Skills, Trust, and Changing Consumer Preferences: The Decline of Antwerp's Craft Guilds from the Perspective of the Product Market, c.1500–c.1800

Abstract

Summary:The main reason for the decline of craft guilds in Antwerp should not be sought in the labour market but rather in the product market. Apprenticeship systems, master pieces, and trademarks were conducive to a labour market monopsony but at the same time to the representation of product quality. On the one hand, product quality was legitimized through the superior manual skills of masters; on the other, it was objectified through the attribution of quality marks to the characteristics of the raw material used. This strategy was successful for the sale of the durable, expensive, luxury products Antwerp was renowned for until the first half of the seventeenth century, but economic elites and customers stopped favouring corporative regulations when demand shifted towards less expensive and more fashionable products. As guild-based skills were not necessarily superior in reality, and consumer loyalty ultimately depended upon the masters' trustworthiness, the craft guilds were bound to lose credibility.

Rewinding Civil Society: Conceptual Lessons from the Early Modern Guilds

“…The solution for them existed in prescribing an apprenticeship term and master trial so that all those unable to do the job themselves were excluded from mastership. In this manner, not only was product quality ensured, but also the guild members could continue to boast about their exclusive ability to ensure good quality (De Munck 2007b; 2007c: 116–44; 2008). In short, as a result of structural economic and demographic shifts, the informal character of confraternities was under pressure, and more formal and bureaucratic distinction mechanisms were reached for.…”

“…The Antwerp guilds seem to have rather striven for taking up the so-called faux-maîtres into their ranks (even if this was only because their low-price competition could be better tackled in this way). Moreover, there were several mechanisms with which pupils were attracted or encouraged to become masters, among other things, to prevent them from using their acquired skills elsewhere (De Munck 2007a, 2007c.…”

“…Masters were not only required to contribute, they were in principle also the only ones entitled to relief (in certain circumstances also their widow and children). The idea was that only one who had contributed could later benefit, so that the establishment of poor boxes can also be seen as the origin of an insurance system-and hence: a type of civil society (De Munck 2009;Van Leeuwen 2012).…”

Interlopers and disorderly brethren at the Stade Mart: commercial regulations and practices amongst the Merchant Adventurers of England in the late Elizabethan period

“…Parallels can be drawn here with European craft guilds in places such as Antwerp, which from the seventeenth century onwards struggled to define the boundaries of their trade and the status of ‘master’ in light of changes to the product market associated with an emerging consumer society driven by cheaper goods; de Munck, ‘Skills’; idem, ‘One counter’.…”

Gilding golden ages: perspectives from early modern Antwerp on the guild debate, c. 1450 - c. 1650

“…(hat makers). Additional references in DeMunck (2007aMunck ( , 2008.47 The gold and silversmiths eventually considered setting a maximum age for apprentices in order to prevent fictitious apprenticeships.Schlugleit (1969, pp. 242-8).…”