By Ethan Hollander, Wabash College
To be able to better understand the development of the world history, we need to take a look at the emergence of the modern state in the late Middle Ages—and at how feudalism, which preceded the modern state, didn’t do a lot of the things that a modern state takes for granted.
What Is a State?
The sovereign state is the fundamental unit of political organization in the world today. Virtually every inch of the world’s dry surface is controlled by one sovereign state or another. And so, to understand how governments differ around the world, it’s essential to understand what a sovereign state is, how it functions, and why it’s become so important.
In 1919, a social scientist by the name of Max Weber wrote an essay called “Politics as a Vocation”. In it, he defined the state as follows: He said a state is an institution with “a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a clearly defined territory”.
Weber envisioned the state as being sovereign, which is to say that it was—or at least claimed to be—the single, undisputed authority within its territorial boundaries.
In a sovereign state, the state gets to decide who uses force and who doesn’t. And anyone who uses force without state permission is subject to discipline for violating the state’s rightful monopoly.
Legitimacy of a State
Likewise, the state’s use of force is considered to be legitimate. The notion is that when the state forces you to do something, you think of its actions as acceptable or legal in a way that you wouldn’t if some other actor—someone who wasn’t the state—did the very same thing.
Legitimacy is that amorphous thing that leads us to consider it fair when the state takes our money compared to a guy on the street.
So, the modern state is sovereign—it has a monopoly on the use of force. And its use of that monopoly is legitimate—or at least, it’s widely held to be legitimate.
Defined Territory of a State
One final characteristic of the modern state is that it’s territorial—that is the state exercises its sovereign monopoly over a clearly defined territory.
And in a way, this is counterintuitive. One can be in San Diego or Seattle—minutes from an international border—yet if they’re on this side of an imaginary line, they’re subject to the laws of the United States, every bit as much as if they lived in downtown Washington DC. And just a few feet away, they’d be subject to the sovereign power of Mexico, or Canada.
When it comes to matters of state sovereignty, territoriality is literally all the difference in the world.
Feudalism
Feudalism is the political system that emerged after the decline of the Roman Empire, in about the 5th century CE. It lasted until about the 1600s, when certain historical developments ushered in a new era of political organization.
Feudalism emerged in this context as a defensive system, where peasants and people who couldn’t defend themselves put themselves at the service of a local lord—someone who could defend them, and who would defend them, at least in exchange for the peasants’ promise to work the lord’s land.
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Feudal Hierarchy
The feudal relationship was called vassalage. The peasants were vassals to the lord, and they provided the lord with certain goods and services, all in exchange for the lord’s promise to protect them.
A group of local lords might recognize that there were advantages to working together, and so they might organize themselves as vassals to a particularly powerful lord, and give him, let’s say, a certain number of days of military service per year, in exchange for the overlord’s protection of them.
Feudalism was a hierarchic, defensive network, where major lords, like the king, organized the defense of the realm by pressing their vassals into service—usually military service. The vassals, in turn, pressed their own vassals into service, and so on and so forth right down to the local knight in shining armor, who might have been the lord of his own small manor, but who had also sworn fealty to the major lords above him.
Is Feudal State the Same as Modern State?
In a way, this might look like a state. You have a king who’s in charge, and you have people below him who provide their superiors with resources—taxes—in exchange for protection.
But let’s take a second to recognize the many ways in which a feudal realm wasn’t a state.
Take territoriality, for example. In the Middle Ages, transportation and communication were slow and unreliable. This meant that local lords, who were far away from the king (in physical distance), could often get away with not really being the most obedient of servants.
So one might formally owe their allegiance to the king—but if they cheated a little, or if they enlisted the protection of a rival king, there might not be a whole lot that the king could do to maintain his monopoly on the use of force.
And so, the boundaries of a feudal realm, unlike the boundaries of a modern state, were fuzzy; they kind of blurred out around the edges. It wasn’t always clear where one king’s sovereignty ended and the other one began, and it certainly wasn’t clear whose law would prevail on any given patch of land.
Common Questions about the Feudal State Versus the Modern State
In 1919, a social scientist by the name of Max Weber wrote an essay called “Politics as a Vocation”. In it, he defined the state as follows: He said a state is an institution with “a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a clearly defined territory”.
Feudalism emerged after the fall of the Roman empire as a defensive system, where peasants and people who couldn’t defend themselves put themselves at the service of a local lord—someone who could defend them, and who would defend them, at least in exchange for the peasants’ promise to work the lord’s land.
The feudal hierarchy might look like a state. You have a king who’s in charge, and you have people below him who provide their superiors with resources—taxes—in exchange for protection.
