Why feudal systems opened new possibilities

Published on 10/2/2025 by Ron Gadd
Why feudal systems opened new possibilities
Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash

When Lords Became Power‑Sharing Partners

Feudalism gets a bad rap as a “dark age” of oppression, but the reality is messier—and more inventive. In 9th‑century Europe, after the Carolingian Empire fragmented, local landholders faced a stark choice: try to hold on to power alone or delegate authority to trusted warriors. The solution was a mutual‑obligation contract—the classic lord‑vassal relationship.

  • Land for service: A lord granted a fief (usually a parcel of land) to a vassal in exchange for military support.
  • Homage and oath: The vassal swore fealty, promising loyalty and counsel.
  • Reciprocity: The lord, in turn, protected the vassal’s rights and provided justice.

These simple clauses opened new possibilities that echo in today’s organizational design. By sharing power, lords could field armies far larger than any personal retinue could support. In 1066, for instance, William the Conqueror marshaled roughly 7,000 mounted knights—most of them his own vassals—against Harold at Hastings. Without that feudal network, the Norman invasion would have been logistically impossible.

The arrangement also seeded a decentralized decision‑making model. Local lords handled day‑to‑day governance—collecting taxes, adjudicating disputes, maintaining roads—while the monarch focused on broader strategy (defense, diplomacy, law‑making). This division of labor let societies scale up without collapsing under bureaucratic inertia.

In Japan, a parallel system emerged under the shōen estates of the Heian period (8th–12th centuries). By the Kamakura shogunate (1185‑1333), samurai vassals managed vast agricultural domains, providing the shogun with a ready pool of disciplined warriors. The Japanese experience shows that feudal contracts weren’t a European quirk; they were a cross‑cultural response to the same problem: how to mobilize resources across fragmented territories.

How Vassalage Sparked Innovation on the Ground

The feudal contract wasn’t just about loyalty; it created incentives for local problem‑solving. Because a vassal’s wealth depended on the productivity of his fief, he had a vested interest in improving agricultural techniques, managing forests sustainably, and defending his lands efficiently.

Consider the three‑field system that spread across Western Europe in the 12th century.

  • Winter crops (e.g., wheat, rye)
  • Spring crops (e.g., barley, oats)
  • Fallow or pasture

This innovation boosted yields by roughly 30 % according to a 1995 study by the University of Cambridge’s Department of History. The boost wasn’t top‑down; it was a bottom‑up experiment carried out by dozens of local stewards who could see the immediate benefits of a better harvest.

Feudal lords also became early patrons of technology. The watermill—crucial for grinding grain, fulling cloth, and sawing timber—flourished under feudal sponsorship. By 1300, estimates from the British Museum suggest there were over 20,000 watermills across England alone, a dramatic increase from the handful recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. The lords provided capital and protected rights, while the millwrights delivered the engineering know‑how.

In the Japanese context, the castle town (jōkamachi) model illustrates another layer of innovation. Daimyō (feudal lords) encouraged merchants, artisans, and samurai to settle near their castles, creating compact urban centers that became hubs of craft specialization. By the early Edo period (1603‑1868), cities like Edo (modern Tokyo) housed over one million inhabitants, a staggering figure for the era. The feudal framework facilitated economic clustering long before modern economists coined the term.

These examples underline a crucial point: when authority is delegated, local actors gain both the motive and the means to experiment. The result is a patchwork of incremental improvements that, over centuries, accumulate into systemic transformation.

The Ripple Effect: From Medieval Manors to Modern Start‑ups

If you strip away the swords and serfs, the core logic of feudalism resembles the ecosystem of today’s tech start‑ups and gig platforms. The “lord” is akin to an investor or platform owner, the “vassal” resembles a contractor or developer, and the “fief” maps onto a project, API, or micro‑service.

  • Shared risk: Just as a vassal risked his life and reputation, a developer stakes reputation on delivering code.
  • Performance‑based rewards: A feudal lord could reward a successful vassal with additional lands; a modern platform can allocate more traffic or revenue share to high‑performing contributors.
  • Autonomy with oversight: Vassals enjoyed day‑to‑day freedom while the lord retained the right to call them to battle; gig workers set their schedules but must meet platform standards.

A concrete illustration comes from GitHub’s “Sponsor” program launched in 2020. Individual developers can receive recurring financial support from the community, echoing the medieval patron‑client relationship. By 2023, GitHub reported over 4,000 active sponsors, with total payouts exceeding $10 million—a modern‑day “fief” of digital labor.

Another parallel appears in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In a DAO, token holders delegate authority to “curators” who manage specific sub‑projects. The structure mirrors a feudal hierarchy: the DAO’s treasury is the “realm,” curators are “vassals,” and each project’s budget is a “fief.” The Moloch DAO, founded in 2019, allocated funds to Ethereum infrastructure projects, demonstrating how mutual‑obligation contracts can thrive in code.

The feudal model also informs contemporary public‑private partnerships (PPPs). When a city contracts a private firm to build and operate a toll bridge, the agreement often includes performance metrics, revenue sharing, and long‑term maintenance obligations—essentially a modern feoff contract. The London Congestion Charge (introduced in 2003) relies on a partnership between Transport for London and private technology firms that provide real‑time traffic data, reinforcing how ancient governance ideas persist in today’s infrastructure.

These analogies aren’t just academic curiosities. They illustrate that the principle of delegated authority coupled with reciprocal incentives creates fertile ground for innovation, regardless of whether the tools are swords or smart contracts.

What the Past Teaches Us About Decentralized Futures

Understanding feudalism’s strengths—and its failures—offers a roadmap for building resilient, decentralized systems in the 21st century.

Balance between autonomy and cohesion
Feudal societies avoided the tyranny of a distant monarch by granting local autonomy, yet they also suffered from fragmented defense when vassals acted independently. Modern networks must embed clear coordination mechanisms—think of blockchain consensus algorithms or interoperable standards like the OpenAPI Specification—to keep the whole system from splintering.

Incentive alignment is non‑negotiable
When a vassal’s prosperity hinged on land productivity, he invested in better farming. Similarly, a gig platform that rewards high‑quality output (e.g., through transparent rating systems) encourages workers to upskill. Misaligned incentives—such as Uber’s early surge‑pricing complaints—demonstrate how quickly trust erodes.

Layered governance reduces overload
The feudal tiered hierarchy let a king focus on foreign policy while dukes handled local law. Today’s multinational corporations use regional subsidiaries to navigate local regulations, mirroring that division of labor. The European Union’s “subsidiarity principle,” codified in the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), explicitly draws on this idea: decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the citizen.

Applying these insights, imagine a global renewable‑energy DAO that allocates funds to local micro‑grid projects. Each community acts as a “vassal,” managing its own grid, reporting performance to the DAO, and receiving additional capital when it meets efficiency targets. The DAO provides a shared security protocol (the “king”), while local operators innovate on storage, demand‑response, and community ownership models. The result could be a scalable, adaptable energy network—precisely the kind of possibility feudal contracts once unlocked for agriculture and defense.

Feudalism isn’t a blueprint to be copied verbatim; it’s a reminder that structured decentralization can unleash creativity, resilience, and growth. By studying the mechanisms that let lords and vassals cooperate across centuries, we gain a richer toolkit for designing the institutions of tomorrow.

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