HIST 2710 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Age Of Enlightenment, Early Modern Europe, Tokugawa Ieyasu
Document Summary
In 1500s, earliest european visitors to japan recognized japan institutions as similar to their own: feudalism . Hence, this european term was pinned to japanese history. European enlightenment view of feudalism before the french revolution of 1789: Middle ages as dark age between classical era of ancient greece and rome, and. Karl marx"s idea of the stages of socioeconomic development: His focus was on relations of production : class struggle ends one stage, opens the next. Stanford historian peter duus, relying on french historian marc bloch"s analysis of medieval european institutions, put forward a different approach: japan"s move from centralized bureaucratic government to feudalism. This development gave japan a historical experience distinct from the rest of east. Bloch: unfree peasants; use of the service tenement (i. e. the fief) instead of a salary ; supremacy of specialized (serfdom) Warriors; private ties of obedience and protection instead of public/legal rights; fragmentation of authority. All land and people belong to the emperor (tenno)
