Page 59 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

878 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

times guilds were connected with ethnic minorities. For
Guilds example, in Tudela, Spain, in the late thirteenth century,

Moors had a monopoly on iron and leather working.
uilds, in both the Middle Ages and the modern age, However this was the only such case in Spain, and it did
Gmay be understood as those associations, particu- not recur elsewhere because in nearly the whole of Eur-
larly typical of Western Europe, formed by artisans, mer- ope, ethnic minorities were often excluded from guilds.
chants, and other workers who perform the same job and Even more complete was the formal exclusion of the
have to submit to certain rules.They have been known as Jews, who were usually prevented from organizing their
corporazioni or arti in Italy, Zunfte, Gilden, or Handwerke own guilds,at least until the seventeenth century,with the
in Germany, métiers or corps in France, gremios in Spain, exception of concessions and derogations.Thus a turning
and gilde in those countries overlooking the Baltic Sea. point was marked with the 1648 royal decree by Habs-
Their origins are old: In the ancient Greek cities there burg monarch Ferdinand III of Hungary, who allowed
were associations with religious and charitable purposes. the Jews of Prague to carry on with all kinds of jobs.
They arose in Egypt, too, and in ancient Rome from the As their legal powers grew, guilds regulated produc-
third century BCE as free associations (collegia, corpora, or tion, fixed rules for apprenticeship, restrained competi-
artes) controlled by the state. Following the decline of the tion, and opposed foreign competition with precise ordi-
Roman empire, the barbarian invasions, and the decline nances. Internally, they designated their officials, and their
of cities, these associations disappeared, then revived membership was subdivided into masters and apprentices
after the year 1000 all over Western Europe, although (maestri and garzoni in Italian; maîtres apprendistes and
the link between these associations and the previous garçons in French; and Meister [master], Geselle [journey-
ones is not very well established. In contrast, the deriva- man], and Schelinger [apprentice] in German). Each guild
tion of the Byzantine guilds from the Roman ones has formed a special jurisdiction: The heads of the guild
been proved. In Japan, by comparison, guilds arose much judged controversies between its members and technical
later than in other countries: It was only between the sev- disputes about the trade. From the twelfth century on-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries that town merchants ward, guilds appeared in towns as separate entities with
(or chonin) united in privileged associations, in order to their own legal status.
oppose the feudal landowner.As regards Arabian towns, In many countries, as time went by, there developed a
we do not know anything about artisan or commercial politically significant distinction between major and minor
guilds before the fifteenth century. In India guilds devel- guilds: The former were usually constituted of merchants
oped under the Mughal empire, in the seventeenth cen- (e.g., the six corps marchands in Paris; the Herrenzunfte in
tury, bringing together mostly traders, but they were con- Basel; and the arti maggiori in Florence, where they seized
trolled by the state; in Constantinople the government power in 1293), while the latter were mostly constituted
used to name the guilds’ heads directly, as guilds had the by artisans. As regards the guilds’ organization, it is nec-
function of supplying the city with food.The same thing essary to distinguish between those areas—Venice, Sicily,
happened in the Ottoman empire, while in China guilds France,Aragon and Catalonia, some parts of the German
were weak or did not exist at all, due to the predomi- empire, the Mughal empire in India—where the central
nance of foreign merchants. In England the existence of power was able to keep its own privileges and those where
guilds can first be proved in 1087. it had to share these privileges with class interests.Thus in
Guilds in Europe could be professional communities large independent cities, such as Milan, Florence, Siena,
that were very narrow (ropemakers, woolcarders) or quite Bologna, those of Flanders, and some German cities,
wide (cloth makers). A famous skilled guild arose in guilds played a political role in government. Nevertheless
Spain: The mesta, which united the sheep breeders, was with the creation of great nations, guilds lost their power
established in 1273 by Alphonso X of Castile. Some- and became more and more closed, monopolistic circles.