NCERT Solutions for Class 11 History Themes in World History Chapter 4: The Three Orders

Chapter at a glance

Exercise Questions

Answer

1. Lord–vassal relationship. Society was organised around land. The king gave land to the nobles, who became his vassals; nobles in turn gave land to lesser lords and knights. In return for land and protection, the vassal promised loyalty and military service. This bond was sworn in a ceremony of homage.
2. The manor and serfdom. The lord lived in a manor house and controlled villages, fields, pasture and forest. Serfs cultivated the lord’s land as well as their own plots. They paid dues in labour, produce and money, used the lord’s mill, oven and wine-press for a fee, and could not leave the manor without permission. Lords had judicial powers over them.

(Also: society was divided into three orders: clergy, nobility and peasantry.)

A lord–vassal system based on land in return for loyalty and military service, and a manorial economy in which serfs worked the lord’s land and were bound to it.

Answer

Population growth (11th–13th centuries): Europe’s population rose from about 42 million in 1000 to 73 million in 1300, helped by better farming technology and a warmer climate.

• More food was demanded; more land was cleared for agriculture.
• Towns grew and trade expanded; guilds of craftsmen and merchants developed.
• Peasants gained bargaining power, and labour services were often converted into money rents.

Population decline (14th century): famines (1315–17), cattle murrains and the Black Death (1347–50) killed a large part of the population (perhaps a third to a half in places).

• A shortage of labour followed; agricultural wages rose sharply and farm prices fell.
• Lords’ incomes declined; when they tried to restore old labour services, peasants revolted (France 1358, England 1381).
• Serfdom weakened in western Europe, and the feudal system began to break down; new, stronger monarchies arose.

Growth expanded farming, towns and trade and loosened serfdom; the 14th-century collapse caused labour shortages, rising wages, peasant revolts and the decline of feudalism.

Answer

Why distinct

• From the 9th century, frequent local wars and invasions created a need for a cavalry of trained soldiers. Amateur peasant soldiers were not enough.
• Lords gave knights land (a fief), which they cultivated through peasants, in return for military service and protection of the lord.
• Knights spent time in training, fencing and tournaments, followed a code of conduct (chivalry), and were celebrated by minstrels in songs and stories. This gave them a distinct identity.

Decline: from the 14th–15th centuries, knights lost importance because:

• kings created standing, paid armies of infantry, and fiefs were no longer needed to raise soldiers;
• new weapons (longbow, crossbow, gunpowder and artillery) made armoured cavalry less effective;
• the feudal system itself weakened after the crises of the 14th century.

Knights became distinct as trained, landholding cavalry with a chivalric code in an age of constant warfare; they declined from the 14th–15th centuries with paid armies and gunpowder.

Answer

1. Religious life: monks and nuns devoted their lives to prayer, study and the service of God, away from the world.
2. Learning and education: monasteries were centres of learning; monks copied manuscripts and preserved knowledge; they ran schools.
3. Social service: they looked after the sick and poor, and gave shelter to travellers.
4. Economy: they owned large estates, cleared land, and developed agriculture and crafts.
5. Art and culture: they contributed to music (e.g. Gregorian chant) and art.

Famous monasteries include St Benedict’s at Monte Cassino (529) and Cluny (910). Later, friars (Franciscans and Dominicans) moved among the people preaching.

Monasteries were centres of prayer, learning and manuscript copying, social service to the poor and sick, and agricultural development.

Answer

A day in the life of Jean, a weaver of Chartres, about 1300:

Jean wakes at dawn when the church bells ring. After a quick breakfast of bread and watered wine, he opens the shutters of his small shop, which is also the ground floor of his narrow house. His wife and two apprentices join him at the loom.

The town’s weavers’ guild fixes the quality of cloth, the prices and the hours of work, so Jean must use good wool and avoid working by candlelight. In the morning a merchant comes to buy cloth for the fair at Champagne; they bargain, and Jean earns some silver coins.

At noon he eats bread, soup and cheese. In the afternoon he trains the apprentices. After seven years they hope to become journeymen and, one day, masters with their own shops. Jean also pays his share for the guild’s charity fund, which helps sick members.

In the evening he goes to the guildhall for a meeting about the new cathedral. The guild has promised to donate a stained-glass window showing weavers at work. On the way home he passes the crowded market square. Before dark, he lights a lamp, prays, and goes to bed early to save candles.

His life is hard, but as a free townsman — “town air makes a man free” — he is not a serf bound to a lord.

A craftsman’s day revolved around his workshop-home, guild rules on quality and prices, training apprentices, selling to merchants, guild meetings and church life, as a free townsman.

Answer

Conclusion: both lived hard, unfree lives, but the serf had a family, some land and customary rights, whereas the slave was the property of his master, with almost no rights.

Both were unfree, but a serf was bound to land, had a family, a plot and customary rights, while a Roman slave was the owner’s property with almost no rights.

Topic checklist

• Three orders: clergy, nobility, peasantry
• Feudalism, manor and knights
• Church, monasteries and friars
• Agricultural technology and population growth
• Towns, guilds and cathedral towns
• Crisis of the 14th century and new monarchies

Total questions answered: 6 of 6