The Post-Feudal Polity and the Emergence of the Nation-State

Abstract

Europe around the year 1400 displayed no inexorable tendency towards the stable consolidation of a capitalist system (as defined here). This is reflected in the internal vulnerability of European society to periodic ‘Malthusian’ subsistence crises resulting in demographic collapse. It may also be seen in the lack of any striking technological breakthrough in the medieval period to relieve such pressures. In the light of these problems it is difficult to see capitalism as an immanent feature of either the classical, Germanic and Christian worlds, or of the parcellised sovereignty of the late medieval polity. Hence while the pre-feudal legacy may have been of far greater developmental significance than that particular to the feudal world, it remains the case that the European transition to capitalism in later centuries cannot be regarded as a necessary product of either the pre-feudal or feudal epochs.