Guilds, labour and the urban body politic: fabricating community in the southern Netherlands, 1300-1800 (1st)

This text presents a new view on the relation between labour and community through a focus on craft guilds.

In the Southern Netherlands, occupational guilds were both powerful and governed by manufacturing masters, enabling the latter to imprint their mark upon urban society in an economic, socio-cultural and political way.

While the urban community was deeply indebted to a corporative spirit and guild ethic originating in medieval Germanic and Christian traditions, guild-based artisans succeeded in being accepted as genuine political (and, hence, rational) actors - their political identity and agency being based upon their skills and trustworthiness.

In the long run, this corporative spirit and power inexorably waned.