Urban class
To fight the lords, the unification of all townspeople was required. Although different layers of the urban population were engaged in a specific type of activity (artisans in production, and merchants in the sale of goods), they were united by the common interests of their place of residence. City liberty granted them equal privileges:
Social necessity led to the formation of the urban class. This concept is often identified with the term burghers.
Definition 1
Burghership literally means “city dweller” or “citizen”. In medieval Germany, this was the social status of a city resident. In medieval Europe - a city dweller or “third estate”.
The property and social status of representatives of the urban class was not the same. The estate was divided into subgroups:
By the 13th century, burghers began to be called wealthy and wealthy representatives of urban residents, from whom the bourgeoisie later began to form.
The urban class played a special role among the layers of feudal society. Often it supported the king in his struggle against the willful feudal lords. Later, the third estate defended its interests in estate-representative assemblies. The disunity of the urban class was expressed in the predominance of the guild structure within the city. The desire to achieve local interests of the city led to rivalry between cities and prevented their unification.
The economic basis of the medieval city was handicraft production and handicrafts. The artisan was a small producer, characterized by the same characteristics as the peasant. He
By producing a product. The craftsman sought to maintain the level of family existence that corresponded to social status.
A distinctive feature of medieval craft was the unification of artisans of one profession of one city into a corporate union - a workshop, brotherhood, guild.
Craft workshops began to appear in Europe simultaneously with the formation of cities - around the 11th-12th centuries. The reason for this phenomenon lies in the need to protect production and income from the arbitrariness of feudal lords, neighboring craftsmen, artisans from villages and other cities. In conditions of a narrow sales market and low demand, competition was ruinous, so the main goal of uniting into a workshop was to establish a monopoly on a specific type of craft. The second goal: control over the quality of manufactured products and their sales.
Belonging to a guild quickly became a mandatory requirement for practicing a craft. Until the end of the 14th century, the guilds acted as a progressive force. They coordinated the relationship of the master (workshop owner) with apprentices and apprentices. Every artisan who aspired to become a master had to go through the first two stages - apprentice and journeyman.
Members of his family also worked with the master. The craft was passed down from generation to generation. Many generations worked with the same tools, used the same secrets of making finished products.
Note 1
The guild organization intervened in all spheres of the artisan's life. The artisan took part in the militia, being part of a separate combat unit. Each workshop had its own church and patron saint. It was possible to get married only within the corporation. In the event of the loss of a breadwinner, the workshop organized support and assistance for his family. Along with guild corporations, free craft continued to exist in some cities in northern Europe and southern France.
The production basis of the medieval city was crafts and “manual” trades. A craftsman, like a peasant, was a small producer who owned the tools of production and independently ran his own farm, based primarily on personal labor.
“An existence appropriate to his position, and not exchange value as such, not enrichment as such...”1 was the goal of the artisan’s work. But unlike the peasant, the expert craftsman, firstly, from the very beginning was a commodity producer and ran a commodity economy. Secondly, he did not need land as a means of direct production. Therefore, urban crafts developed and improved incomparably faster than agriculture and rural, home crafts. It is also noteworthy that in the urban craft, non-economic coercion in the form of personal dependence of the worker was not necessary and quickly disappeared. Here, however, there were other types of non-economic coercion related to the guild organization of crafts and the corporate-class, essentially feudal nature of the urban system (coercion and regulation by the guilds and the city, etc.). This coercion came from the townspeople themselves.
A characteristic feature of crafts and other activities in many medieval cities of Western Europe was a corporate organization: the unification of persons of certain professions within each city into special unions - guilds, brotherhoods. Craft guilds appeared almost simultaneously with the cities themselves: in Italy - already in the 10th century, in France, England, Germany - from the 11th - early 12th centuries, although the final registration of the guilds (receiving special letters from kings and other lords, drawing up and recording shop regulations) occurred, as a rule, later.
1 Archive of Marx and Engels. T. II (VII), p. 111.
The guilds arose because urban artisans, as independent, fragmented, small commodity producers, needed a certain unification to protect their production and income from feudal lords, from the competition of “outsiders” - unorganized artisans or immigrants from the village constantly arriving in the cities, from artisans of other cities, and and from neighbors - craftsmen. Such competition was dangerous in the conditions of the then very narrow market and insignificant demand. Therefore, the main function of the workshops was to establish a monopoly on this type of craft. In Germany it was called Zynftzwang - guild coercion. In most cities, belonging to a guild was a prerequisite for practicing a craft. Another main function of the guilds was to establish control over the production and sale of handicrafts. The emergence of guilds was determined by the level of productive forces achieved at that time and the entire feudal-class structure of society. The initial model for the organization of urban crafts was partly the structure of the rural community-marks and estate workshops-magisteriums.
Each of the guild foremen was a direct worker and at the same time the owner of the means of production. He worked in his workshop, with his tools and raw materials and, in the words of K. Marx, “fused with his means of production as closely as a snail with a shell”1. As a rule, the craft was passed down by inheritance: after all, many generations of artisans worked using the same tools and techniques as their great-grandfathers. New specialties that emerged were organized into separate workshops. In many cities, dozens, and in the largest - even hundreds of workshops gradually appeared. A guild artisan was usually assisted in his work by his family, one or two apprentices and several apprentices. But only the master, the owner of the workshop, was a member of the workshop. And one of the important functions of the workshop was to regulate the relations of masters with apprentices and apprentices.
The master, journeyman and apprentice stood at different levels of the guild hierarchy. Preliminary completion of the two lower levels was mandatory for anyone who wished to become a member of the guild. Initially, each student could eventually become a journeyman, and the journeyman could become a master.
The members of the workshop were interested in ensuring that their products received unhindered sales. Therefore, the workshop, through specially elected officials, strictly regulated production: it made sure that each master produced products of a certain type and quality. The workshop prescribed, for example, what width and color the fabric produced should be, how many threads should be in the warp, what tools and raw materials should be used, etc. Regulation of production also served other purposes: so that the production of members of the workshop remained small-scale, that
1 Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 23. P. 371.
none of them would push another master out of the market by producing more products or making them cheaper. To this end, guild regulations rationed the number of journeymen and apprentices that a master could keep, prohibited work at night and on holidays, limited the number of machines and raw materials in each workshop, regulated prices for handicraft products, etc.
The guild organization of crafts in cities was one of the manifestations of their feudal nature: “... the feudal structure of land ownership in cities corresponded to corporate ownership, the feudal organization of crafts”1. Until a certain time, such an organization created the most favorable conditions for the development of productive forces and urban commodity production. Within the framework of the guild system, it was possible to further deepen the social division of labor in the form of establishing new craft workshops, expanding the range and improving the quality of goods produced, and improving craft skills. Within the framework of the guild system, the self-awareness and self-esteem of urban craftsmen increased.
Therefore, until approximately the end of the 14th century. workshops in Western Europe played a progressive role. They protected artisans from excessive exploitation by feudal lords; in the conditions of the narrow market of that time, they ensured the existence of urban small producers, softening competition between them and protecting them from the competition of various outsiders.
The guild organization was not limited to the implementation of basic socio-economic functions, but covered all aspects of the life of a craftsman. The guilds united the townspeople to fight the feudal lords, and then the domination of the patriciate. The workshop participated in the protection of the city and acted as a separate combat unit. Each workshop had its own patron saint, sometimes also its own church or chapel, being a kind of church community. The workshop was also a mutual aid organization, providing support to needy craftsmen and their families in the event of illness or death of the breadwinner.
It is obvious that the guilds and other city corporations, their privileges, and the entire regime of their regulation were public organizations characteristic of the Middle Ages. They corresponded to the productive forces of that time, and were similar in character to other feudal communities.
The guild system in Europe, however, was not universal. It has not become widespread in a number of countries and has not reached its completed form everywhere. Along with it, in many cities of Northern Europe, in the south of France, in some other countries and regions, there was a so-called free craft.
But even there there was regulation of production, protection of the monopoly of urban artisans, only these functions were carried out by city government bodies.
1 Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 3. P. 23. A unique corporate property was the monopoly of a workshop in a certain specialty.
Craft guilds played an important role in the development of commodity production in Europe in the process of forming a new social group - the class of hired workers. The essay is of interest to correspondence students when writing a test in history.
STATE BUDGET PROFESSIONAL
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION OF KRASNODAR REGION
"ANAPSKY AGRICULTURAL TECHNIQUE"
MEDIEVAL CRAFT SHOP (XIII-XV CENTURIES)
Completed by: teacher of socio-economic disciplines
Eisner Tatyana Viktorovna
Anapa, 2016
Medieval craft workshops (XIII-XV centuries)
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… | |
1. Reasons for the emergence of workshops and their functions………………………... | |
2. Shop regulation. Master, student, journeyman..…………….. | |
3. Decomposition of the guild system……………………………………………. | |
Conclusion………………………………………………………………… | |
List of sources and literature………………………………………………………... |
Introduction.
Craft shops in Western Europe appeared almost simultaneously with cities: in Italy already in the 10th century, in France, England and Germany from the 11th and early 12th centuries. It is worth noting that the final formalization of the guild system with the help of charters and statutes occurred, as a rule, later.
The guilds played an important role in the development of commodity production in Europe, in the formation of a new social group - wage workers, from whom the proletariat was subsequently formed.
Therefore, the study of the problem of the emergence of guilds as an organization of crafts in medieval Europe is relevant.
The purpose of this work is to identify the main features of the guild organization of crafts in medieval Europe.
Tasks:
1) reveal the main reasons for the emergence of workshops, their functions, features of workshop regulation;
2) to identify the features of the relationship between masters, their students and apprentices in medieval guilds, between the guilds and the patriciate;
3) reveal the reasons for the decomposition of the guild organization of the medieval city.
1. Reasons for the emergence of workshops and their functions.
Medieval cities developed primarily as centers of concentration of handicraft production. Unlike peasants, artisans worked to meet market needs by producing products for sale. The production of goods was located in the workshop, on the ground floor of the artisan's premises. Everything was made by hand, using simple tools, by one master from start to finish. Usually the workshop served as a shop where the artisan sold the things he produced, thus being both the main worker and the owner.
The limited market for handicraft goods forced craftsmen to look for ways to survive. One of them was the division of the market and the elimination of competition. The well-being of the artisan depended on many circumstances. Being a small manufacturer, the artisan could produce only as much goods as his physical and intellectual abilities allowed. But any problems: illness, error, lack of necessary raw materials and other reasons could lead to the loss of the customer, and, therefore. and livelihood.
To solve pressing problems, artisans began to join forces. This is how guilds appear - closed organizations (corporations) of artisans of a particular specialty within one city, created with the aim of eliminating competition (protecting production and income) and mutual assistance. Let us present the reasons and goals of the emergence of guilds-unions of medieval artisans in the form of a table.
Table 1.
Reasons and purpose of the emergence of workshops.
Organization of life | Need for security | Internal economic | Foreign economic |
1.Organization of everyday life | 1.Organization of city defense in case of war. | 1. Protection from competition. | 1. Development of uniform rules in the production and sale of products |
2.Mutual assistance | 2. Protection from attacks by robber knights. | 2. division of the sales market in conditions of market narrowness. | 2. Creation of the same conditions for all masters. |
Members of the workshop helped each other learn new ways of crafting, but at the same time they guarded their secrets from other workshops. The elected leadership of the workshop carefully ensured that all members of the workshop were in approximately the same conditions, so that no one got rich at the expense of another or lured away customers. For this purpose, strict rules were introduced, which clearly indicated how many hours one could work, how many machines and assistants to use. Violators were expelled from the workshop, which meant loss of livelihood. There was also strict control over the quality of the goods. In addition to production, the workshops also organized the life of artisans. Members of the workshop built their own church, school, and celebrated holidays together. The workshop supported widows, orphans, and disabled people. In the event of a city siege, members of the workshop, under their own flag, formed a separate combat unit, which was supposed to defend a certain section of the wall or tower.
“One of the main functions of the workshops was the establishment of monopolies for this type of craft. In most cities, belonging to a guild was a prerequisite for practicing a craft. Another main function of the guilds was to establish control over the production and sale of handicrafts." 1 . Dozens of workshops gradually appeared in cities, and even hundreds of workshops in large cities.
An important role was played by the workshop charter - rules binding on all members of the workshop:
Foremans served to enforce the regulations and punish violators.
2. Shop regulation. Master, student, journeyman.
Members of each workshop were interested in ensuring unhindered sales of their products. Therefore, the workshop strictly regulated production and, through specially elected workshop officials, ensured that each master member of the workshop produced products of a certain type and quality.
The workshop prescribed, for example, what width and color the fabric should be, how many threads should be in the warp, what tool and material should be used, and so on.
The regulation of production also served other purposes: being an association of independent small commodity producers, the workshop zealously ensured that the production of all its members remained small in nature, so that none of them would displace other craftsmen from the market by producing more products. Therefore, guild regulations strictly limited the number of journeymen and apprentices that one master could have, prohibited work at night and on holidays, limited the number of machines on which an artisan could work, regulated stocks of raw materials, prices for handicraft products, and the like.
“Regulation of shop life was also necessary so that the members of the shop would maintain its high reputation not only by the quality of the products produced, but also by their good behavior.” 1 .
The members of the workshop were craftsmen. They elected the head of the workshop or the workshop council. The masters were assisted by apprentices. They were not considered members of the guilds, and, therefore, did not enjoy many of the advantages of craftsmen; they did not have the right to open their own business, even if they were fluent in their craft. To become a master, one had to pass a serious test. The candidate presented a product to the chief craftsmen of the workshop, which, of course, indicated that he had completely mastered all the tricks of his craft. This exemplary product was called a masterpiece in France. In addition to making a masterpiece, an apprentice who wanted to become a master had to spend a lot on treating the members of the workshop. From decade to decade, becoming a master became increasingly difficult for everyone except the sons of the masters themselves. The rest turned into “eternal apprentices” and could not even hope to someday join the workshop.
Dissatisfied apprentices sometimes conspired against the masters and even started rebellions. Even lower than the apprentices were the apprentices. As a rule, even in childhood they were sent to be trained by some master and paid him for training. At first, the master often used his students as household servants, and later, without much haste, he shared with them the secrets of his work. A grown-up student, if his studies benefited him, could become an apprentice. At first, the position of apprentices had strong features of “family” exploitation. The apprentice's status remained temporary; he himself ate and lived in the master's house, and marriage to the master's daughter could crown his career. And yet, “family” traits turned out to be secondary. The main thing that determined the social position of the apprentice and his relationship with the owner was wages. It was the hired side of the journeyman’s status, his existence as a hired worker, that had a future. The guild foremen increasingly exploited the apprentices. The duration of their working day was usually very long, 14-16, and sometimes 18 hours. The apprentices were judged by the guild court, that is, again, by the master. The workshops controlled the life of journeymen and students, their pastime, spending, and acquaintances. The Strasbourg "Regulation on Hired Workers" in 1465, putting apprentices and domestic servants on the same level, orders them to return home no later than 9 o'clock in the evening in winter and 10 o'clock in summer, prohibits visiting public houses, carrying weapons in the city, and dressing everyone in the same dress. and wear the same decals. The last ban was born out of fear of a conspiracy of apprentices.
3. Decomposition of the guild system.
In the 14th century, great changes took place within craft production. In the first period of their existence, the guilds played a progressive role. But the desire of the guilds to preserve and perpetuate small-scale production, traditional techniques and tools, hampered the further development of society. Technical advances contributed to the development of competition, and the workshops turned into a brake on industrial development, an obstacle to further growth of production.
However, no matter how much the guild regulations prevented the development of competition between individual artisans within the guild, as the productive forces grew and the domestic and foreign markets expanded, it grew more and more. Individual artisans expanded their production beyond the limits established by the guild regulations. Economic and social inequality in the workshop increased. Wealthy craftsmen, owners of larger workshops, began to practice handing over work to small craftsmen, supplying them with raw materials or semi-finished products and receiving finished products. “Thus, from among the previously unified mass of small artisans, a wealthy guild elite gradually emerged, exploiting the small craftsmen - the direct producers” 1 . The entire mass of students and journeymen also fell into the position of being exploited.
In the XIV-XV centuries, during the period of the beginning of the decline and disintegration of the guild craft, the situation of students and journeymen sharply worsened. If in the initial period of the existence of the guild system, a student, having completed an apprenticeship and becoming a journeyman, and then having worked for some time for a master and having accumulated a small amount of money, could count on becoming a master (the costs of setting up a workshop given the small-scale nature of production were small), now access to this was actually closed to students and apprentices. In an effort to defend their privileges in the face of growing competition, masters began to make it in every possible way difficult for journeymen and apprentices to obtain the title of master.
The so-called “shop closure” occurred. The title of master became practically available to journeymen and students only if they were close relatives of the masters. Others, in order to receive the title of master, had to pay a very large entrance fee to the workshop's cash desk, perform exemplary work requiring large financial expenditures - a masterpiece, arrange an expensive treat for the members of the workshop, and so on. Thus deprived of the opportunity to ever become masters and open their own workshop, apprentices turned into “eternal apprentices,” that is, in fact, into hired workers.
Peasants who lost their land, as well as students and journeymen, who actually turned into hired workers, were an integral part of that layer of the urban population that can be called the pre-proletariat and which also included non-guild, various kinds of unorganized workers, as well as impoverished members of the guild - small artisans, increasingly dependent on the large masters who had become rich and differed from apprentices only in that they worked at home. “While not being a working class in the modern sense of the word, the pre-proletariat was “a more or less developed predecessor of the modern proletariat.” He made up the bulk of the lower layer of townspeople - the plebeians." 1
As social contradictions within the medieval city developed and intensified, the exploited sections of the urban population began to openly oppose the city elite that was in power, which now included in many cities the richer part of the guild masters, the guild aristocracy. This struggle also included the lowest and most powerless layer of the urban population - the lumpen proletariat, that is. a layer of people deprived of certain occupations and permanent residence, standing outside the feudal class structure. During the period of the beginning of the decomposition of the guild system, the exploitation of the direct producer - the small artisan - by trading capital developed. Commercial, or merchant, capital is older than the capitalist mode of production. It represents the historically oldest free form of capital, existing long before capital subjugated production itself, and arising earliest of all in trade. Merchant capital operates in the sphere of circulation, and its function is to serve the exchange of goods in the conditions of commodity production in a slave society, and in a feudal and capitalist one. As commodity production developed under feudalism and guild crafts decomposed, commercial capital gradually began to penetrate into the sphere of production and began to directly exploit the small artisan. Usually, the merchant-capitalist initially acted as a buyer. He bought raw materials and resold them to the artisan, bought the goods of the artisan for further sale, and often put the less wealthy artisan in a position dependent on him. Especially often, the establishment of such economic dependence was associated with the supply of raw materials, and sometimes tools, to the artisan on credit. Such a craftsman who fell into bondage to a buyer or even a downright bankrupt artisan had no choice but to continue working for the merchant-capitalist, only no longer as an independent commodity producer, but as a person deprived of the means of production, that is, in fact, a hired worker. “This process served as the starting point for the capitalist manufacture that emerged during the period of disintegration of medieval craft production. All these processes took place especially vividly, although in a peculiar way, in Italy.” 1 .
Conclusion.
Having considered the problems of organizing crafts in a medieval city, we can draw the following conclusions.
The emergence of guilds was determined by the level of productive forces achieved at that time and the entire feudal-class structure of society. The main reasons for the formation of guilds were the following: urban artisans, as independent, fragmented, small commodity producers, needed a certain association to protect their production and income from feudal lords, from the competition of “outsiders” - unorganized artisans or immigrants from the countryside constantly arriving in cities, from artisans of other cities , and from neighbors - masters. The entire life of a medieval guild artisan - social, economic, industrial, religious, everyday, festive - took place within the framework of the guild brotherhood. The members of the workshop were interested in ensuring that their products received unhindered sales. Therefore, the workshop, through specially elected officials, strictly regulated production. “Regulation of shop life was also necessary so that the members of the shop would maintain its high reputation not only by the quality of the products produced, but also by their good behavior.” 1 .
As the productive forces grew and the domestic and foreign markets expanded, competition between artisans within the workshop inevitably increased. Individual artisans, contrary to guild regulations, expanded their production, property and social inequality developed between masters, and the struggle between masters and “eternal apprentices” intensified.
From the end of the 14th century. The guild organization of crafts, aimed at preserving small-scale production, was already beginning to restrain technical progress and the spread of new tools and production methods. The workshop charter did not allow the consolidation of workshops, the introduction of an operational division of labor, in fact prohibited the rationalization of production, and restrained the development of individual skills and the introduction of more advanced technologies and tools.
Guilds played an important role in the development of commodity production in medieval Europe, influencing the formation of social relations in the modern era.
List of sources and literature:
Sources
1. Augsburg Chronicle // Medieval city law of the 12th – 13th centuries. /Ed. S. M. Stama. Saratov, 1989. pp. 125 – 126.
2. Contracts for hiring a student // Medieval city law of the 12th – 13th centuries. /Ed. S. M. Stama. Saratov, 1989. pp. 115 – 116.
3. Book of customs // History of the Middle Ages. Reader. In 2 parts. Part 1 M., 1988.P. 178 – 180.
4. Message from the Constance City Council // History of the Middle Ages. Reader. In 2 parts. Part 1 M., 1988.P. 167 – 168.
5. A call for a strike addressed by the apprentice furriers of Vilshtet to the apprentice furriers of Strasbourg // History of the Middle Ages. Reader. In 2 parts. Part 1 M., 1988.P. 165.
6. Guild charter of silk weavers // Medieval city law of the 12th – 13th centuries. /Ed. S. M. Stama. Saratov, 1989. pp. 113-114.
Literature
7. City in the medieval civilization of Western Europe / Ed. A.A. Svanidze M., 1999 -2000.T. 1-4.
8. Gratsiansky N.P. Parisian craft workshops in the XIII - XIV centuries. Kazan, 1911.
9. Svanidze A. A. Genesis of the feudal city in early medieval Europe: problems and typology//City life in medieval Europe. M., 1987.
10. Stam S. M. Economic and social development of the early city. (Toulouse X1 - XIII centuries) Saratov, 1969.
11. Stoklitskaya-Tereshkovich V.V. The main problems of the history of the medieval city of the X - XV centuries. M., 1960.
12. Kharitonovich D. E. Craft. Guilds and myths // City in the medieval civilization of Western Europe. M.1999. P.118 – 124.
13. Yastrebitskaya A. L. Western European city in the Middle Ages // Questions of history, 1978, No. 4. pp. 96-113.
1 Stam S. M. Economic and social development of the early city. (Toulouse X1 - XIII centuries) Saratov, 1969.
