Final answer:
Nobles and warriors were granted land, or fiefs, under feudalism in exchange for military service and loyalty to a higher lord or the king. Examples include Viking leader Rollo receiving Normandy and Tokugawa Ieyasu's land distribution in Japan. Over time, feudalism was supplanted by capitalist structures and industrialization.
Step-by-step explanation:
The individuals who were rewarded with land, starting feudalism, were mainly warriors or nobility such as lords and knights. These nobles were granted pieces of land called fiefs by a monarch or a higher-ranking lord in exchange for military service and other obligations. An example of this system at work is when the Carolingian king, Charles the Simple, granted the Duchy of Normandy to the Viking leader Rollo, on the condition that Rollo would protect northern France from other Vikings. This hierarchical system of power based around land ownership and protection saw lords place vassals in charge of land to take care of and extract wealth from, most often through the labor of peasants known as serfs.
The feudal system also included the Church, which became a wealthy and powerful landowner, with church lands nearly always being tax-exempt. As part of consolidating power in Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu also used land rewards, giving the best lands to the most loyal daimyos, a similar mechanism to European feudalism in principle. Ultimately, with the rise of capitalism and the changes brought by the industrial era, the social and economic system of feudalism declined.