ABSTRACT
Modern scholarship has in general rallied to the side of Voltaire. Egyptian feudalism, Achaean feudalism, Chinese feudalism, Japanese feudalism—all these forms and more are now familiar concepts. The historian of the West must sometimes regard them with a certain amount of misgiving. Feudalism, manorial system—the identification here goes back much farther. It had first occurred in the use of the word “vassal”. The aristocratic stamp which this term had received from what was, after all, a secondary development, was not strong enough to prevent it from being occasionally applied, even in the Middle Ages, to serfs and even to ordinary tenants. The simplest way will be to begin by saying what feudal society was not. European feudalism should therefore be seen as the outcome of the violent dissolution of older societies. In the dark ages of Japanese history people dimly perceive a society based on kinship groups, real or fictitious.
