Feudal fragmentation is a defining stage of European development

Feudal fragmentation – this weakening of the Central government while strengthening the peripheral regions of the country. The term is applied exclusively to medieval Europe, with its subsistence agriculture and a system of vassal relations. Feudal fragmentation was generated by the increase in Members of the Royal dynasties at the same time laid claim to the throne. Together with this factor, the relative military weakness of the medieval kings before the combined forces of their own vassals led to the fact that the previously extensive the state were split into numerous principalities, Duchies and other self-governing fiefdoms. The split was, of course, caused by objective changes in economic and social development of Europe, however, the conditional moment of the beginning of feudal fragmentation call 843 year, when the three grandsons of Charlemagne, was signed the Treaty of Verdun, which divided the state into three parts. From these scraps of the Empire of Charlemagne were born subsequently, France and Germany. The end of this period in European history refers to the XVI century, the era of the strengthening of the Royal government-absolutism. Although the same German lands were able to unite in a single state only in 1871. And that is not counting the ethnically German Liechtenstein, Austria and part of Switzerland.

Feudal fragmentation in Rus '

The pan-European trend of the X-XVI centuries, was not spared and Russian principalities. However, the feudal fragmentation of medieval Russian state had a number of features that differentiate it in character from the Western version. The first bell to the disintegration of the integrity of the state became the death of Prince Svyatoslav in 972, after which his sons started the first civil wars for the throne of Kiev. The last ruler of 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 fiefdoms heirs and never rebelled in its previous form.

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Of Course, Would be wrong to talk about the immediate collapse of the Kiev lands. The feudal fragmentation in Russia, as in Europe, was the result of objective processes of strengthening local land boyar nobility. Enough increased and has vast estates of the boyars became more profitable to support its own Prince, based on them and considered their interests, and not to remain loyal to Kiev. This has allowed younger sons, brothers, nephews and other princely families to resist centralization.

As for the features of domestic decay, then it lies first and foremost in the so-called elasticheskoj system, according to which, after the death of the ruler, the throne passed to his younger brother, not the eldest son, as it was in Western Europe (Salic law). This, however, was the cause of multiple internecine conflicts between the sons and nephews of the Russian dynasty XIII-XVI centuries. Russian lands in the period of feudal fragmentation began to be a large number of independent principalities. The rise of the local noble families and princely courts gave Russia the emergence of the Novgorod Republic, the rise of Galicia-Volyn and Vladimir-Suzdal principalities, the creation and rise of Moscow. Exactly the princes, and was destroyed because of feudal fragmentation and created the Russian Kingdom.