Ruggengraat van de stedelijke samenleving : De rol van de gilden in de stad Utrecht, 1528-1818

In: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/31910

Abstract

Dutch historiography of the guilds was 'sectarian' throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries. Catholics, Protestants, and National Socialists expressed appreciation for the guild system for various reasons. Marxists and Liberals took a more critical view and Liberals had the broadest following, also internationally. This study examines whether the existence spanning several centuries – half a millennium – of the guilds in the City of Utrecht is attributable to the fact that they were the backbone of the urban society. As such, they were the main, formative component. The investigation entailed exploring their economic, political, social, religious, and military role. After 1300 the City of Utrecht had no substantial wholesale industry, although the craft industry thrived. As a consequence, guilds became powerful (Chapter 2). In the early modern period guilds and guild members were more numerous than was hitherto assumed (Chapter 3). Agreements between the guilds and the municipal authorities regarding accommodations and social services indicate that they maintained close ties with urban society as a whole (Chapter 4). In the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries the guilds became more economically prominent, in part because they ceased to play a role in politics and military affairs. Craft guilds assumed responsibility for training in the trade, and no alternative was available for these programmes in Utrecht. Innovations were commonplace in the arts and in the textile and metal industries controlled by the guilds. Craft guilds of painters, linen weavers, and smiths negotiated with the municipal authorities for the right to hold markets. As a consequence, the market expanded and became more transparent, cultivating ever more consumer confidence. Exports by the guilds generated part of the urban affluence and brought the city its reputation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In practice they held at best a partial monopoly (chapter 5, 6, and 7). The demands of the guilds came ...