Medieval
European Guilds
By the 11th cent. in Europe, associations of merchants had
begun to form for the protection of commerce against the feudal
governments. Those merchant guilds became extremely powerful
as trade in the Mediterranean and across Europe increased.
Some of the Italian merchant guilds, such as those in Genoa
and Florence, became dominant in local government. In England
and in Germany the merchant guilds also exercised enormous
power in the growing towns. Commerce was becoming less and
less a local affair, and the guilds in some cases developed
into intercity leagues for the promotion and protection of
trade. The most striking example was the Hanseatic League
of N Europe, which established and controlled some of its
own trading cities. The merchant guilds had vast influence
in the development of commerce during that period.
 No
less important were the craft guilds, the associations of
artisans of a particular industry, e.g., the weavers guild.
These grew with great rapidity as towns developed in the 12th
cent. and tended to share power with the merchants or even,
in some cases, to supplant them in power. Generally the members
were divided into masters, apprentices, and journeymen. The
masters were the owners of the shops and instructors of the
apprentices. The apprentices were bound to the masters; they
were accepted for a stipulated sum paid to the masters for
training and were given a subsistence wage for a number of
years; the amount paid and the length of time varied from
one craft to another and one place to another. The apprentices
were strictly under the control of the masters, but the conditions
of control were set by guild regulation. The journeymen were
men who had finished their training as apprentices but could
not attain the status of masters, the number of masters being
limited.
The
guild reflected a predilection for ordering society. Each
guild set the terms of its craft: the forms of labor, standard
of product, and methods of sale. With the rise of nationalism
in the West, those things were increasingly subject to royal
and national law. The relationship of the feudal ruler to
the guilds was ideally one of cooperation. Actually the wealthy
guilds were able to gain some immunity from interference by
noble or king either by paying them large sums of money or
by intimidating them. Sometimes, as in the weaving towns of
Flanders, the guilds led revolts against feudal authority
(e.g., in Bruges and Ghent). The tendency in the industrial
towns was for the guilds to assume dominance in municipal
government, and traces of that control have persisted in the
local governments of Western Europe. The guilds of London
(see livery companies) had wide social obligations and prominence
in the city government.
The
strengthening of the power of nations in the 15th and 16th
cent. tended to increase royal power, and the king in some
instances was able to reduce the guilds to subservience. The
improvement of communications, the expansion of trade, with
the introduction of foreign-made goods, and finally the appearance
of the capitalist and the entrepreneur hastened the end of
the guild system. The guilds, with their rigorous controls
and emphasis on stability and quality, were not equipped to
cope with the expanding production of a more capitalistic
age. They tended to guard their monopolies jealously and to
oppose change.
As
time went on, the guild system became increasingly rigid,
and the trend toward hereditary membership grew very marked.
Thus the development of new trade and industry fell to the
capitalists, who adapted themselves to new demands in an age
of exploration and expansion. By the 17th cent. the power
of the guilds had withered in England, and their privileges
were officially abolished in 1835. In France the guilds were
abolished (1791) in the French Revolution. The German and
Austrian guilds were abolished in the 19th cent. as were those
in the Italian cities. In Eastern Europe guilds grew numerous
in the great market cities, and the power of some long persisted,
notably in Novgorod and Kraków.
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