In a conference on feudalism held in 1999, Chris Wickham identified three main ‘ideal types’ or models of feudalism that had dominated twentieth-century historiography: first, ‘Marxist feudalism’, which focused on the relationship between the peasant who worked the land, and the lord, who controlled it; second, ‘juridical feudalism’ or feudo-vassalic feudalism, which prioritised the relationship between lord and vassal, centred on the holding of a piece of land, the fee or fief; and third, feudalism as a type of society, comprising its economic bases, cultural manifestation and socio-political bonds. This type of society was outlined in the final few pages of Marc Bloch's Feudal Society and, in its ideal form, comprised:

Wickham's ‘ideal types’ of feudalism are not uncontroversial interpretive frameworks. But in this case they provide useful entry points through which to analyse the historiography of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scotland, the period when the kingdom is traditionally thought to have become ‘feudalised’. Within Scottish historiography, debates on feudalism remain almost exclusively within the framework of the ‘feudo-vassalic’ or ‘juridical’ model, for two reasons.