“Feudalism” is a flawed terminology. The wide-ranging definitions of it, and contradictory views about it, lead “feudalism” to be an altogether complex and ambiguous coinage. It is a vague word generalizing “either a period or a regime dominated by lords, or domination by people who possess financial or social power and prestige” (Cheyette 1). “Feudalism” cannot have a singular or precise definition because it did not operate the same across all areas; in Brown’s Tyranny of a Construct, she mentions that “the feudalism of France differs radically from the feudalism of England, that the feudalism of the thirteenth is very different form that of the eleventh century” (1066). Additionally, the creation of “feudalism” have been shaped by the political ideologies of the historian’s time, rather than on the actual historical events of the Middle Ages. Thus, the concepts of “feudalism” and the “feudal system” have been “simplistically defined”, oversimplifying the models of the Middle Ages (Brown 1065).
