The Concise Encyclopedia of Britain interprets feudalism as "feudalism", which is a social system of rights and obligations based on the relationship between land ownership and personal attachment.
In Marc Bloch's book Feudal Society, feudalism mainly refers to the political system and legal system in medieval Western Europe, specifically referring to the relationship between feudal lords and vassals, the respective rights and obligations of feudal lords and vassals, the system of enfeoffment of land, the hierarchical decentralization system, the weak power of the king or the central government, and traditional legal habits.
The Modern Chinese Dictionary (1996) defines feudalism as "a social system based on landlords occupying land and exploiting farmers".
People in the 20th century didn't know what feudalism was, what feudal system was and what feudal society was. At that time, these abstract nouns did not exist. It is a modern thing to use these concepts to refer to the system and society in the Middle Ages, so these words are a theoretical construction after the Middle Ages.
Since modern times, a set of words such as "feudalism" and "feudalism" have been widely used in academia and society, but at the same time their meanings have become diverse, different and even almost opposite.
By the first half of the 20th century, the concept of feudalism used by western non-Marxist scholars appeared in broad sense and narrow sense. The so-called broad feudalism refers to various social phenomena in the Middle Ages, while the so-called narrow feudalism specifically refers to monarchs, vassals and fiefs. French scholars have dedicated two classic works to explain broad-sense feudalism and narrow-sense feudalism.
The former is "Feudal Society" by French historian Marc Bloch, and the latter is "What is Feudalism" by Fran? ois Schouw.