The correct answer is A.D. 700.
Feudalism is a social, economic, and political system that consists in a contractual relation of vassalage between a powerful lord, a landowner, and a vassal, a free man of inferior position in the society. According to this contract, the vassals offered different kinds of services to the feudal lord according to their position (military support, peasantry) in exchange for protection and a piece of land to work. Feudalism emerged as a mix between the Roman law and the Germanic law, to bring order to the chaos generated after the barbarian invasions.
While the first forms of feudalism took shape right after the fall of the Roman empire at the beginning of the 6th century, it was during the 8th century that it prevailed as a decentralization system, since the Carolingian dynasty couldn't afford the bureaucratic infrastructure of its expanding empire.
