The middle age: the end of the Ancient World

The middle ages marked the total defeat of the Western Roman Empire in the fight against pagan barbarians who seized her land and began to build their States on the ruins of a once great country. However, they soon found out that slavery from a purely economic point of view is not suitable for efficient management, the Germans and the Slavs invented and implemented a new system of state control over the tillers, later called “feudal”. The essence of this system is that as the population density is already sufficient, the main value of the land. So, controlling the land, you can control all tech who handles it.

Therefore, the emphasis in the feudal system of farming was done on a professional military unit, the head of which stood the feudal, hereditary warrior-knight, which controlled and protected a piece of land around their base constant location called “castle”. All free peasants, who were treated controlled by the feudal Lord of the land, paid the knight-landowner rents the products or work. In the case of bandits or other troops of the knight of the feudal Lord protected the peasants had the opportunity to hide in the castle and wait out the danger. But if the farmer wanted to get away with feudal land, it made sense to prevent the farmer to do so, because thus the Lord could stay on the land but did not remain farmers for its processing. Thus was born the serf of feudal dependence, which in some places were stricter, and some softer.

The advantages of the new feudal system was that the peasants didn’t have to feed if they worked badly or had a bad harvest. Also the number of soldiers needed to control thousands of peasants was much smaller than the number of supervisors at a thousand slaves. The peasants were hereditary professional farmers, and therefore their effectiveness on the ground was higher than the semi-slaves. In General, feudalism had a clear advantage in efficiency in front of the slave system and the feudal system because fast enough widespread, except for the trading city-States.

As usual, for the trade port cities-States was more profitable to be in authority is not of a knight-Lord, and the electoral management body. Professional military units were employed including the elected councils to conduct a policy of aggressive negotiations with those who encroached on the business interests of the shareholders of city-States. However, again played by the same factors that have destroyed democratic trade policies of the Ancient World, and the era of free democratic city-States faded quickly, they were absorbed by the growing feudal kingdoms and empires.

The fact that the feudal self-sufficient, but has limited military resources. The self-sufficiency of the feudal Lord is that he is on their land with their peasants can do all the tools and all the weapons that are necessary for life and war, given the level of technology of the time. A feudal Lord needs no protection stronger, nor patronize over the weaker. However, the personal military force of the feudal Lord cannot be more than the number of people that he could personally command, and the amount of land cannot exceed the capacity of his personal control. So, if the neighbors can agree on a common attack of land Lord single the song is it is likely to be sung, and the peasants will go to work the land for a new landowner-a feudal Lord – it makes no difference to the original name of the person to pay dues to them not killed or robbed.

So outlaws and feudal disunity rather quickly ceased, and they came – voluntary-compulsory system of feudal caste hierarchy. The feudal lords were taken under the protection of the weaker lords and themselves become under banners of the feudal Lord more powerful. The result is a medieval Kingdom and Empire, which controls large areas of land and are able to accumulate and preserve a significant amount of wealth, and then quickly spend accumulated in order, for example, the acquisition of territory, which, as we remember, was in short supply in Europe.