Feudal fragmentation - the defining stage of European development

Feudal fragmentation is a weakeningcentral state power with simultaneous strengthening of peripheral regions of the country. The term applies exclusively to medieval Europe with its natural economy and a system of vassal relations. Feudal fragmentation was generated by an increase

members of the royal dynasties, simultaneouslypretending to the throne. Along with this factor, the relative military weakness of the medieval kings before the combined forces of their own vassals led to the fact that previously extensive states began to split into numerous principalities, duchies and other self-governing units. Of course, the fragmentation was caused by the objective evolution of the economic and social development of Europe, but the conditional moment of the beginning of feudal fragmentation is 843, when the Verdun Treaty was signed between the three grandsons of Charlemagne, who divided the state into three parts. It was from these flaps of the empire of Charles the Great that France and Germany were subsequently born. The end of this period in European history is attributed to the XVI century, the era of strengthening the royal power - absolutism. Although the same German lands managed to unite in a single state only in 1871. And then, not counting the ethnically German Liechtenstein, Austria and part of Switzerland.

Feudal fragmentation in Russia

The pan-European tendency of the 10th-16th centuries did not passside and domestic principalities. At the same time, the feudal fragmentation of the medieval Russian state had a number of features that distinguished its character from the Western variant. The first bell for the disintegration of the integrity of the state was the death of Prince Svyatoslav in 972, after which the first internecine wars for the Kiev throne began between his sons. The last ruler of the united Kievan Rus is the son of Vladimir Monomakh, Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich, who died in 1132. After his death, the state was finally divided into patrimonies by heirs and never again rebelled in its former form.

Of course it was

would be wrong to talk about simultaneous decayKiev possessions. Feudal fragmentation in Russia, as in Europe, was the result of objective processes of strengthening the local landed boyars. It became more profitable for the boyars, who had sufficiently strengthened and located extensive possessions, to support their own prince, relying on them and reckoning with their interests, and not remaining loyal to Kiev. It was this that allowed younger sons, brothers, nephews and other princely relatives to resist centralization.

As for the features of domestic decay,then it lies primarily in the so-called lästvichesky system, in which, after the death of the ruler, the throne passed to his younger brother, and not to his eldest son, as it was in Western Europe (Salic Law). This, however, became the cause of multiple internecine conflicts between the sons and nephews of the Russian dynasty of the XIII-XVI centuries. The Russian lands in the period of feudal fragmentation began to constitute a number of large independent principalities. The rise of local noble families and princely courtyards gave Rus the emergence of the Novgorod Republic, the rise of the Galitsko-Volyn and Vladimir-Suzdal principalities, the creation and elevation of Moscow. It was the Moscow princes that destroyed feudal fragmentation and created the Russian kingdom.