Feudalism in ASOIAF

[butterweedstrover]

I discussed this topic in another part of the internet, but I wanted to bring it home here for a wider discussion. 

Most of GRRM intent is not always clear, but I've heard complaints about the peasant population and how they so worship their betters, or at least those among the major families that don't actively ostracize the general population.  

From kings like Robert Baratheon to Princes like Rhaegar or minor lords like Tytos Blackwood the common folk are never shown to have a concept of class politics or despise for those with more privileged than them. They often cheer their lords and love the children of those same lords despite being given no leeway or economic mobility. 

I'd like to contest that point by justifying this social dynamic beyond the simple excuse that GRRM doesn't like discussing peasant politics. Firstly they are not slaves like in Essos for they themselves can rise up against rulers they deem on worthy were as the slaves are taught to obey not question their masters. 

Feudalism is not the same as a dynamic market economy that is meant to stimulate wealth transaction rather than keeping it static in the hands of some honorable family or ancient blood line. In our present day economic system the wealthy are often times upstarts who resolve to increase their wealth by way of personal ambition. They will just as easily lose that wealth if they don't invest competitively or scale their interests globally. 

Feudal lords held most of their wealth in land ownership before it was commoditized to the petty gentry (rich peasants). These families had a much more parental relationship with their landed subjects while also protecting against forms of usury like land speculation, rent inflation, or global competition. Giving hereditary transactions with a static form of productivity and a deep concept of moral law can offset much of the vices of a free market system where the most ambitious is the one who gathers the most power. Concepts of loyalty and oaths give way to globalism and a lack of rooted identity in such cases. I won't say the former is better than the latter, but there is a give and take.  

But neither was this a tyrannical relationship where the peasants were dictated around by their lords both big and small.

You see the nobles owned the land, but the peasants controlled it.

They had something called an Open-field system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-field_system

Suffice to say each working hand grew and managed alternating crop lines at different ends of the land. This would necessitate cooperation between peasants to keep adjacent crops will cut and taken care of. This way if a crop failure happened on one side of the field, it wouldn't affect one set of croppers over another unevenly. It wasn't the best system in the world, but it also limited investment in increasing output as the whole system acted as one wide safety net.

Ownership is something else which was started by the first kingdoms in and around Mesopotamia. The idea of having inherent property rights was taken from feudal societies and adapted to commercial needs.

Before any of that communal land was the biggest land sharing system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_land

To understand it better, this is not a commune, and people had exclusive rights, but they did not have governance rights as we now understand. Nobility is a form of property ownership, but its hereditary as the value was seen as static (that's not the case, but with the Open Field system it wasn't far from it either).

Commercialization allowed the petty aristocracy to own land and control it, however most manoral systems left the land to be managed by peasants. Once competitive leases started to rise working hands became less equal, and the poorer farmers were angry.

 There was an idea later on in European history that much of the agreement between peasants and nobility were based on codes of honor and knightly chivalry which which were by the enlightenment period considered irrational responses. 

That's also a problem I had with the show. It made a joke of things like honor and chivalry by trying to say all people are monsters and only hold up these ideas as benefit them. In the book you have the northern lords standing by the starks as well as characters like Ser Garlan who weren't just hypocrites. The revisionism of enlightment Europe tried to make these ideas seem like fraudulent ideals but I do believe they were real at least in some part and they were an important part of the middle ages. 

Secondary changes made on the show include absolute loyalty to one's liege lord as if the armies were mindless drones following their masters. In the show all the wildlings follow Tormund, The knights of the vale are controlled by Yohen Royce, the Northerners follow Roose and then Ramsay without ever questioning his lead, and Cersei, the queen of everything, turned a man like Randyll Tarly into a willing slave. 

It not only made the world of westeros seem empty as their are less players and important people making decisions, it also modernized all the themes to be about personal actualization over duty and honor. Shae and Tyrion, Robb and Talisa, Sansa/Arya/Bran's total disinterest in the needs of their family in favor of their own individual goals is a fine topic for modern day literature, but it does not properly reflect the time period ASOIAF is based in.  

 

[Springwatch]

We can't discuss the show in this section of the forum, but you make good points.

Quite often here you see impatience among posters for feudalism to be overthrown - some kind of democratic revolution triggered by the devastation of a long winter, maybe. It's never that easy. Anarchy and barbarism are more likely. There are reasons it took thousands of years to get to modern democracies (that is, I think, I feel, I guess - I'm no historian).

I don't suppose peasants loved their system much (there were peasant rebellions in England I believe) - but it was better than anarchy, and democracy was beyond imagining.

Also agree about honour. If knights = killing machines, it would be better to have killing machines with a code of conduct. Even hypocrisy, even the effort of pretending to be good, is a force in the right direction.

[Aldarion]

Problem is what I like to call "modern man delusion" or "newness delusion" - belief that simply because something is newer it must be better, and newest or latest thing must then be best. And thus, because we live in representative democracy, the representative democracy is way forward for Westeros.

Reality however is quite the opposite. Monarchy has many advantages over democracy, and feudal monarchy in particular had advantages in that it was not just less complex, more intuitive and easier to manage, but also had much reduced tendency towards centralization and authoritarianism. We like to pretend that we are free, but in reality average serf likely had more freedom of decision than average "citizen of the free world". In truth, replacing monarchy with democracy would likely be a step backwards as far as personal freedom and human rights are concerned.

[butterweedstrover]

3 hours ago, Springwatch said:

We can't discuss the show in this section of the forum, but you make good points.

Quite often here you see impatience among posters for feudalism to be overthrown - some kind of democratic revolution triggered by the devastation of a long winter, maybe. It's never that easy. Anarchy and barbarism are more likely. There are reasons it took thousands of years to get to modern democracies (that is, I think, I feel, I guess - I'm no historian).

I don't suppose peasants loved their system much (there were peasant rebellions in England I believe) - but it was better than anarchy, and democracy was beyond imagining.

Also agree about honour. If knights = killing machines, it would be better to have killing machines with a code of conduct. Even hypocrisy, even the effort of pretending to be good, is a force in the right direction.

There were peasant uprisings, but most of them happened at the time feudalism was being dismantled because the open field system offered them economic security that competitive leases couldn't. 

It's not like I'm saying its a perfect system or even that it should be replicated, but there is a reason it existed and the general population weren't fools for loving their lords or kings. 

Without much investment into field production and hereditary transition of land, exploitation of peasants gained the lords very little which is why taxes on crop yields were so low.  

Concepts like chivalry, honor, and family are mocked today because we see the peasants as poor slaves abused by their rich masters, but these concepts were important to people and were what allowed the leaders to stay in power. 

[SeanF]

There's nothing strange about this.  By and large, the tenants of great lords tended to be pretty loyal to them real life.  It took a lot to erode that loyalty.  Either the lord had to a complete psychopath, like Ramsay Bolton, or to be wholly unjust in his dealings with his tenants.

Peasant uprisings, like the Jacquerie, or the Peasants Revolt, tended to occur when the lower classes felt their leaders weren't upholding their end of the feudal bargain.  In France, they'd suffered from fifteen years of military failure, devastating campaigns on the part of the English, culminating in the capture of the King.  The chivalry of France were meant to protect the people, and uphold the honour of the King, and they had failed totally.  In England, twenty three years, on, the war with France had turned very sour, taxes were mounting, and the royal officials were abusing the population of Essex.  That culminated in revolt, a revolt which included quite a few of the gentry and burgesses.