Feudalism - History of Feudalism

History of Feudalism

Feudalism usually emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire: especially in the Japanese and Carolingian (European) empires which both lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to support cavalry without the ability to allocate land to these mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated land and their power over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres.

These acquired powers significantly diminished centralized power in these empires. Only when the infrastructure existed to maintain centralized power—as with the European monarchies—did Feudalism begin to yield to this new organized power and eventually disappear.