'Professor Ganshof's book answers the prayer of every teacher and student of medieval history for a lucid, concise and authoritative exposition of feudal institutions. Its author is one of the leading authorities in western Europe on Feudalism and its translator a leading English expert on the early Middle Ages. Professor Ganshof ...confined himself to those institutionalized relationships of lord and man, prevalent in western Europe from the ninth to the thirteenth century, which are commonly included in the narrower definition of Feudalism. The result is a summary of current doctrine which could scarcely be bettered.' George Holmes, The Cambridge Review