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Feudalism from the perspective of the farmer explained in two pages. A crash course of what they never bothered telling you in school. From an excellent book by Frances Gies, a little dated but easy to read and none of the usual anti-medieval hysterics. 
Even though the peasant could cooperate as sovereign entities when it came to farming, regional projects where still beyond the hamlets: enter, the Church, with the tech, an inter-continental network of skills and funding. Without the Church Europe would never have developed.
On the explosive growth of mechanical power in 11th century feudal Europe. Without feudalism Europe would never have developed as fast as it did: water wheels and wind mills for irrigation, milling, construction, manufacturing, fulling, etc. Again back to Gies.
Where the Lords provided mechanical power in the rural countryside, it was the Church and the Monastics that lead the way in providing power for manufacturing. Towns grew up around the monasteries as they provided employment, energy, infrastructure and stability.
Imagine a small monastery today: providing sustainable local electric power, first rate dentistry and basic health care, education, order and hierarchy, in exchange for labor. A community based on faith, love, and labor. Not consumerism and state corruption, violence.
An interesting view of the role of monasteries in medieval Europe can be found in the Clairvaux report, written by Abbot Arnold of Bonneval (d. ca 1156) sometime during the 1140s, on the Cistercian monastic factory in Clairvaux and its uses of water power.
Monasteries all over Europe, from Scotland to Portugal, to Sweden to Hungary to Switzerland, all used nearly identical cutting edge technology. The network of the Monks, both in form of textbooks and skilled personnel travelled freely on the requests of their communities.
The most vivid illustration of medieval technological progress, from the fall of the Roman Empire to as late as the 18th and 19th centuries: half a horse power to sixty. By Frances Gies.
