Why did feudalism develop?
Feudalism developed in Western Europe after the collapse of centralized Roman authority and the breakup of the Carolingian Empire, exacerbated by devastating Viking, Magyar, and Muslim raids in the 9th–10th centuries. With no strong central government to provide security, local lords with castles became the effective government, exchanging protection for loyalty and labor.
Feudalism emerged in Western Europe as a practical response to a security crisis. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE and the subsequent fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century, there was no effective central authority capable of defending populations against the waves of invasions that swept across Europe.
The 9th and 10th centuries were a period of extraordinary vulnerability. Vikings raided from the north, penetrating deep into the European interior via rivers. Magyar horsemen struck from the east with devastating speed. Muslim forces threatened Mediterranean coastlines and even established bases in southern France and Italy. The kings and emperors of the post-Carolingian world were too weak to defend their territories effectively.
In this vacuum, local strongmen — lords who could build castles and maintain armed retainers — became the real source of security. Peasants surrendered their freedom and labor in exchange for protection, becoming serfs bound to the lord's estate (manor). Warriors pledged loyalty and military service to more powerful lords in exchange for land grants (fiefs). These personal bonds of obligation, replicated up and down the social hierarchy, created the system historians later called feudalism.
It's worth noting that feudalism was not planned or designed — it emerged organically from desperate circumstances. It was also never as neat or uniform as textbook descriptions suggest. But the core dynamic — political power held by local lords, sustained by personal bonds of loyalty and land — provided stability in a violent and uncertain world, even if that stability came at the cost of personal freedom for the majority of the population.