In context though, I wonder if serfs really had it better. They still had no freedom to move, and in the early Middle Ages there was no appeal granted to serfs under a tyrannical lord.
Many societies continued to have slaves after the introduction of Christianity, including Britain before the Norman conquest.
There was a religious reform movement around the time of the conquest that if I understand correctly gradually eliminated slavery over a few generations to a few centuries.
The Catholic Church was very particular about this in making sure to only ban the enslavement of Christians while explicitly condoning the slavery of non Christians.
It's a classic example of ingroup vs outgroup bias.
I think the in the US slavery is associated with the virulent Slavery in the United States where slaves were literal property every bit as much as a horse and a wagon were property.
Might be that Romans would have considered the difference between their slaves and medieval surfs as a distinction without a difference. And possibly be horrified by the US variant. Your slave doesn't have the right to marry and own property? WTF?
There was nothing especially virulent about slavery in the US compared to slavery in other places.
> Your slave doesn't have the right to marry and own property? WTF?
It's actually true that American slaves were generally legally forbidden from marrying. This didn't matter, though; marriage was not just not suppressed but actively encouraged by slaveholders.
It's not true that American slaves didn't have the right to own property. They did.
The just-in-time supply chains that keep the lights on and food and other goods in the stores would fall apart within a couple of weeks.
Medieval starvation was local. Areas were largely self-sufficient in the bare essentials - except in bad years, which happened regularly enough to keep a lid on population growth, but not so regularly they caused widespread depopulation.
Trade was mostly for useful extras.
That's very much not true today. Everything is specialised and interdependent, and not even farming areas are truly self-sufficient.
This was - and possibly still is - the biggest risk from a pandemic. It's hard to calculate the exact tipping point, but when you have a certain percentage of the population unable to work for a couple of weeks or so, essential systems start breaking down.
If 50% of Canadians died next week, you think what, Canada would cease to exist?
It’s possible. Canada’s nearly broken up* in recent memory over regional differences. 50% of a population dying is a massively destabilizing event that could undo even a comparatively wealthy nation.
* or at least its second largest province narrowly decided to stay in Confederation.
Eventually, some black swan event will happen and we'll have a systems collapse it will be very hard to recover from - because so little of the population will have baseline skills. Thankfully this pandemic wasn't it, but it doesn't seem to have woke up TPTB to the problem.
However i agree with you and i think even the US govt agrees with you. Thats the reason farming subsidies exist
If you are trained well enough to be effective with metal armor, you're probably trained well enough to be effective without it in close quarters.
Heavy plate requires mounted cavalry, but largely negates the maneuverability of horse, and can be brought down with foot trained with pikes or heavy spears.
Maybe the metal was best used elsewhere.
The Romans learned this from the celts early on, and went on to conquer the Mediterranian.
Against the heavy knights of the Medieval period, swords were pretty useless for infantry, though. And at the end of the Middle Ages, when pikes had regained the dominant position for the infantry, armor had become so effective that regular swords would have trouble penetrating. During the 14th anc 15th century, halberds and poleaxes and specialist greatswords would would fill the role that the gladius had 1500 years before, ie that of being able to decisively defeat the pikes after closing in. (Although, until gunpowder weapons took over, pikes were still the most frequent weapon, as the defence against cavalry was still necessary).
At the time, the Romans were basically using the same weapons and tactics as the Greeks, but they had trouble when fighting the Celts when the Celts managed to breech their lines.
In 390 BC, the celts sacked Rome [3]. In response, Rome was fortified and the the Romans would be training and organizing in ways intended to withstand the Celtic charge. Most importantly, that meant improving cohesion and discipline to the point where they could hold the line.
Gradually, though, the Romans would also incorporate Celtic arms and armor, both from Gaulic Celts and Iberian Celts, perhaps most famously the Gladius [4].
Eventually, Rome started to push the Celts back, but there were setbacks, such as when Hannibal employed large numbers of Celtic soldiers during the Punic Wars [5].
Eventually, the Roman military came out if these conflict as a much stronger force when it had started, and ended up as a force that was even able to match the Macedonian phalanxes (partly because the Macedonians did not employ cavalry with the skill that Alexander had).
While Rome was busy conquering the Mediterranean, Germanic tribes were pressuring the Celtic tribes that had occupied modern day Germany, partly replacing them and partly subjugating them.
The Cimbrian war started in 113BC (the Cimbrians themselves may have been Germanic or Celtic, but the Teutons supporting them were definitely Germanic, and the German name for Germany (Deutschland) is taken from them).
Initially, the barbarians were on the offensive, but in the end the Romans under the leadership of Gaius Marius were able to push them back.
In response to the weakness against the Germanics, Marius would institute his "Marius Reforms", replacing the citizen army with a much more capable professional army. [7]. These soldiers are the most famous incarnation of the Roman Legions, armed with Pila, Scuta and and Gladii.
Those reforms, incidentally, paved they way for the Fall of the Republic.
[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisalpine_Gaul [2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Allia#Aftermath,... [4]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius [5]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War [6]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbrian_War [7]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_reforms
And here a different one in English: https://web.archive.org/web/20180401081044/http://mygeologyp...
In Poland, peasants actually were freer in the Middle Ages then they were in later centuries. Serfdom became more of a thing with the rise of the wealthy landed magnates whose greed increasingly bound the peasants to production. Poland was, among other things, the breadbasket of Europe, and in the preindustrial era, agriculture was a major source of wealth, and so among its exports to Western Europe, grain was a major source of revenue. The nobility in Poland was quite large (around 10%, as opposed to the ~2% in a country like France), but over time, a part of that nobility managed to become fabulously wealthy and maintained private armies that I believe could rival the army of the Polish Crown in size, and owned hundreds of villages, towns, and even cities. Eventually, Poland's last king, Stanislaus II Augustus, placed the peasants under the protection of the State.