Rajaraja Chola: Interplay Between an Imperial Regime and Productive Forces of Society

To maintain their income, the lords attempted to extract a greater amount from each peasant, as well as trying to dispossess one another (via brigandage and internal warfare).

The first kings of Early Medieval Britain were not off-the-shelf products of a homogeneous history, geography or philosophy; they were experimenting with new forms of power born out of the necessity to rule self-identifying peoples and regions that generated a directly consumable surplus; by the needs of mobile lords and their warbands.

An agrarian surplus sustained urban elites and their elaborate high culture. In the towns, an artisan class of legendary skill had sprung up to cater for these elites’ material demands.