In the 19th century, influenced by Adam Smith and other Scottish thinkers, Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95) made “the feudal mode of production” one stage in their visionary reading of Western historical development; the feudal model followed “the ancient mode of production” and preceded capitalism, socialism, and communism. Marx and Engels rejected the traditional understanding of feudalism as consisting of fiefs and relations among the elite and emphasized the lords’ exploitation of the peasants as the essence of the feudal mode of production. Marx and Engels did not try to establish that the feudal period had existed universally; they formulated for Asia the idea of a specific Asiatic mode of production. Still, by incorporating “the feudal mode of production” into their design, they endowed it with seminal significance. Their followers came to view the feudal stage as a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of socialism, and socialist scholars and activists sought traces of it throughout the world.

Marx and Engels’s model of Western historical development indicates how popular the feudal construct had become by the middle of the 19th century. Their modification of the construct to serve their own purposes demonstrates its pliancy. However, they were not unique in having shaped the feudal construct to suit their particular perspective. The Australian medieval historian John O. Ward isolated 10 different sets of phenomena that historians had associated with feudalism. Some employed narrow legalistic definitions like those elaborated by 16th-century lawyers. Others, following the English historian Thomas Madox (1666–1726/27) and the French historian Marc Bloch (1886–1944), equated feudalism with feudal society. They saw feudalism as encompassing many if not most aspects of medieval society: peasants, whether free, unfree, or semi-free; a ruling warrior class with subordinates compensated for military service by grants of land rather than money; fragmentation of power; and disorder—yet with the family and the state retaining their importance. The American historian Joseph R. Strayer (1904–87) laid special emphasis on the splintering of political and public power and authority, and he believed that systematized feudal institutions and customs were compatible with the formation of large political units, which he viewed as recognizable precursors of contemporary nation-states. Although Bloch and Strayer employed the feudal construct throughout their careers, both admitted the idiosyncrasy of the various definitions of the feudal labels that have been proposed, and both acknowledged that focusing on the construct inevitably obscures the human beings, both individuals and groups, whose actions historians are dedicated to comprehending.