The State became the political institutional structure that provided legitimacy to the conquering bands by rationalizing their rule not just as an ongoing extortion racket for their own enrichment, but as beneficial to the ruled and plundered due to the conqueror providing them with law and order, and some useful infrastructure projects.Įach manor ultimately served as a mostly self-sufficient economic entity, in which all production for the local members was performed. It has been argued that the State emerged from marauding bands who decided they wanted to permanently settle down and rule those they had conquered and plundered.In German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer’s book The State (1915), and in the American economist Mancur Olson’s Power and Prosperity (2000), both argued that the modern State emerged out of the conquest of territory by marauding bands who decided to permanently settle down and rule over those they had conquered and plundered. The local social units revolved around “the Manor,” or residence of the “Lord,” who both owned all the land and ruled over its use and the people on it through possessing a high degree of power and legitimacy. Throughout most of Medieval Europe, agriculture was organized around the Manorial System. The remaining 10 to 20 percent of the population was either following various small and relatively simple trades and crafts in the towns, provided personal services to the nobility, or were members of the Catholic Church and, therefore, ministering to the religious needs of the people. It has been estimated that between 80 to 90 percent of Europe’s population lived on the land and devoted all their time to the production of food. This is in stark contrast to life in the Middle Ages. In the United States today, less than three percent of the labor force works in farming or farming-related occupations this small percentage of the American work force feeds the most of the population of the country with much left over to export to feed other parts of the world.
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Rural Life and the Self-Sufficiency of the Manorial System Shortly after 1500, the compass came into use, which radically changed the ability to travel vast distances out of sight of land and without dependence on clear skies to “read” the stars it saw the introduction of gunpowder, which transformed warfare and it was the start of intellectual forces that eventually resulted in the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. It marks the beginning of the “discovery” of the “New World” by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and a sea route around Africa to India in 1498. Fifteen-hundred was the eve of the Great Religious Reformation known as Protestantism. After this date, momentous changes occurred in European history that transformed the face of European society, and the development of the whole world, as well. The “close” of the Middle Ages is commonly said to be around 1500. The Middle Ages is usually defined as beginning with the fall of the Roman Empire in A.D.
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Only one institution encompassed the entire European world through most of this time – the Catholic Church. In attempting to understand the ideas and institutions of the period of history that is usually called the “Middle Ages,” it must be kept in mind that this covers a timeframe that is easily divided up into smaller periods, each of which can be seen to have its own unique characteristics and qualities.Įach part of Europe had its own historical development in terms of traditions and customs.Furthermore, each part of Europe had its own historical development in terms of traditions and customs.