Sheilagh Ogilvie: evaluation

Transcript context

…You mentioned the guilds. One of the things you’re best known for is your two books on the guilds [The European Guilds, Institutions and European Trade] and your articles. What’s the best argument you can make on behalf of Medieval and Renaissance guilds? Is there anything you can say for them? [laughs] I might be becoming soft-hearted in my old age, but I think there are examples of guild systems which operated effective professional training. I would say the Dutch and English guilds had a fairly good vocational training system. It was good because it did provide a training framework for young people to learn crafts and services. In England and the Netherlands, it was even possible for females, for girls, to sometimes get vocational training and not be excluded from the guild apprenticeship system. The other amazing thing about the English guild system was that, once you had been apprenticed to any occupation in London, you could practice any other. You just had to get membership of one guild, and then you could do any guilded occupation in London. This was unique. This was not the way guilds normally were. I’ve finished saying my good things about the guilds. The bad things were that no other apprenticeship system in Europe was flexible like that. In fact, in most European societies, guilds fundamentally in principle, didn’t let women, girls get any formal vocational training. They excluded Jews. They excluded poor boys who could not pay the several years of wages necessary to pay the training fees. They excluded migrants. They excluded people with the wrong color of skin. In 18th-century Spain, a cobbler’s guild in one Spanish city excluded all boys from apprenticeship whose skin was darker than the color of quince jelly. There was a literal color bar to getting into a guild, even getting any training. It was completely not merit-based. I think, in general, the problem with guilds is that they seek the benefits of their existing members, and restricting entry always enables you to raise prices. It was quite difficult to prevent a guild from behaving like a little mini cartel. I would say guilds did operate training systems for those they let in, but they didn’t let everyone in. They did some quality control over goods and services, but they often imposed quality restrictions that meant that it was not possible to sell cheap and nasty products. They focused on the nastiness, and they didn’t focus on the fact that sometimes less well-off people would like something nasty as long as it’s a bit cheaper. Do you think the guilds improved the history of Western art or damaged it? If you look at Florence, there are some notable commissions. Arguably, Dutch municipal buildings may have benefited from guild investment. Were there any offshoot public goods, or there was more damage done?…

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