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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5121043" data-attributes="member: 4937">Are you trying to define 'serfdom' to me?  Do you seriously think I need a definition of serfdom?Name one.  Name any ancient world agricultural civilization were the majority of peoples weren't a) slaves and b) subsistance farmers.  Or, name any ancient world agricultural civilization that had less technology and higher standard of living than Europe which also had small amounts of arable land and a short growing season.  Well, I'm not sure that the common people were really that much better off under Nationalist Monarchies than they were bondsman to feudal lords.  The various changes in the political structure did little to effect the lot in life of peasant farmers, and the most notable result of the collapse of the feudal structure was a great increase in wealth disparity.  The rich certainly got richer as income expanded, and a true middle class began to grow, but it was a while yet before slavery would be ended or prosperity reached every level of society.  Still widespread serfdom was itself a gradual social/political innovation that replaced the traditional slave based models of the ancient world.  The manor was the natural outgrowth of the insula/plantation.  The manorial system itself was marked the gradual acquisition of greater civil rights by the coloni, principally the not to be underestimated right not to be sold away like cattle.  But I'm highly skeptical of the notion that Northern Europe had sufficient agricultural production prior to the 13th century to support Greek or Roman style heavy infantry militaries made up of free citizens (the free citizens themselves each being supported by the labors of large slave plantations) even if the social/political model had existed, or of the notion that stirrup based heavy cavalry was not the natural dominate military arm from the collapse of the Roman empire to the introduction of massed missile fire, cannon, and so forth during the late middle ages.  And I'm highly skeptical of the notion that social/political innovation alone, divorsed from the innovations in agricultural production, would have done much to improve the lot of the European peasantry.  If you want to talk about social innovation that had a real impact on the lives of the poor, you have to talk about things like the Cistercians - and even then that folds back into innovations in productivity.</blockquote>

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