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In the absence of forceful kings and emperors, local lords expanded the territory subject to them and intensified their control over the people living there. The mightier of the later Carolingians attempted to regulate local magnates and enlist them in their service, but the power of local elites was never effaced. Before and afterward, however, political units were fragmented and political authority diffused. For a relatively brief period, from the mid-8th to the early 9th century, the Carolingian rulers, especially Pippin (reigned 751–768) and Charlemagne (reigned 768/771–814), had remarkable success in creating and maintaining a relatively unified empire. The terms feudalism and feudal system were generally applied to the early and central Middle Ages-the period from the 5th century, when central political authority in the Western empire disappeared, to the 12th century, when kingdoms began to emerge as effective centralized units of government.
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Use of the terms associated with feudum to denote the essential characteristics of the early Middle Ages has invested the fief with exaggerated prominence and placed undue emphasis on the importance of a special mode of land tenure to the detriment of other, more significant aspects of social, economic, and political life. They were derived from the Latin words feudum (“fief”) and feodalitas (services connected with the fief), both of which were used during the Middle Ages and later to refer to a form of property holding. The expressions féodalité and feudal system were coined by the beginning of the 17th century, and the English words feudality and feudalism (as well as feudal pyramid) were in use by the end of the 18th century. They refer to what those who invented them perceived as the most significant and distinctive characteristics of the early and central Middle Ages. Feudalism and the related term feudal system are labels invented long after the period to which they were applied.
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