October 11, 2023

The Medieval F Word

Everyone agrees feudalism is a lie, but

Modern Medieval

by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele

Today in class I asked students to read “The Tyranny of a Construct,” Elizabeth AR Brown’s 1974 article that argued against using the term “feudalism” in writing or teaching about the European Middle Ages.1 This was the hardest piece of modern writing they’ve read so far (it’s a freshman seminar about how we think about the Middle Ages) but they did brilliantly of course!

I still remember reading this article in grad school and being completely persuaded. First, she goes through the literature, indicating that while all historians agree that feudalism never really existed, they argue it’s useful … but useful how? How can it be a useful simplification if no two historians agree on how to simplify it?

Then second, she talks about teaching:

To advocate teaching what is acknowledged to be deceptive and what must later be untaught reflects an unsettling attitude of condescension toward younger students. Furthermore, not only does such a procedure waste the time of teacher and student, but its supporters apparently disregard the difficulty of, as a student of mine puts it, "'erasing' an erroneous concept or fact from the mind of a child who has been taught it, mistakenly or intentionally, at a lower school level." This student, Marie Heinbach, who teaches social studies in a New York junior high school, goes on to point out that "the difficulty becomes almost insurmountable when the amazing retentive powers of a young and impressionable child are considered. In addition, as the amount of time between the learning and unlearning of a concept increases, it becomes nearly impossible totally to correct the misconceptions that a student may have." Experts who knowingly mislead their students appear to be- unsure of their own ability to present a simplified account of the conclusions concerning medieval society that historians have now reached.

This is powerful, right? It boils down to: don’t tell students things that aren’t true. If you do, most won’t ever unlearn it.

As a case in point, I’m pretty sure that Brown (and me!) persuaded our students that feudalism isn’t real, that historians don’t agree on it, that it’s not useful, that it’s arguably harmful.

But 19 of 20 students in my class learned about “the feudal system” in school - some as early as third grade, and some as late as ninth grade. But they all were taught it was just a fact, as if that’s how the European Middle Ages just simply worked.

Brown wrote in 1974. I went to grad school in the late 90s and read her work and was persuaded. Today, in 2023, a bunch of college Freshmen are now persuaded. But we have to keep working to avoid taking the easy way out, which for me means avoiding the f-word, but also easy ideas like Dark Ages, Renaissance, Fall of the Roman Empire, and all the other constructs that distort more than they reveal. Our biggest and most important publics, after all, are sometimes right there in the classroom with us.

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Update: Social media informs me that “there was no such thing as feudalism” is news and that’s something we’ll write up soon!

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