It's a surprisingly hard question to answer. "feudal" is a historiographic term which was first coined in the late 18th century. It saw various interpretations over the course of the 19th and 20th century through various historical schools. Another term, at least for mainland Europe, would be "Ancien Régime" which denotes the political and socio-economic system before the French Revolution.
As for legal traditions, you're looking at concepts such as customs (coutumes) and seigneurial rights (banalités or bans) which varied from region to region. The former were normative and mostly local. From the 12th century onwards, Civil Law based on Roman Law started to coalesce. The major driver was monarchs gradually succeeding in centralizing and consolidating their power throughout Europe. Through violence (wars, subduing insurrections,...) and through gradual establishing a powerful administrations (typical example: the Dukes of Burgundy).
The French Revolution swept all of that away. The period between 1789 and 1830 saw a fracturing of European nobility and their power, and subsequent consolidation into nation states based on constitutional powers.
Put in a different way, if you were born in 1760 and lived to 1840 (80 years), you'd experience a "societal collapse" (to describe with a hyperbole) in which any and all "old" ways that governed life were overthrown and replaced by an entirely new way of organizing society.
>Put in a different way, if you were born in 1760 and lived to 1840 (80 years), you'd experience a "societal collapse" (to describe with a hyperbole) in which any and all "old" ways that governed life were overthrown and replaced by an entirely new way of organizing society.
This is not hyperbole, Napoleon promptly took over France as Emperor due to the power vacuum and plunged the entirety of Europe into what is now termed "total war." Millions and millions and millions dead, and not everyone wanted a "Republic" or "freedom" driven at the point of the sword from the French.
There are millions dead in between the "ideals" of the Revolution and the later Republics you skipped over.
>Historians have explored how the Napoleonic wars became total wars. Most historians argue that the escalation in size and scope came from two sources. First was the ideological clash between revolutionary/egalitarian and conservative/hierarchical belief systems. Second was the emergence of nationalism in France, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere that made these "people's wars" instead of contests between monarchs.[138] Bell has argued that even more important than ideology and nationalism were the intellectual transformations in the culture of war that came about through the Enlightenment.[139] One factor, he says, is that war was no longer a routine event but a transforming experience for societies—a total experience.
Arguably, comment forms on online fora don't provide much affordances for writing college grade essays. Neither will the audience read long comments start-to-end. I was well aware of how much I left out for the sake of terseness and staying on topic.
While the Napoleonic Wars left several million dead over the course of 12 years, Europe itself counted a population of 160 million at the time. Depending on who you were, your experience may have vastly differed. Millions lived in poverty and remained living in poverty, tens thousands emigrated to the New World or within Europe, and then there were plenty who seized the opportunity to acquire wealth (small and large) and power during that time through commerce and new opportunities on a local, regional and/or international level. That doesn't downplay the horrible experiences related to early 19th century warfare: it's adding important nuance to life in Europe as it was.
I'm calling the "societal collapse" hyperbole because I was aware of it lacked that nuance. Alternatively, I could have called called it "societal disruption on macro level" or some such.
But again, online fora do not make for a great medium catering to nuanced historiography about the experience of living in early 19th century Europe. It's also pretty much off-topic as this discussion is about leftover vestiges of the Ancien Régime in modern legal systems.
As for legal traditions, you're looking at concepts such as customs (coutumes) and seigneurial rights (banalités or bans) which varied from region to region. The former were normative and mostly local. From the 12th century onwards, Civil Law based on Roman Law started to coalesce. The major driver was monarchs gradually succeeding in centralizing and consolidating their power throughout Europe. Through violence (wars, subduing insurrections,...) and through gradual establishing a powerful administrations (typical example: the Dukes of Burgundy).
The French Revolution swept all of that away. The period between 1789 and 1830 saw a fracturing of European nobility and their power, and subsequent consolidation into nation states based on constitutional powers.
Put in a different way, if you were born in 1760 and lived to 1840 (80 years), you'd experience a "societal collapse" (to describe with a hyperbole) in which any and all "old" ways that governed life were overthrown and replaced by an entirely new way of organizing society.