Bert De Munck

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

This article contributes to the debate about the early modern craft guilds’ rationale through the lens of apprenticeship. Based on a case study of the Antwerp manufacturing guilds, it argues that apprenticeship should be understood from the perspective of ‘distributional conflicts’. Fixed terms of service and masterpieces guarded the guilds’ labour market monopsony, enabling masters to distribute the available skilled and unskilled labour among members (among other ways, through the restriction of the number of apprentices per master). Although from the perspective of product quality, this may have enabled masters to prevent adverse selection, the introduction of standardized apprenticeship requirements was the result of social and rent-seeking concerns.

One counter and your own account: redefining illicit labour in early modern Antwerp

This article examines the problem of illicit labour from the perspective of transformations in the (local) distribution channels. Rather than large masters circumventing the guilds’ rules regarding labour market entry or large merchants shifting from a Kauf to a Verlag system, early modern manufacturing guilds in Antwerp confronted mercers and wholesalers who entered into production without being masters. In response, the guilds extended their rules, so that their regulations actually matured in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rather than (labour market) deregulation and proto-industrialization, the issue was the disappearance of the straightforward link between production and retailing, tied together by mastership.

The agency of branding and the location of value. Hallmarks and monograms in early modern tableware industries

This article addresses early modern guild-based hallmarks from the perspective of modern branding. Although guilds could have firm-like functions and create ‘brand names’, collective marks at least in ‘strong guilds’ (on the continent) served a primarily socio-political function for small manufacturing masters who controlled and sanctioned branding practices themselves. While helping to solve problems of information asymmetry, the collective marks objectified product quality by locating it in the political standing and ‘quality’ of guild-based masters. The crucial shift at the end of the Ancien Regime involved the disappearance of this link between the status of urban ‘freemen’ and the cultural identity of their products.This article addresses early modern guild-based hallmarks from the perspective of modern branding. Although guilds could have firm-like functions and create ‘brand names’, collective marks at least in ‘strong guilds’ (on the continent) served a primarily socio-political function for small manufacturing masters who controlled and sanctioned branding practices themselves. While helping to solve problems of information asymmetry, the collective marks objectified product quality by locating it in the political standing and ‘quality’ of guild-based masters. The crucial shift at the end of the Ancien Régime involved the disappearance of this link between the status of urban ‘freemen’ and the cultural identity of their products.

Corpses, Live Models, and Nature: Assessing Skills and Knowledge before the Industrial Revolution (Case: Antwerp)

Recent research on science and art suggests that artists and artisans contributed considerably to what has been called the “scientific revolution” and the shift from natural philosophy to natural science.While researchers have traditionally written intellectual, top-down histories of theoretical inventions or “discoveries” trickling down to economic actors, recent research suggests that handicraft and artistic milieus were indispensable for the transformations associated with the scientific revolution. Scholars are therefore increasingly investigating the bottom-up processes that have informed these transformations.1 Artisans’ hands-on knowledge of natural materials and their expertise in manipulating them helped lay the foundation of modern science, which was, after all, based on observation and

Disassembling the City A Historical and an Epistemological View on the Agency of Cities

Current ideas about the “agency” of cities are dominated by economists and economic geographers who point to agglomeration economies and the clustering of institutions, if not to “creative classes” and a tolerant and diverse cultural climate. In this article, such views will be historized and denaturalized. It will be examined how “urban agency” was fabricated in the late medieval and early modern period, stressing the role of political philosophy and epistemology. First, focusing on guilds and artisanal economic actors, I will describe the coemergence of specific types of skills and knowledge and the urban as a community and body politic. Subsequently, I will argue that the city as an “assemblage” transformed drastically during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, showing that the transformations concerning both the political and economic identity of guild-based artisans and the city as a specific political community were contingent on specific attitudes and practices related to matter and materiality.Current ideas about the “agency” of cities are dominated by economists and economic geographers who point to agglomeration economies and the clustering of institutions, if not to “creative classes” and a tolerant and diverse cultural climate. In this article, such views will be historized and denaturalized. It will be examined how “urban agency” was fabricated in the late medieval and early modern period, stressing the role of political philosophy and epistemology. First, focusing on guilds and artisanal economic actors, I will describe the coemergence of specific types of skills and knowledge and the urban as a community and body politic. Subsequently, I will argue that the city as an “assemblage” transformed drastically during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, showing that the transformations concerning both the political and economic identity of guild-based artisans and the city as a specific political community were contingent on specific attitudes and practices related to matter and materiality.

FREE CHOICE, MODERN LOVE, AND DEPENDENCE: MARRIAGE OF MINORS AND RAPT DE SéDUCTION IN THE AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS

In the 18th-century Southern Netherlands, rapt de séduction - synonymous with the marriage of minors without parental consent - wasn’t an extinguishing practice. Among the elite groups courtship behaviour of minors was an acute problem. The question was not, however, one of changing norms and values of youngsters. Due to changing relations between different social groups - e.g. between high aristocrats and rich merchants - traditional barriers seem to have been crossed more boldly from about mid-century on, but this does not point to the emergence of notions as “free choice” and “modern love.” On the whole youngsters were likely to have followed the wishes of their parents even more desperately then before; and if some minors didn’t, they were genuinely seen as weak and blind victims of their own uncontrollable inner feelings directed at the wrong party. From both perspectives, “free choice” paradoxically resulted in a growing dependency on traditions and authority.In the 18th-century Southern Netherlands, rapt de seduction - synonymous with the marriage of minors without parental consent - wasn’t an extinguishing practice. Among the elite groups courtship behaviour of minors was an acute problem. The question was not, however, one of changing norms and values of youngsters. Due to changing relations between different social groups - e.g. between high aristocrats and rich merchants - traditional barriers seem to have been crossed more boldly from about mid-century on, but this does not point to the emergence of notions as “free choice” and “modern love.” On the whole youngsters were likely to have followed the wishes of their parents even more desperately then before; and if some minors didn’t, they were genuinely seen as weak and blind victims of their own uncontrollable inner feelings directed at the wrong party. From both perspectives, “free choice” paradoxically resulted in a growing dependency on traditions and authority.

Re-assembling Actor-Network Theory and urban history

Few theories have left their mark on urban studies to the extent that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has in the last few decades. Its background in Science and Technology Studies (STS), its critique of the explanatory value of such abstractions as ‘class’ and ‘society’ and its efforts to transcend society/nature and local/global binarisms inevitably challenged conventional views on cities, urbanization and urban phenomena. Economic and Marxist approaches to the city in particular have been challenged, at least to the extent that they invoke the explanatory force of the economy or capitalism as a global social system and, thus, fall back upon the binarisms under attack from ANT. The network approach questioned architectonic explanatory models (substructure vs. superstructure) and deepened our understanding of actors and agency (both emerging from networks of humans and non-humans). However, ANT has always been subject to criticism too.