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Tolkien's Middle-earth doesn't look like Medieval Europe - Page 8

© Michael Martinez

Hence, where Tolkien speaks of "the fiefs of the south", he is not referring to feudal lands but rather to regions of the realm. The Lords of Dol Amroth were, after the end of the Kingly line, essentially autonomous according to Tolkien. If they were feudal vassals, how could they have become autonomous since the authority of the kings was retained by the Ruling Stewards? Feudalism is not a particularly medieval European convention. It also arose in the Orient but is most closely identified by medievalists with Tolkien's Gondor. He never once speaks of feudalism in any text or letter. Feudalism is essentially a contract of personal obligation between two individuals, as opposed to a contract for service in exchange for payment. A tenant who pays rent is not feudally obligated to the land owner. Many who argue that Gondor was feudal infer there must have been feudal estates. Such conventions arose in Europe because the monied economy of the Roman Empire broke down and national armies seized to exist. The tribal armies of the Franks, Saxons, Angles, et. al., were gradually replaced by small professional cadres augmented by regional forces. The leaders of these regional forces were usually military officers given special responsibility for defending those lands. Sometimes the offices became hereditary, or as kings conquered neighboring realms they divided their lands among their sons upon their deaths (or the sons divided the lands themselves). The gradual unification of England under the kings of Wessex and the advent of Charlemagne's empire stalled or even reversed the decentralization. But within 100 years France and the low countries developed a complicated feudal hierarchy as freemen gave up their land rights in exchange for protection from local nobles, who in turn assigned lands to their own soldiers to defend. The ever-shifting politics of the Franks, whose empire broke up into three kingdoms, and their lack of agricultural and economic sophistication, ensured that regional authority increased as new threats arose, such as the Vikings. England retained a regional hierarchy reminiscent of its ancient kings, but these Earls did not sub-divide their lands to lesser feudal vassals as the Franks did. In Germany the Holy Roman Empire sought to govern regional princes and church prelates who had been conquered or empowered by Charlemagne and his successors. The emperors had no real lands or wealth of their own and were forced to recruit allies among their titular vassals. And in Spain the ancient Visigothic kingdom had been overthrown by a superior Moslem enemy which took advantage of the Visigoths' divisions. Their successors, outlaws in the northern mountains, eventually established small kingdoms founded on strong central authority but which had limited resources. Thus more kingdoms emerged because the ever-shifting borderlands between the Christians and Moslems provided opportunities for a few resourceful leaders to carve out their own realms.

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