear to be Arthur’s vassals nor do they appear to have fiefs anywhere. ]]> GiveawayRequest650629706 Wed, 27 Nov 2024 11:32:25 -0800 <![CDATA[<a href="?x=http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/105482-ari">Ari</a> entered a giveaway]]> https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/392440-blood-over-bright-haven Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang
10 copies available, ends on December 19, 2024
Enter to win ]]> ReadStatus8679085615 Wed, 27 Nov 2024 11:16:08 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari wants to read 'The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7038394179 The Wrong Stuff by John Strausbaugh Ari wants to read The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned by John Strausbaugh
]]> ReadStatus8675822003 Tue, 26 Nov 2024 13:48:38 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari wants to read 'The Dragon's Path']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7036220667 The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham Ari wants to read The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham
]]> ReadStatus8669272400 Sun, 24 Nov 2024 18:29:36 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari started reading 'Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6658472996 Fiefs and Vassals by Susan Reynolds Ari started reading Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted by Susan Reynolds
]]> ReadStatus8666222982 Sat, 23 Nov 2024 23:11:57 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari wants to read 'The Constitution in Congress: The Jeffersonians, 1801-1829']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7029508600 The Constitution in Congress by David P. Currie Ari wants to read The Constitution in Congress: The Jeffersonians, 1801-1829 by David P. Currie
]]> Review3227249431 Sat, 23 Nov 2024 13:49:49 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari added 'Turning Darkness Into Light']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3227249431 Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan Ari gave 4 stars to Turning Darkness Into Light (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #6) by Marie Brennan
Fully charming. Set in the sane world as the “lady Trent” books but readable alone. ]]> ReadStatus8654173862 Wed, 20 Nov 2024 11:54:34 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari wants to read 'Carrying The Fire. An Astronaut's Journeys. With A Foreward by Charles A. Lindbergh.']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7021049677 Carrying The Fire. An Astronaut's Journeys. With A Foreward b... by Michael; Lindbergh Collins Ari wants to read Carrying The Fire. An Astronaut's Journeys. With A Foreward by Charles A. Lindbergh. by Michael; Lindbergh Collins
]]> Review1415704028 Mon, 11 Nov 2024 16:06:20 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari added 'Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1415704028 Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold Ari gave 4 stars to Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (Vorkosigan Saga, #16) by Lois McMaster Bujold
bookshelves: to-read
It holds up fine but it's not one of the exciting books in the series. It has a good deal in it that's moving, a few parts that are laugh-out-loud funny, but it's pretty free of stress and drama. Cozy, as they say. ]]> ReadStatus8612145863 Sat, 09 Nov 2024 15:48:37 -0800 <![CDATA[Ari wants to read 'Blood Over Bright Haven']]> https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6991711391 Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang Ari wants to read Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang
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