No.4817[Reply]
I need someone to give me a rundown of how does society develop from the end of tribal society up to birth of feudal one.What are the conditions that lead to creation of slave society and lead to its demise? What contradictions are at play here?
My understanding is that first large scale agriculture and with it city states are established. You get social stratification into commoners, nobility and priests. Why does this happen? Do priests and nobles start as mere bureaucrats, organizing production and distribution of food, and over the time solidify their position on top of society?
I am also not quite clear on the reasons why do these city states proceeds to enslave their neighbours. Is because work, particularly farming, sucks and nobody wants to do it, so the citizens of the city state get slaves for it, and thus the main antagonism is between free citizens and slaves? From what I remember from history, the most important class conflicts in Athens were between rising merchant class and nobility, and in Rome between nobility and plebeians.
Ancient city states were oligarchies, but when they expand and become empires, the power seems to concentrate in a hands of single ruler. Why? Also, why does the similar thing happen in feudal kingdoms? In early middle ages, nobility had substantial independence from king, yet during late middle ages came absolutism.
At the end, when Roman empire collapsed, why did the newly settled tribes establish feudal relations between nobility and peasantry, rather that slave society?