NCERT Book Class 11 History Chapter 4 The Three Orders

THEME 86 THEMES IN WORLD HISTORY

4 THE THREE ORDERS

IN this chapter, we shall learn about the socio-economic
and political changes which occurred in western Europe
between the ninth and sixteenth centuries. After the fall of
the Roman Empire, many groups of Germanic people from
eastern and central Europe occupied regions of Italy, Spain
and France.
In the absence of any unifying political force, military
conflict was frequent, and the need to gather resources to
protect one’s land became very important. Social organisation
was therefore centred on the control of land. Its features were
derived from both imperial Roman traditions and German
customs. Christianity, the official religion of the Roman
Empire from the fourth century, survived the collapse of Rome,
and gradually spread to central and northern Europe. The
Church also became a major landholder and political power
in Europe.
The ‘three orders’, the focus of this chapter, are three
social categories: Christian priests, landowning nobles and
peasants. The changing relationships between these three
groups was an important factor in shaping European history
for several centuries.

Over the last 100 years, European historians have done
detailed work on the histories of regions, even of individual
villages. This was possible because, from the medieval period,
there is a lot of material in the form of documents, details of
landownership, prices and legal cases: for example, churches
kept records of births, marriages and deaths, which have made
it possible to understand the structure of families and of
population. The inscriptions in churches give information
about traders’ associations, and songs and stories give a sense
of festivals and community activities.
All these can be used by historians to understand
economic and social life, and changes over a long period
(like increase in population) or over a short period (like
peasant revolts).
Of the many scholars in France who have worked on
feudalism, one of the earliest was Bloch. Marc Bloch
(1886–1944) was one of a group of scholars who argued that
history consisted of much more than just political history,
international relations and the lives of great people. He
emphasised the importance of geography in shaping human