• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Big Site of History

History of Civilization

Feudal Europe | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe

May 20, 2008 by Marge Anderson

It is all very well to speak of relative anarchy before and after Charlemagne, but what was anarchy like and how were human relations governed? Did everyone just slaughter everyone else indiscriminately? What were the rules that enabled life to go on, however harshly?

In fact, of course, there were mutual arrangements that allowed people to work and fight, to survive if they could, to seek out some way of assuring at least temporary security. In these arrangements we find elements surviving from Roman times, innovations introduced by the barbarians, and changes linked with conversion to Christianity.

The settled inhabitants of western Europe and the invaders underwent a long, slow, mutual adjustment, as new and old ways of regulating human affairs competed and often combined with each other.

Related Posts

  • The Civilization of the Early Middle Ages in the West | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe
  • Europe about 1000 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe
  • The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe
  • The Breakdown of Roman Civilization | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe
  • Visigoths, Vandals, Anglo-Saxons, 410-455 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe

Filed Under: The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Between The World Wars
  • Byzantium and Islam
  • Church and Society in the Medieval West
  • European Exploration and Expansion
  • Judaism and Christianity
  • Modern Empires and Imperialism
  • Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution
  • The Beginnings of the Secular State
  • The Democracies
  • The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe
  • The Enlightenment
  • The First Civilizations
  • The First World War
  • The French Revolution
  • The Great Powers in Conflict
  • The Greeks
  • The Industrial Society
  • The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe
  • The Late Twentieth Century
  • The Modernization of Nations
  • The Non-Western World
  • The Old Regimes
  • The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy
  • The Protestant Reformation
  • The Renaissance
  • The Rise of the Nation
  • The Romans
  • The Russian Revolution of 1917
  • The Second World War
  • The Written Record
  • Twentieth-Century Thought and Letters

About · Privacy · Contact
Copyright © 2021 Big Site of History