Return of the Guilds

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Article

* Article: The Return of the Guilds: Towards a Global History of the Guilds in Pre-industrial Times. By Jan Lucassen, Tine De Moor, and Jan Luiten van Zanden. IRSH 53 (2008), Supplement, pp. 5–18

URL = https://www.ris.uu.nl/ws/files/20096181/_PUB_ReturnGuilds_IRSH_53_Suppl.pdf

Excerpt

1.

"Most of that received wisdom about guilds has not withstood the impact of recent research.8 New approaches in economic, social, labour, and institutional history have re-examined guilds, not least within the framework of a reappraisal of the classic and strict distinction between ‘‘capitalist’’ and ‘‘pre-capitalist’’ modes of production.9 Those researches are unravelling the reasons why guilds were established, and why they could maintain themselves for such a long time, and international comparisons have ensured the rejuvenation of guild studies. Awareness is growing that guilds were not just a European phenomenon, but were prominent all over northern Africa and the Middle East, as well as in many parts of Asia, including China and Japan. They existed in Latin America too.10 In many countries guilds flourished until the end of the ancien re´gime, and in central Europe, China, and the Middle East they existed well into the nineteenth century, and even into the twentieth. Emphasis is now laid on the possibility that innovation, entrepreneurship, and social security could flourish simultaneously within guild structures,11 outside as well as inside Europe.

In many Asian towns guilds competed with other forms of vertical organization of the labour market, based on kin, caste, ethnicity, religion."


2.

"The question had to be asked, to what extent guilds and guild-like institutions played a role in the divergent economic development of the different parts of Eurasia: in the Little Divergence that occurred during the early modern period when the countries bordering the North Sea developed much more dynamically than the rest of Eurasia, and in the Great Divergence that began in the eighteenth century.

Making global comparisons of the occurrence and functioning of guilds requires consensus on the characteristics of guilds. Several papers in this issue will show that the European image of the guild is insufficiently comprehensive to cover all its possible varieties around the world. To detect potential ‘‘brother organizations’’ elsewhere, the combination of the following features was considered indicative of a guild-like institution: more or less independent, self-governing organizations; people with the same or similar occupations; aimed at furthering their common interests; and in almost any respect, i.e. in the economic, political, social cultural, or religious fields.

Conference

"A conference organized in October 2006 by the International Institute of Social History and the research group in social and economic history at Utrecht University on the theme ‘‘The Return of the Guilds’’, as part of a series of conferences on global economic history, a continuation of the Global Economic History Network – GEHN – set up by Patrick O’Brien and his group at the London School of Economics (LSE). The challenge of the conference was to bring together specialists in non-European regions with Europeanists, and to study the similarities and differences between guilds in different parts of the world." (https://www.ris.uu.nl/ws/files/20096181/_PUB_ReturnGuilds_IRSH_53_Suppl.pdf)

Bibliography

  • Bert De Munck, Piet Lourens, and Jan Lucassen, ‘‘The Establishment and Distribution of Craft Guilds in the Low Countries 1000–1800’’, in Maarten Prak et al. (eds), Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power and Representation (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 32–73, especially 32–34 and 67;
  • Natalie Fryde, ‘‘Guilds in England before the Black Death’’, in Berent Schwineköper (ed.), Gilden und Zünfte. Kaufmännische und gewerbliche Genossenschaften im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1985), pp. 215–229, quotation on p. 128
  • George Unwin, The Guilds and Companies of London (London, 1938), pp. 2–4, the seventh volume of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1932), pp. 204–224, where not only guilds in antiquity are treated but, on an equal footing, European guilds (by Henri Pirenne), Islamic guilds (by Louis Massignon), Indian guilds (by Vera Anstey), Chinese guilds (by Harold M. Vinacke), and Japanese guilds (by G.C. Allen).
  • Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘‘Understanding Ottoman Guilds’’,
  • Randi Deguilhem (eds), Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East: Fashioning the Individual in the Muslim Mediterranean (London [etc.], 2005), pp. 3–40, especially 16–18.
  • David B. Weisberg, Guild Structure and Political Allegiance in Early Achaemenid Mesopotamia (New Haven, CT, 1967).
  • Gary Richardson, ‘‘A Tale of Two Theories: Monopolies and Craft Guilds in Medieval England and Modern Imagination’’, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 23 (2001), pp. 217–242;
  • Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, ‘‘Craft Guilds in Comparative Perspective: The Northern and Southern Netherlands, A Survey’’, in Prak et al., Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries, pp. 1–31, 2–5;
  • S.R. Epstein, ‘‘Craft Guilds in the Pre-modern Economy: A Discussion’’, Economic History Review, 61 (2008), pp. 155–174;
  • S.R. Epstein and Maarten Prak (eds), Guilds, Innovation and the European Economy, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 2008)

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