Feudalism In The Middle Ages Research Paper

Feudalism was unfair and an ineffective organizational system during the Middle Ages. Feudalism was an organized system developed by Western Europeans in around the High Middle Ages, which took place around 1000 CE. This social system is constructed upon the promises of loyalty for people in exchange for land and services. The feudal system started out with a monarch, a king or queen, who theoretically owned all the land in the kingdom. The monarch distributed fiefs, or units of land, to his lords. The amount of land distributed to lords was determined by the loyalty of the lords. In exchange for land, lords offered protection to the king when needed by supplying an army of knights. Lords also had people working under them. In exchange for peasants and craftsmen working and paying taxes to the lord, the lord offered protection to …show more content…
Serfs could not leave their lord’s land and were required to work in grain mills for their lord. In addition, even if people work harder, or obtain fortune, they could not escalate in class. They were most often born in a class and stay in that class for their life. Feudalism was unfair and ineffective for many different reasons. The first reason why Feudalism was ineffective was that people could not escalate in class by working hard. This is unfair because most of the population in the Middle Ages consisted of peasants and serfs. Peasants and serfs did not have a comfortable lifestyle and since they could not improve their lifestyle significantly by working hard or obtaining fortune, families stayed in the same class. Another reason why feudalism was infective was that people got too greedy with land and power. In the higher Middle Ages, there was a regulation that the oldest son had all the inheritance of the father. That means that people that were younger in the family did not have even a partial amount of the inheritance which is unfair to people who did not have the