Once foundational to interpretations of medieval society, political economy, and institutional development, feudalism has fallen out of favor among medievalists in recent decades. Critiqued as overly schematic, anachronistic, or insufficiently attentive to regional variation, the term has often been set aside altogether. Rather than attempting to revive feudalism as a totalizing ideal type, this session seeks to reopen debate by reflecting on its potential as a comparative and analytical tool.

Bringing together scholars of legal and institutional history and political economy working on premodern Europe and West Asia, the roundtable will use feudalism as a heuristic that may help historians integrate diverse strands of inquiry – economic, social, legal, and cultural – to develop a more holistic approach to the study of the past. Moving beyond historiographic debates that treat questions of lordship, vassalage, landholding, and jurisdiction as discrete institutional or cultural phenomena, the discussants will consider how the notion of feudalism can help root these in contemporary material conditions and labor regimes, foregrounding the intrinsic links between property, production, politics, and power. The participants will also ask how a critically formulated and historically grounded understanding of feudalism may help us identify parallel features in otherwise distinct societies, as well as whether, and how, feudalism can be meaningfully distinguished from other socioeconomic arrangements such as capitalism.

By debating feudalism’s conceptual boundaries and comparative potential, this roundtable aims to reevaluate the place of this term in current historical scholarship and to reflect on its continued relevance for comparative and interdisciplinary research.