From warriors to Lords - historians I need your help

[Finchbearer]

At school I remember that the Anglo-Saxons were taught to be more a collection of tribal groups, but yes the school teachers and the school books could have been wrong, but that’s in part what I have always gone off of.

The Cambridge dictionary gives these definitions for each term:

Clan: a group of families, especially in Scotland, who originally came from the same family and have the same name.

Tribe: a group of people, often of related families, who live together, sharing the same language, culture, and history, especially those who do not live in towns or cities.

 

[Finchbearer]

I do appreciate any and all answers, I really do, but I find Skip that you are just telling me I’m wrong - which is fine, I am not a historian, but that still isn’t steering me in the direction I was looking for.

 

[pmmg]

So...if you were not a clan member, were you just a farmer? did you own the land? were you a freeman? or a serf? What were you? Would you own a farm in some clan lords territory and not owe anything to him?

 

[Mad Swede]

So...if you were not a clan member, were you just a farmer? did you own the land? were you a freeman? or a serf? What were you? Would you own a farm in some clan lords territory and not owe anything to him?

I can only explain this in Swedish terms. If you lived in a given area you were a member of a clan/kindred whose area it was. That might be a small clan allied with the largest clan (the de facto rulers of the area) or it might be the large clan itself. You might change clan as a result of marriage, otherwise you stayed a member of the same clan for your whole life. As a clan member you were also automatically a freeman, and as a freeman you owned your property, be that a farm or some smithy or whatever. Serfdom did not exist. You owed a duty of service to the head of your clan, which usually meant that you did some form of work for the clan head or someone who needed help from the clan. As examples, if you were literate you might do some work as a scribe but you might also be called to accompany your clan head to the king's ting. A skilled smith might make a sword or a knife, a stone mason might do some building work. The amount of work done was always by agreement - a clan head who mistreated their freemen tended not to last long, simply because being head of the clan was an elected position. The clan owed you and your family protection and support, eg if you were ill or had been hurt doing your work.

 

[pmmg]

So, you were a member of the clan, even if you had no blood or marriage relation to them, just because you lived in their area? You would be a freeman, living in the clans territory, and considered part of the clan?

 

[Mad Swede]

So, you were a member of the clan, even if you had no blood or marriage relation to them, just because you lived in their area? You would be a freeman, living in the clans territory, and considered part of the clan?

The chances of you not being related by marriage or blood were very slim, although the relationship might be distant. If you weren't related in this way then you would have earned your clan membership as a result of services to the clan. One example of this is those captured during raids or wars - they were thralls (slaves, sort of) but they could only be held as thralls for a limited period and the clan still had a duty of care to them. After their period of thralldom was complete these people became clan members and freemen as a result of their service.

 

[pmmg]

So...bringing this back to clans and tribes, clans may have more family relations, but they are essentially the same.

Going back to Skip:

>Tribe is surely just another word for clan
Nope. As MadSwede pointed out, clans are about kindred groups. Tribes are something else (varies by society). And neither are directly explanatory of legal conditions of farmers (which can be free, semi-free as in serfdom, tenancy, or slaves). Also, none of that has to do with feudal relations but has more to do with manorialism.

If you are looking for historical accuracy, you're in for some serious book reading. It's a fascinating topic and there are some excellent books on it, but it's not something you're going to learn from casual conversation.

How is it unreleated? How do we go from freemen owning their land, to feudal lords with peasants and serfs who do not own the land and owe their work to the lord? Somewhere, the relations must not be enough, or there must be a source of labor that gets separated out from that system, and the feudal system creeps in and takes over.

 

[skip.knox]

I do appreciate any and all answers, I really do, but I find Skip that you are just telling me I’m wrong - which is fine, I am not a historian, but that still isn’t steering me in the direction I was looking for.

I could recommend specific books, but I don't know your background, so the odds of me recommending something you'll actually find useful are fairly small. I have my favorites, but I'm very much aware that I've been a historian my whole life, so what I think is introductory and easy to understand might not be so for another person. I've experienced that more than once.

There is a benefit to working one's way through a bibliography for oneself. The individual makes their own choices as to what seems accessible. Sure there will be books that don't turn out to be useful, but that's simply part of the process. To argue by analogy, it's why we have to write our own books, even though some efforts fall short; the unfinished novel is never wasted effort.

You've restricted your inquiry to the British Isles. That's good; it lets out a whole bunch of works on agrarian history (there's good stuff on France and Germany, and elsewhere). You've said you're interested in certain specifics but some of those specifics are centuries apart. If you're after accuracy, then you'll have to get that sorted.

The process I think you are describing evolved over the course of centuries. It's a long and complex story, which is why you are not finding any quick summary of how it happened.

You asked other questions that are nearly as huge in scope, so again I can't find a way to summarize. I think I could offer some help if you had specific questions derived from an actual story. But again I have to say that the story outweighs considerations of historical accuracy anyway.

And I'll offer a book anyway. Joseph and Frances Gies wrote a whole series of books on medieval life. One of those is Life in a Medieval Village. I think they're still in print. Very readable, and you could take a look at their other works as well.

 

[skip.knox]

So...if you were not a clan member, were you just a farmer? did you own the land? were you a freeman? or a serf? What were you? Would you own a farm in some clan lords territory and not owe anything to him?

It really does depend on time and place. MadSwede answered for Sweden. Italy was different. Scotland was different. France was different. Heck, different parts of France were different. And all varied over time.

The terms used here are extremely slippery. For one thing, these are English-language words. French has a different vocabulary. Ditto elsewhere. And anyway we find inconsistent usage in different documents. But this is a fantasy forum, so there's no need to plunge into those dark alleys.

Farming is an occupation, not a social or legal status. So they were all farmers (well, not the village blacksmith but you get the idea).

Farmers might be freeholders or serfs. Peasant is a very slippery term but is probably closest to a generic synonym for farmer. The more strictly legal statuses were slave, serf, and freeholder. There were also what in England were called cottagers, which were farm workers who had no land of their own but worked the farms of others.

I'm not sure there were clans in England. I've always thought of them as Scottish. Maybe Northumbrian. I don't know about Wales or Ireland on that score. But there was always a place for individuals who were not members of a clan. For one thing, exogamy was fairly standard practice (though not universal). For another, people could and did move from one community to another. So residence alone did not make a clan member. At least not in the British Isles, and the term doesn't work in most of the Continent. There were plenty of kin-based groupings, but "clan" wasn't the term used. Think, for example of the Montagues and Capulets in Verona. Those were famiglia, but not clans.

 

[Finchbearer]

Thanks Skip - I’ll take a look at that book. That would be of interest to me because I find it easier to learn history through the social and domestic daily life of it. That’s what I’m interested in. I find I can learn about the wider political happenings through that too.

I’ve been filtering through Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, which again, puts information in easy to understand terms for me.

For my fantasy worldbuilding historical accuracy need not apply as you’ve mentioned, so I’ve certainly been delving into Anglo-Saxon culture and traditions along with the Early Modern time period.