There's been a lot of work since Marc Bloch. Can I recommend Susan Reynolds' Fiefs and Vassals as well as Chris Wickham.
On the substance, manors were basically an administrative and judicial division - the lord collected rent and fines (often a substantial part of his income). They could comprise one village or several or just part of a village. In post-conquest England lands were assessed for military obligations but this was not a necessary tie to vassalage. It was more like a tax assessment.
Oaths and personal relations were the key stuff of medieval relations at all levels, going back to post-Rome.
I don't think the economic argument holds up - what we think of as essentially medieval (castles, knights, hereditary nobles each with a defined domain) are very much features of the period c1000 - 1250, when royal governance was unable to cope with constant raiding. There was no shortage of silver then, albeit a lot was hoarded and a lot obtained from the Muslim and Byzantine worlds in exchange for slaves. In any event, the main medium of exchange was the tally or other form of credit note, as it had been for millennia.
Thank you for the recommendation! I will add Reynolds to the list. Other pressing readings have sadly pushed the medieval stuff back, but I look forward to tackling Wickham when I get the chance...
So you are saying Bloch was more or less right about manors and oaths/vassalage, but the monetary point is misguided/overstated? As I said in the piece, I know very little, but I look forward to learning more - Bloch felt like a good way to 'start at the beginning'!
Right about manors, less so about vassalage, which was just one form of the general oath-taking. The monetary point is overstated. More widely, a lot of thinking about money in economics is either very abstract (unit of account, store of value etc) or goes to coins (with a nod to other units that crop up in history - cows, bondswomen, cigarettes ...). But coins come late (c750-800 BCE), until recently are relatively high value (English foot soldier paid 2p per day - 8 farthings. Hard to buy two meals and a few beers with 8 coins - if you can get change) and never constitute more than a small fraction of the value of exchange taking place.
So you have to look at how exchange is mediated in different circles. In the village the ale-wives, miller, etc run tallies and accounts mostly net out. The manor wants coin or saleable goods - it pays in tallies against obligations but tries to take in coin for off-manor expenses. Merchants run on credit (see some of the Geniza letters for details), with coin reserved for new trades and in cases where credit is doubtful (Clauswitz' aphorism that 'Battle is to war as cash settlement is to trade' runs both ways - cash settlement tests credit). In medieval times the long-distance merchants meet and net out their obligations at the great fairs. The king runs on tallies (credit against taxes) within the kingdom but on coin for luxuries/mercenaries others who want to take their pay home. (DS Bachrach has a nice article on the admin of maintaining the royal artillery under Henry II of England - exchequer issues tallies, expenditure acquitted by oaths with guarantors).
So silver lubricates long-distance trade and luxuries but lack of it is no particular barrier to ordinary exchange. Credit and the social environment that encourages or inhibits it are the keys.
There's been a lot of work since Marc Bloch. Can I recommend Susan Reynolds' Fiefs and Vassals as well as Chris Wickham.
On the substance, manors were basically an administrative and judicial division - the lord collected rent and fines (often a substantial part of his income). They could comprise one village or several or just part of a village. In post-conquest England lands were assessed for military obligations but this was not a necessary tie to vassalage. It was more like a tax assessment.
Oaths and personal relations were the key stuff of medieval relations at all levels, going back to post-Rome.
I don't think the economic argument holds up - what we think of as essentially medieval (castles, knights, hereditary nobles each with a defined domain) are very much features of the period c1000 - 1250, when royal governance was unable to cope with constant raiding. There was no shortage of silver then, albeit a lot was hoarded and a lot obtained from the Muslim and Byzantine worlds in exchange for slaves. In any event, the main medium of exchange was the tally or other form of credit note, as it had been for millennia.
Thank you for the recommendation! I will add Reynolds to the list. Other pressing readings have sadly pushed the medieval stuff back, but I look forward to tackling Wickham when I get the chance...
So you are saying Bloch was more or less right about manors and oaths/vassalage, but the monetary point is misguided/overstated? As I said in the piece, I know very little, but I look forward to learning more - Bloch felt like a good way to 'start at the beginning'!
Right about manors, less so about vassalage, which was just one form of the general oath-taking. The monetary point is overstated. More widely, a lot of thinking about money in economics is either very abstract (unit of account, store of value etc) or goes to coins (with a nod to other units that crop up in history - cows, bondswomen, cigarettes ...). But coins come late (c750-800 BCE), until recently are relatively high value (English foot soldier paid 2p per day - 8 farthings. Hard to buy two meals and a few beers with 8 coins - if you can get change) and never constitute more than a small fraction of the value of exchange taking place.
So you have to look at how exchange is mediated in different circles. In the village the ale-wives, miller, etc run tallies and accounts mostly net out. The manor wants coin or saleable goods - it pays in tallies against obligations but tries to take in coin for off-manor expenses. Merchants run on credit (see some of the Geniza letters for details), with coin reserved for new trades and in cases where credit is doubtful (Clauswitz' aphorism that 'Battle is to war as cash settlement is to trade' runs both ways - cash settlement tests credit). In medieval times the long-distance merchants meet and net out their obligations at the great fairs. The king runs on tallies (credit against taxes) within the kingdom but on coin for luxuries/mercenaries others who want to take their pay home. (DS Bachrach has a nice article on the admin of maintaining the royal artillery under Henry II of England - exchequer issues tallies, expenditure acquitted by oaths with guarantors).
So silver lubricates long-distance trade and luxuries but lack of it is no particular barrier to ordinary exchange. Credit and the social environment that encourages or inhibits it are the keys.