The subject of this book is occupational guilds in crafts and trades in medieval and early modern Europe. The author is a renowned historian who has published widely on European early modern economic, social, and gender history. The aim of her present book, as expressed in the subtitle, is an “economic analysis” of guilds. This does not mean that the various cultural, religious, and political activities of guilds are neglected, but rather that the book is an intervention into debates about guilds among economists and economic historians, by means of unusually rich and multifaceted historical evidence. The evidence is made up of three layers: first, a database consisting of about 12,000 qualitative observations of activities of guilds in all fields of their actions, from the late eleventh to the late nineteenth centuries, covering almost the whole of Europe; second, a quantitative database of guild behavior “that can be measured in numbers” (26); and third, a huge number of previous studies, mainly micro-histories of local or regional guilds in specific time periods, which go beyond normative sources and show how guilds actually behaved. The close reading of case studies in combination with statistical analysis is one of the major strengths of this study. It permits an assessment of whether and/or how norms and rules actually mattered.
The book is arranged along the lines of those issues that have been in the focus of previous and recent positive and negative attitudes toward guilds. Each of these issues is discussed in a chapter of about fifty to one hundred pages. The chapter on the interactions between “Guilds and Governments” shows that guilds were useful in many respects to governments, which conversely guaranteed guilds’ privileges. “Entry Barriers” are used to demonstrate the dialectics between compulsory membership for anyone who wanted to practice a certain occupation, on the one hand, and exclusionary strategies against individuals and groups on the other. The chapter on “Guilds and Women” discusses both the exclusion of women from training and full membership, as well as their indispensable labor activities in workshop and household. “Market Manipulation” deals with prices, wages, and output limitation. Chapters on “Quality Regulation,” “Human Capital Investment” (mainly training and skill), and “Innovation” are particularly linked to issues that are often used to argue that guilds exerted a positive impact on social and economic development. The last chapter, “Guilds and Growth,” concludes that guilds “were never associated with economic success” (562).
Toward the end of her book Ogilvie comes to a scathing judgment. She introduces her assessment with the formulation of her question: “Why guilds existed so widely despite the fact that they acted as cartels of producers, manipulated markets, overcharged costumers, underpaid employees, stifled competition, oppressed women, imposed quality standards to please producers rather than consumers, limited access to human capital investment, and blocked innovation?” (581). Her answer is that guilds played such an important role “because they benefitted powerful and well-organized interest groups”—first, the guild masters themselves, and second, governments and political elites in general. And guilds disappeared when and where “the coalition between guilds and governments” broke down (583).
Such harsh assessments would have certainly pleased the many critics of guilds from late medieval times to the nineteenth century, but they contradict in strong terms the mainstream of recent scholarship in historiography and economics, particularly institutional economics. But Ogilvie's arguments are so well established in empirical terms, and so thoroughly designed, that all those who harbor more friendly attitudes toward guilds will have serious difficulties refuting her conclusions. Moreover, Ogilvie is fully aware of potential counterarguments, takes them seriously, and presents and discusses them throughout the book.
All in all, this is a unique contribution to the history of guilds. Ogilvie has a pleasing inclination toward clear and unmistakable messages. This favors the awareness of similarities among guilds throughout the huge temporal and spatial reach of her study. Another great achievement is an elaboration on the enormous variations of almost all rules, norms, and practices presented in the book. Perhaps this aspect will have a particularly strong impact on future research, because it might inspire local and regional guild historians to put their findings into a wider context.
