ABSTRACT
Feudal polities are commonly regarded as bad regimes, inefficient and anarchical in nature. They are closely linked with medieval Europe, where it is often stated that the feudal polity reached its apogee in France, England, Spain and Germany. Besides Western Europe, only Japan is singled out as having had full feudalism or almost so. Only in Western Europe was the ideal-type of feudalism put into practice in the estates society. However, feudalism may be found outside Western Europe such as in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India and China. Feudalism may be regarded as omnipresent in agrarian political systems, since it is true that feudalism appears as either a political or an economic phenomenon, or both. But it is not true that feudal polities were only conducive to anarchy. Weber made a few distinctions between different kinds of feudalism which are well worth reproducing here (Weber, 1978: 255-266, 1073-1077).
