MBeran Feudalism and the Middle Ages

All right, today we are talking about feudalism and the Middle Ages, and if you're like, I already have no idea what she's talking about. That's okay. I'm not expecting you to have any idea what I'm talking about. That's what I'm going to talk about it. Just a reminder, we are talking about the continent of Europe. Right there. So remember continents, I had this as a type of last time. I thought I fixed it. Hold on. All right, there we go. Continents are the largest landmasses on earth, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, and we are of course talking about Europe, this unit. So when we talk about Europe, we generally think of Europe as a timeline. Okay, what do I mean by that? Well, over the span of human history, the right were like we're in the year right now 2019, depending on when you're watching this video, you may or may not be, I don't know, maybe your time traveler. But anyways, you know, we have year zero, but there's actually time before that in time after that, we'll get into that later. But we're in your 2019 2019, right? So when we look at Europe, we kind of are looking at it from the year 200 to the year 2000. 1800 years of history that we're going to cover in this unit, so hold on, it's going to go fast. But right now, we're going to talk about what is called the Middle Ages. So around the year 400 to 1400, you had what was called the Middle Ages. And feudalism was a specific societal structure that just means a way to say like societal structure is just a fancy way to say ways people were grouped. So if feudalism was from about the year 900 to about the year 1300. So feudalism was a thing in Europe for around 400 years, okay? So let's talk about what it was. Oh, and then there's this thing called Black Death and people died and it was over. Right. But that sounds pretty terrible. That's because it was. We learned about that in another day though. So the Middle Ages, a couple things happened in during the Middle Ages. One was the Catholic Church grew in power. They built churches like this all across Europe and you're thinking awesome. It's a building that I have seen buildings before, but remember all of this was done without electricity. All of this was done without bulldozers and cranes. So we're looking at people with ladders and hand making bricks, hand making stone, all that kind of stuff, or not hand making the hand carving stone. In building these churches all over Europe. Because the Catholic Church became very powerful throughout Europe in this time. They raised money through what is called tithing, which is giving 10% of your money to the church or religious organization. So if I make a $100 a week, I'll give $10 of that to the church that's hiding. 10%. But the church didn't pay taxes to the countries they were in. And so the church was able to build up a lot of wealth, there is a lot of money. Through tithing, even forced timing, which means people didn't really have choice. And then it became very powerful throughout Europe because there wasn't really strong kings and queens. There was kind of a little areas to be in charge of, but there weren't really strong kings or queens. And so the church kind of filled that leadership authority role. Okay? So one thing that happened in the Middle Ages was the Catholic Church became very powerful. You also had the growth of Islam, okay? Islam we remember is the religion that believes that there is no God, but a lot and Muhammad is his prophet. So they follow they read the Quran and follow what the Quran says about God and says about how people should act and all those kinds of things. And Islam, so the Catholic Church is becoming very powerful throughout Europe. And Islam was becoming very powerful throughout southern Europe and also Africa and Asia. A couple of things that happened through the Islamic religion during the Middle Ages was they actually developed our current number system. I know that you just sit around all day pondering things like, where did numbers come from? Never came from our current number system zero, one, two, three, all that kind of thing. It came from the Islamic Arabic region during the Middle Ages. Like they were the ones that came up with numbering things, and counting things, and doing it a specific way every time. And then there was also me technology advances, okay? Things like soap. PSA, this is 6th grade. Everybody should be using soap. Surgery tools, all kinds of things. They actually was one of the first known sketches and inventions and attempts at human flights. This guy whose name I forget at the moment, who is part of the Muslim scientific community, the Islamic scientific community, built a flying contraption, and strap himself to it. Also he was 70, right? So obviously hardcore, and jumped off the side of a hill. And it was really more of a glider than like a flying flappy wings and go up machine. But it was still really the first instance of recorded human flight if you want to call it that. So that happened in the Middle Ages. So some scientific discovery going on, especially in the Islamic world. So the Catholic Church is getting powerful in one part of Europe. The Islamic religion is getting powerful in southern Europe as well as Asia and Africa, which leads to fighting. So you have what's called the crusades. A lot of people have a lot of opinions about the crusades. But I'm gonna do my best to just give you the facts. So basically, European Catholic armies invaded the Muslim territories. So Catholicism was in one area and Muslims were in another area and Catholic armies invaded the Muslim areas, okay? There are a lot of reasons for that that you can Google. But basically it all had to do with gaining control of a city called Jerusalem in the Middle East. When we move on to our Middle East unit, you'll notice that people are still fighting over control of Jerusalem and that was like a 100,000, not a 100,000. Like a thousand years ago, and people are still fighting about it. So obviously Jerusalem has a lot of significance to a lot of people. But the European Catholics invaded the Muslim territories, many lives were lost on both sides. It was not a one sided battle, the Europeans would gain territory and lose territory and gain territory and lose territory there actually several different crusades that were all these big battles to try and control certain territories. But a good thing that happened was cultural diffusion. We know that cultural diffusion is the sharing and mixing of cultures from one place to another, so through these invasions, we know that the Islamic world made technological advances like soap and surgery tools. Well, when the Europeans invaded, they discovered some of these things and brought these things back to Europe with them. So not at all advocating for crusades. Much like when we talked about colonization in Colombian exchange, triangular trade, we can't go back and fix it, right? You can't change history. And everybody gets to form their own opinions about what was right and what was wrong, however, through all of those things we can acknowledge. There were both good and bad consequences of the crusade, just like they were getting bad consequences of triangular trade. Okay? So that's the Middle Ages and kind of all these things were happening. And so then developed this social structure called feudalism. All right, so feudalism. Bam. So, starting off the top, you have the king. Since the king owned all the land in the country and made the loss. He gave an area of land called a 5 to the rich lords and nobles, right? So the king is the leader. He's the guy up on the top of the pyramid. There's one. In some cases, of course it was also a queen, not a king. But you have the king at the top. Beneath them you have the lords or nobles or vassals however you want to call them. And it says in return, the lords and nobles agree to supply the king with soldiers and horses for his army. So the king gives somebody's land and they say awesome, we will have an army for you. Okay. And then so then the nobles to get people to be soldiers gave way into those soldiers. Those soldiers were called knights. You've probably not been shining armor, fighting dragons, all those kinds of stuff. I'm sorry if I ruined your life, dragons are not real. That was not something that was happening during that time. But the nights and shining armor really were a thing. And so the nobles gave land to the soldiers and show the soldiers agreed to fight for the kings and the nobles. And then down here at the bottom, you have the peasants. The peasants worked the land for the nobles and knights who then, in turn, protected them. Okay? So if you're going to have these lords who are in charge of these areas and you're going to have these nights, somebody's got to feed them. Somebody's got to make clothes for them. Somebody's got to build houses around the castles and whatnot. That's going to be the peasants, the serfs. That's most people. Most people were workers. Most people were not wealthy. We're living day to today week to week trying to make sure they had enough to survive. You also did not move up and down really between these different people groups. Like, if you were a peasant girl or surf, whatever you want to call it, and you fell in love with this super cute night that lived in the same area as you did on the same little piece of land, you don't get to fall in love and get married to them and become like a night's wife. No, you're going to marry another peasant. Okay. If you're a former and you really want to be a really bad work all day in the farms with the animals and then you train at night to be to be a night with your sword and your axe and your shield and all that and you don't get to like go try out to be a night. You're just going to be a surf forever. You're going to be born to serve. You're going to live a surf and you're going to die. And that's just kind of how life was. Okay, so not a lot of moving up and down, pretty much none. Whatever area you were born into was what you stayed as. So you have these people groups, but how can we relate it to how we know life to be? Well, let's talk about a school. The school has a leader called a principle. So kind of like a king, right? The principles kind of like the king. In our case, we've got mister ebley here. Other schools have other leaders, but there's one, right? Just like there is one king. Then you have an office team, right? Our sister principals are counselors. Those are the organizers, kind of like the lords were the organizers. Okay? They each had their own little area like we have a 5th grade assistant principal and a 5th grade counselor in a 6th grade principle and a 6th grade counselor. Everybody had their own area that they were in charge of. Okay? And then you have the managers. Those are the teachers, right? We each have a classroom that was given to us by the organizers by the lord of the vessel. And we as nights are the managers and the protectors of our classrooms. And then so sorry, students, you are the workers, right? I can't do the work of 6th grade for you. I can provide you everything you need to do the work of 6th grade, but I can't actually do it for you. You're the workers. It's your job to do the work of 6th grade. Also just like the peasants, there were more peasants than anybody. There's more students than anybody, right? Like we've got around 80 adults in this building. We've got around 750 to 800 students in this building. There's way more of you all than there are of us. You're the workers. Okay? This is not obviously a perfect illustration. But this is kind of the best I can do to get you to understand there's kind of different different levels. There's not a whole lot of moving up and down, right? As a student, you're not going to come to more and be a teacher. As a teacher, I'm not coming tomorrow and being a principal. That's not how it works. And so again, this is not a perfect example, but it's the best I can give you there is one leader, the king or the principal, there are organizers who were each in charge of a large area. So the office team or the nobles and lords, there are managers and really more protectors. That would be the 9th, and the teachers. And then the workers, the cerse, which is, you know, you guys, sorry. That's okay. I was a student once, too. So I was also a surf in my school. So, you know, work hard, do good, it'll be fine. But that's kind of our lesson on feudalism.