"Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked innovations. Did the benefits of guilds outweigh their costs? Analyzing thousands of guilds that dominated European economies from 1000 to 1880, The European Guilds uses vivid examples and clear economic reasoning to answer that question. Sheilagh Ogilvie's book features the voices of honorable guild masters, underpaid journeymen, exploited apprentices, shady officials, and outraged customers, and follows the stories of the "vile encroachers"--Women, migrants, Jews, gypsies, bastards, and many others--desperate to work but hunted down by the guilds as illicit competitors. She investigates the benefits of guilds but also shines a light on their dark side. Guilds sometimes provided important services, but they also manipulated markets to profit their members. They regulated quality but prevented poor consumers from buying goods cheaply. They fostered work skills but denied apprenticeships to outsiders. They transmitted useful techniques but blocked innovations that posed a threat. Guilds existed widely not because they corrected market failures or served the common good but because they benefited two powerful groups--guild members and political elites."--Rabat de la jaquette.

This book is made up of a collection of papers from the 'Revisiting the livery companies of early modern London' conference held in April 2000 by the CMH, exploring the history of London livery companies from a variety of perspectives. Employing historical and interdisciplinary approaches, it examines print culture and early histories, civic myths, charity, the family, artisans, mercantile elites and the control and regulation of guild and economy. Contributions by Ian W. Archer, Matthew Davies, John Forbes, Ian Anders Gadd, Perry Gauci, Ronald F. Homer, Mark Jenner, Derek Keene, Giorgio Riello, James Robertson, Patrick Wallis and Joseph P. Ward.

A collection of essays focusing on the arisanal presence and the artisanal experience in Europe between the beginning of the early modern period and the end of the 19th century. The works cover a broad topic area, from the masters who served the most demanding of aristocratic clients to the journeymen who travelled round Central Europe in search of work and opportunities, from ritual representations of the social order to the fate of artisans and their guilds in a major port city during the French Revolution. Also explored are artisans' political activities and the presence and difficulties of women artisans.

This book is made up of a collection of papers from the 'Revisiting the livery companies of early modern London' conference held in April 2000 by the CMH, exploring the history of London livery companies from a variety of perspectives. Employing historical and interdisciplinary approaches, it examines print culture and early histories, civic myths, charity, the family, artisans, mercantile elites, and the control and regulation of guild and economy. Contributions by Ian W. Archer, Matthew Davies, John Forbes, Ian Anders Gadd, Perry Gauci, Ronald F. Homer, Mark Jenner, Derek Keene, Giorgio Riello, James Robertson, Patrick Wallis, Joseph P. Ward.