I think in a couples of recent asks you mentioned some points of Kings falling out of love with feudalism because it always de-centralized their power. Is it possible that you could provide some examples of nations and their methods (summaries that sort of thing) for such kingdoms as France and England? Furthermore if its not too much to ask, how does the re-fuedalization of Poland play into this?

In the context of England, I’ve written a lot about Henry II in the context of judicial reforms, Henry VII in terms of financial reforms, and Edward IV and Henry VII in terms of trying to eliminate affinities. (I’ve also talked more generally about scutage, which was created by Henry I, used more extensively by Richard I, abused by John, and eventually superseded by Edward I, II, and III’s use of direct taxation through Parliament.)

In the context of France, I’ve not written as much, but you can definitely look at centralizing monarchs like Phillip IV or Phillip V of the “rois maudits,” or Charles V, or Louis XI the “universal spider.”

The refeudalization of Poland is something of a confusing term, because what it’s actually referring to is the reintroduction of serfdom: cash rents which had gradually replaced forced labor were refused in favor of forced labor, freedom of movement was abolished, and family farms were supplanted by folwarks, vast serf-run latifundia aimed at exporting huge quantities of grain to Western Europe. The relation of this phenomena to feudalism is more complicated – the rise of the commercial and middle classes was slowed down, the nobility was enriched, and the money raised by exporting Poland’s material standard of living to the west was used to fund wars with Sweden, the Ottomans, the Russians, and many Cossack rebellions, wars that were generalled by the nobility – but at the same time, the government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth couldn’t really be described as feudal in nature.