Basic Call to Consciousness

Legal History of the Haudenosaunee, continued from last week.

Feudal society in Europe appears to have arisen as the result of a number of conditions which existed following the dissolution of the Roman Empire. It was based in a system by which rulers of warrior castes became strong enough to demand and extract fealty from warriors. There arose, generally, an administrative center, usually a castle, and around these were agricultural people who were usually protected from outside aggression by their “lord”, the sovereign of the manor. It appears likely that that new technologies arose which created economies which made the feudal society both possible and perhaps even inevitable in Europe.

The feudal lord often held dictatorial power over his “subjects,” especially the peasants. Military protection was necessary because of the continuous state of “feuding” among the various lords. The “peaceful people,” or peasants, were caught in the middle. The land, and everything on it, including the animals, plants, and people, was under the domination or dominion of the feudal “lord”. This lord demanded loyalty and a part of the peasant’s crops as well as some of his/her labor. Feudalism could be far more brutal and humiliating than is outlined in many histories. Some feudal lords exercised what was called “the right of the first night,” a custom which referred to the right of a lord to a peasant’s bride.

Prior to the rise of feudalism, it is fair to state that most of the agricultural people of Europe were local tribesmen of various kinds. Feudalism imposed the concept of sovereign, dictatorial rulers whose rule was imposed by military might, and gave rise to the true European peasantry.

The crystallization of centralized executive power served to separate civilized societies from primitive societies. It is immaterial whether such controls are located in a feudal castle or in the executive offices of the capital of nation states. The appearance of the hierarchical state marks the transition of food cultivators in general to the more specific definition contained in the concepts of peasantry. When the cultivator becomes dependent upon and integrated in a society in which he is subject he is subject to demands of people who are defined by a class other than his own, he becomes appropriately termed a peasant.

The state of a medieval European peasant was not a pleasant one. Peasants have no rights, save those granted by their lord. They cannot own the land as a people. Only the Sovereign owns or possesses sovereignty. Peasants were often treated as chattel. They were a people who had been dispossessed of their freedom. At some points in history, the tribal people of Europe became peasants through a combination of forces, the most direct being military pressure.

A peasant is not a member of a true community of people. His society is incomplete without the town or city. It is trade with the town or city, an economic relationship, which defines the early stages of peasantry. As trade becomes more necessary, for whatever reasons, the tribesman becomes increasingly less of a tribesman and more of a peasant. The process is neither immediate or nor is it necessarily absolute, but to the degree that a tribesman becomes dependent, he becomes less of a tribesman.

To a great extent, the process by which people lost their freedom in Europe was economic in nature. The medieval castles were military forts and functioned as kinds of storehouses, but they also developed into trade centers and eventually towns. In the early stages of feudalism, the agricultural worker “traded” his freedom for security from military aggression. But increasingly, over the centuries, a primary function of the medieval town became that of the marketplace.

Continued in next issue.