Gents - I was intrigued to stumble on this via a skeet from DP. Not a historian, but I had heard long ago from my father who was one - and is footnoted in Peggy Brown's article - about this debate over whether feudalism was really "a thing".
Coming at this from a training in natural science, I have to push back. In physics we learn Newtonian physics first. What we learn first is "wrong". But it's a useful setup for something "more right" later.
So with "feudalism" or "the crusades" is it not useful as an initial framing for a later deep dive? The details might be completely different, e.g., between the 1st crusade more or less in support of Constantinople and the 4th diverted to depose its ruler. But they took the same broad form and many details were similar (sanctioned by the pope, absolution for killing, intended to take/save/retake Jerusalem, etc.) and presumably (a question I suppose) the participants saw what they were doing as part of a common project at least polemically (opposition to the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem) even if the true motivations require more explication. I can't access Matt's article, but I don't quite understand what is lost by using the word, even though many specifics are different. Even the fact that we refer to them numerically speaks to our intention to distinguish among them.
In reading Brown's article it seems like she is inveighing against using the term feudalism in a totalizing way, so that whatever facts on finds on the ground are subsumed into its framework. From a pedagogical standpoint, is it not sufficient to simply say "we use this term loosely to refer to these structures / these events and we'll engage with the commonality and differences as we go"? This would somewhat parallel going into learning to work with F=ma with the admonition that the framework of space, time and the very small that Newton presupposed are all to be supplanted later - but you have to learn the basics first. I know almost nothing of the structure of 12th c English society, but knowing that it was described as "feudal" tells me that peasants were attached to the land, owed a portion of their product to their lord, may have owed him military service and he in turn owed such up the chain. Is that so wrong that the term is rendered pernicious?
And the terms even still have relevance today - when GWB referred to the Iraq war as a crusade, we read immediately about how this was seen in Arab countries as invoking religious war. Perhaps if GWB or his speechwriters (Frum maybe?) had paid any attention at all in college they might have thought twice about using such a loaded term because it does have a broadly understood meaning.
Gents - I was intrigued to stumble on this via a skeet from DP. Not a historian, but I had heard long ago from my father who was one - and is footnoted in Peggy Brown's article - about this debate over whether feudalism was really "a thing".
Coming at this from a training in natural science, I have to push back. In physics we learn Newtonian physics first. What we learn first is "wrong". But it's a useful setup for something "more right" later.
So with "feudalism" or "the crusades" is it not useful as an initial framing for a later deep dive? The details might be completely different, e.g., between the 1st crusade more or less in support of Constantinople and the 4th diverted to depose its ruler. But they took the same broad form and many details were similar (sanctioned by the pope, absolution for killing, intended to take/save/retake Jerusalem, etc.) and presumably (a question I suppose) the participants saw what they were doing as part of a common project at least polemically (opposition to the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem) even if the true motivations require more explication. I can't access Matt's article, but I don't quite understand what is lost by using the word, even though many specifics are different. Even the fact that we refer to them numerically speaks to our intention to distinguish among them.
In reading Brown's article it seems like she is inveighing against using the term feudalism in a totalizing way, so that whatever facts on finds on the ground are subsumed into its framework. From a pedagogical standpoint, is it not sufficient to simply say "we use this term loosely to refer to these structures / these events and we'll engage with the commonality and differences as we go"? This would somewhat parallel going into learning to work with F=ma with the admonition that the framework of space, time and the very small that Newton presupposed are all to be supplanted later - but you have to learn the basics first. I know almost nothing of the structure of 12th c English society, but knowing that it was described as "feudal" tells me that peasants were attached to the land, owed a portion of their product to their lord, may have owed him military service and he in turn owed such up the chain. Is that so wrong that the term is rendered pernicious?
And the terms even still have relevance today - when GWB referred to the Iraq war as a crusade, we read immediately about how this was seen in Arab countries as invoking religious war. Perhaps if GWB or his speechwriters (Frum maybe?) had paid any attention at all in college they might have thought twice about using such a loaded term because it does have a broadly understood meaning.