Hello /twiggeee/ i'm working on a setting right now and you see i've got a question
Would it be possible for feudalism to exist in an early-mid 19th century society?
How would it be possible? I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while now with no result.
How would you do it, /tg/? Particularly the military aspect of it. Would levying be in order? It'd be like conscription, right? How about standing armies?
>>44399184
it's not really my area of expertise, but for feudalism to persist into the 19th century, you'd need to pinpoint the cause(s) of its attenuation and then invent reasons for said cause(s) to be mitigated or otherwise prevented from occurring.
So, like I said, this isn't really a part of history I'm especially knowledgeable about but I understand the collapse of European feudalism to be the ultimate consequence of
- political changes that increasingly shifted authority and power away from feudal lords and into the hands of centralized sovereigns
- economic changes that lessened the value of land ownership and placed increased importance on the acquisition of capital and the transference of physical labor
- military changes that resulted in knights and levies becoming less desirable soldiery than professional mercenaries or combatants with modern training and equipment.
Of course, none really function in isolation - it is the intersectionality of these things that resulted in feudalism's death knell. If you can introduce any sort of appropriate rupture to these societal shifts, you could easily present an alternate reality where feudalism persisted.
You mean like it did in IRL Russia?
>>44399394
Russia was a 13th-century society until the 20th century.
>>44399184
Well, basically, the only things that have reduced feudalism by that point are anti-monarchical revolutions (American, French, the earlier abortive English) and the Industrial Revolution. Take those away, or set it somewhere where those had no impact, and you still have feudalism in place.
For more effect, remove the Thirty Years' War, in which feudalism and factionalism led to such destruction that the surviving sides codified limits to the power of any sub-national actor.
Instead, replace it with a period of quiet negotiation and backstabbing between lords that never reached a decisive end, and instead became almost the continental sport--the Great Game of Houses, rather than the Great War.
>>44400871
As far as armies go, I would have it vary by state based on how each nation evolved IRL. The Swiss, for instance, would use canton militias at home and send skilled mercenary units abroad. England would still rule the waves, but with a more Elizabethan attitude than a Victorian one. France's armies would be a mix of trained regulars (kept by the king and rich nobles) bulked up by masses of conscripts raised by each local lord. Germany would never be centralized like Bismarck did later in the 19th century, because that would ruin the feudal nature of what you're aiming for.
tl;dr Small trained forces, consisting of (few) elite regiments and (many) trained cadres, with the latter being filled out by conscription managed by each local lord sending men to higher lords for training and deployment.
>>44399184
Could always go with the Confederate South. Not really feudal but it's got an agricultural economy, an effective aristocracy, slavery in the place of serfdom, with basically peasants roaming around in the form of poor whites. Domestic security (fucking w/ slaves) is often taken care of by whipping up poor whites into a frenzy, there's conscripted armies, etc.
>>44399184
>>44400966
No, because feudalism was blown the fuck out way before the industrial revolution. It was on the way out in the Renaissance. The Black Plague decimated the population, people moved to towns from more rural areas, the population sank a lot, and it completely fucked over the infrastructure. This paved the way for monarchs who wielded enormous amounts of power through state-funded massed armies, instead of a military aristocracy.
Add in the industrial revolution and it basically went the way of the dinosaur. To have a return to a military aristocracy would mean a society where individual soldiers and a warrior class are necessary again.
Having feudalism as an economic system would mean completely blanking everyone's minds of capitalism so they forgot how trade and capital works. Because capitalism is another force that completely rips feudalism up by the roots.
You have to understand that feudalism was a societal system, not a system of government. It isn't something you can just declare here or there, it formed and was destroyed by numerous factors over many centuries.
Though, if you want pure fantasy, you can of course bullshit whatever. I'm talking in realistic terms.
>>44399184
It literally did in Russia
Serfdom wasn't abolished until 1861 there
>>44399184
Pre-Meiji Japan?
>>44399184
Feudalism is a solution to a problem, and that problem is creating a semblance of order in a collapsed civilization. From the fall of Rome to the collapse of Imperial power in Japan, feudalism rises where centralized power collapses (notice that collapse and decentralization are different things).
By the 19th century as we see it, this was already impossible. Nation-states had arisen as an irreversible concept and Napoleonic codes made the law a centralized affair rather than something created by traditional regional authorities.
If you were to ask me to create a feudal 19th century, I'd do it something like this.
>Napoleon conquers all of Europe
>Enjoys unquestioned rule and great popularity until about 1821, when he dies
>His son takes over and, like in our timeline, he dies young and without children despite being very talented and loved
>Successon crisis
>Louis-Napoleon, or our Napoleon III, marches from Strasbourg to Paris with an army of mercenaries and enforces his claim
>This already fractures the existing order, demonstrating that anyone with enough guns backing him can claim the throne
>Napoleon III rules for about a decade before another pretender outs him
>Somewhere around the 1840s this gets so bad, that there are four emperors in a single year
>Some members of the old and de facto disbanded nobility of the pre-Napoleonic era are sick of the Bonapartes' shit
>Considering the entire dynasty is in chaos and busy overthrowing eachother, they all pay some mercenaries and fight for their freedom
>Even France itself fractures, as the armies -no longer led by a military genius- are incapable of supporting the emperor du jour's claims and maintaining order all over the empire
>The nobles, weary of their mercenaries turning on them as well, appoint their generals and other high ranking military officials by loyalty rather than merit
>The most loyal retainers are rewarded with land and other privileges
>We feudalism now
>We wuz dukes 'n shiet
>>44403802
So basically Fall of Rome II: And Nothing was Learned?
>>44399336
Funny thing about the last point is how everyone went right back to conscription when the musket become the master of the field
How would you play in such a setting? I imagine a game set in it would look a lot like the mummy or the quest (with Jean clause van dam as the murder-clown that got away with wanton manslaughter)
Was fuedalism not BTFO by the industrial revolution?
>>44404205
Not really, as it only affected the ability of mankind to produce things. It was blown out of the water much earlier. I'd say somewhere between the late Hundred Years War (when Charles the Victorious replaced his feudal armies with a professional standing army directly loyal to the king, robbing the nobility of their most important political role) and the Treaty of Westphalia (widely considered to dictate the rise of nation-states). The Industrial Revolution was about two centuries later.
KNIGHTS WITH GUUUUNS!!!!!
>>44404904
>Guns
>Not boats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqorZzsRiQY
>>44400711
Very incorrect
tl;dr
there's no specific definition of feudalism
If you want meaningful answers to your question you're going to need to explain what aspects of a society you're describing as 'feudal'
Centralised power (monarchical or bureocratic) and feudalism cannot exist in the same state of being since feudalism is essentially just a crude form of the delegation of power do to the incapability of the ruler to micromanage all of his domain so he delegates ownership to individuals who then promise to serve the person one step higher in the pyramid scheme.
The closest I guess you could do is have a system of autonomous authoritarian communities answering to a higher federal authority, but how do you mix serfdom into it? Are the populations living in the small authoritarian communities ("castles") all indentured or are the majority slaves? Does the indentured population come along with the title of the authoritarian?
>>44404994
Debt slaves are not serfs?
Maybe we would return to feudalism after an apocalyptic event?
>>44405020
Technically not. There's a difference between serfdom and slavery even though the end result is not much different.
>>44399184
Look at imperial Russia and Austro-Hungaria.
>>44399184
Conscription was not ever a feature of medieval feudalism.
There is a world of difference between a class of gentry and aristocratic landowners providng personal military service for a limited term, equipped and supported at their own expense, and an obligation for all able-bodied men (with most of the manpower coming from the lower class) to be drafted into a state army if required.
Conscription is an invention of the French Revolution (the Levee en masse), which in turn built upon instituions put in place during the Absolutist monarchy and the building of a state-supported standing army.
The idea of every able-bodied man owing the state indefinate military service is completely alien to the medieval mindset.
>>44405099
Tsarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are both examples of 19th century states that have a decidely medieval "flavour". Princes and Dukes cavorting in castles while swathes of the population live in remote villages alomost untouched by modern technology.
They are not "feudal" in any real sense, the socio-economic framework of even these societies are very different but it does capture many of the superficial aspects of popular imaginings of the middle ages.
Which is probably actually rather more up OP's street than dissecting medieval sociology and economics.
>>44399184
The decline of feudalism was a process that took place gradually over hundreds of years.
I don't think you could conceivably justify persistent feudalism without imposing some sort of technological stagnation but you could probably justify a much more 'feudal' society existing in the 19th century
I would suggest that if colonialism was mostly a failure for whatever reason (e.g. most people Europeans encountered being able to successfully resist them) then the transition away from feudalism would have been slower.
The way to do this that I can see that requires the least alt-history fuckery would be to say (a)that the black death never occurs/is a much smaller event and (b) that the ottomans never restricted Europe's access to the products of Asia, which was a major impetus for early explorers. These changes would still only slow the decline though.
>>44404160
Not really. The levy in medival times were at least semi professionals, often full time soldiers under their liege. Peasants sole job was it to feed everyone, on the other side they did not have to fight.
The musket did not change that for a long while.
Levy en masse happened because there was sufficent industrial capacity to equip a large army, while still being able to feed your nation.
>>44399184
It would be possible, just like IRL.
>>44405155
>Princes and Dukes cavorting in castles while swathes of the population live in remote villages alomost untouched by modern technology.
not in Austria. Austria was behind in industrialization, but the difference wasn't so huge, especially in western parts. Depends on definition of feudalism, but relationship between lord and his subjects obliged to pay him taxes and work for him lasted until 1848.
