Craft Guild

under feudalism, an organization of city craftsmen according to occupation; craft guild members were economically independent small-scale producers.

Western Europe. The organizations of city craftsmen reached their greatest development in the countries of Western Europe, where the medieval urban population had achieved a large measure of self-government. The rights gained by urban dwellers facilitated the joining together of craftsmen into craft guilds and contributed to the growth of the craft guilds that were already in existence. Craft guilds were formed in the 11th and 12th centuries in France, Germany, and England, and possibly even earlier in Italy; they reached their apex in the 13th and 14th centuries, when most of the cities of Western Europe had their various specialized craft guilds. Thus, for example, there were craft guilds of weavers, clothworkers, cloth dyers, shoemakers, tanners, bakers, butchers, carpenters, and metalwork craftsmen.

The formation of craft guilds was associated with a characteristic trait of Western European feudal society—its tendency to organize social groups into separate corporate entities. Besides the craftsmen and artisans, other strata of the urban population that organized themselves into craft guilds included musicians, fishermen, gardeners, physicians, and various specialized retail tradesmen. Merchants, too, joined together in special corporations, or guilds, that resembled the craft guilds.

Only independent craftsmen who had their own businesses were full-fledged members of the craft guilds; such craftsmen, called masters, owned the tools of their trade as well as the shops where they worked, aided by journeymen and apprentices. In order to become a master, a man not only needed to have sufficient material resources to open his own shop; he was also required to serve a term of apprenticeship (ranging from two or three years to as much as seven years or even longer) and to work a certain time as a journeyman. Once they were joined together in the craft guilds, the master craftsmen usually obtained the right to manage their own internal affairs under the general supervision of city authorities. The craft guilds were governed by assemblies of masters and by special officials elected by the craft guild members; frequently, however, such officials were appointed (or confirmed after their election) by the city authorities.

The craft guilds’ activities were primarily determined by the production interests of the urban craftsmen. The craft guilds fought (not always successfully) to establish a system under which craft guild members would be granted monopoly rights—that is, exclusive rights to produce and sell a given type of handicraft within the bounds of the city and its environs. The regulations imposed by the craft guilds on the production and marketing of handicraft products had the twofold purpose of creating favorable conditions for guild members’ economic activities and eliminating competition in their respective fields; the guilds’ charters contained such specifications as masters’ and journeymen’s working hours and conditions of work, the technology of the production process, the quality requirements for finished articles, the prescribed locations and conditions for the purchase of raw materials and the marketing of finished goods, the length of time and conditions of apprenticeship, and sometimes the number of journeymen and workbenches that each master was allowed in his workshop. The chief justification for all these measures was the limited range of the market; the limited demand for handicraft items was related to the predominance of the natural economy in feudal society.

Despite the equalizing tendency of craft guild regulations, the small-scale production of goods created distinct opportunities for property-based stratification. In the large urban centers, such stratification had already reached considerable dimensions in the 13th and 14th centuries, especially where large quantities of handicraft articles were produced for export (for example, in Florence, Ghent, and Bruges). Within the craft guilds, distinctions were made on the basis of the masters’ varying degree of affluence. Likewise, stratification developed among the various specialized craft guilds—some of which became, in effect, associations of entrepreneurs who distributed work to craftsmen from other craft guilds.

As in the case of other medieval corporations, the craft guilds’ influence extended to all aspects of the lives of their members: for example, the guilds exacted conformity to specific rules of conduct, provided mutual aid, organized joint holiday celebrations, and participated in religious processions; they also constituted the nuclei of urban militia forces. Each craft guild had its own emblem, depicting the tools of the particular craft, as well as its own seal and cash funds.

The craft guilds played a major role in the social conflicts within each city. Defending the interests of a broad range of craftsmen, the craft guilds headed the struggle against the urban patriciate and in many cases seized control of the city’s administration—usually in the cities where a highly developed craft was predominant in the urban economy (for example, in Florence, Cologne, and Ghent). As a rule, however, it was only the richest and most influential craft guilds that reaped the rewards of such victories.

The craft guilds differed among themselves in specific respects, such as forms of organization and functions, and the changes that took place within them accorded with the distinctive features of each country’s socioeconomic and political structure. Specific changes were also related to such factors as the nature of the city’s economy (that is, the predominance of industry or of trade) and the type of industry in which a given craft guild was founded. The extent of the craft guilds’ independence vis-à-vis the city authorities and the state varied considerably. In some instances the craft guilds enjoyed broad autonomy, while in others they were strictly supervised by the city authorities or official state bodies. Greater restrictions were placed on the craft guilds’ autonomy in the centralized states than in the decentralized ones; in France, for example, the craft guilds were less autonomous than they were in Germany.

In their initial stage, craft guilds were a progressive force that strengthened the craftsmen’s economic and legal position. The craft guilds contributed to the development of handicraft techniques and helped raise the level of workmanship by enforcing the observance of definite rules with respect to production technology, apprenticeship, and masters’ qualifications. The growing number of highly developed craft guilds was a major contributing factor in the rapid economic upsurge of the Western European countries from the 12th through the 14th century.

A different situation obtained from the 16th through the 18th century: in the early stages of capitalism, the craft guilds acted as a brake on economic progress; by supporting and protecting small-scale handicraft production, they hindered the development of emerging capitalist economic forms. New forms of production—capitalist domestic industries and manufacturing— assumed the leading role in technical and economic development. During this period the organization of the craft guilds and their functions changed substantially. A sharper line of social demarcation was drawn between masters and journeymen. Being forced to compete with the more advanced forms of industry, the masters sought to maintain their own position by transforming themselves into an exclusive privileged estate. “Closed’” craft guilds were created by a “locking out” process—that is, by restricting the admission of journeymen to membership; the various means used to this end included setting higher entrance dues and strict requirements for the “masterpiece” that each craftsman had to produce in order to gain entrance to a craft guild. A concomitant of these changes was the growing exploitation of the journeymen.

All these developments together led to the exacerbation of the conflict between masters and journeymen and the shift from journeymen’s associations to organizations actively opposing the masters. The journeymen and apprentices, now in effect hired laborers, were losing any real chance they may have had of becoming masters, while the masters, having enriched themselves, were turning into the entrepreneurs of early capitalism. To a considerable extent, the craft guilds had lost the right of self-government and were subjected to continuous and petty controls and fiscal exploitation by the state and city authorities.

With the establishment of advanced capitalist relations and the consequent recognition of the principles of free capitalist entrepreneurship and competition, the craft guild system came to an end even in those branches of industry where small-scale handicraft production had survived. The French craft guilds were abolished in 1791, during the French Revolution; in Germany all the restrictions imposed by the craft guilds on handicraft production were removed by law over the course of the 19th century.

Asia and North Africa. Specialized craftsmen’s associations also existed in such countries as China, Japan, India, Persia, the Arab countries, and the Ottoman Empire, where the economic status of urban craftsmen during the Middle Ages and in early modern times was in many ways analogous to that of their counterparts in feudal Europe. In these countries, however, such associations did not attain the level of development of the Western European craft guilds; unlike the latter, they had no self-government rights, and they played no significant role in their countries’ history.