Urban Renaissance
The craft guilds and urban production
The cities did not disappear completely in the High Middle Ages ; but although retain some of their old business activities, now have a mainly administrative and episcopal character. This situation began to change in the eleventh century, when the population of Europe has grown, the trade revived and feudalism was Renaissance crisis. Thus began the Commercial and Urban Renaissance , when cities became centers of business activities and, by extension, industrial centers; or, more specifically, craft and manufacturing.
The big merchants were selling products from other regions, such as silk Italy, wool of Flemish cities and the spices of the East.These opulent merchants formed the upper class (or, as they were then, the urban patricians). They are organized in associations called guilds and had the monopoly of big business.
Below them, they were at the smaller traders, that is, the petty bourgeoisie . Owned street shops and masters of craft production workshops (the last small industrial entrepreneurs, known as master craftsmen ).
The lower strata of the urban population were formed by employees of craft workshops, by journeymen (workers paid by workday), the servants of wealthy families and individuals with no defined and beggars profession.
Most of the urban production was intended for consumption site and the surroundings formed by the adjacent rural areas. Only in the more developed regions, such as Flanders and Italy, there was a production for the international market.
Most of the urban production was intended for consumption site and the surroundings formed by the adjacent rural areas. Only in the more developed regions, such as Flanders and Italy, there was a production for the international market.
The production of handwork was governed byguilds (associations gathered all the artisans of a city, when connected to the same productive activity). The regulation was intended to maintain the balance between production and consumption, and avoid competition among producers. It is not possible to intervene in the consumer market, it was in the producer market by pricing, quantity and quality of products, payments to employees, working hours etc.
The corporation also had assistance functions because the contributions paid by its members could be partly designed to associated ill, disabled or whose workshop had suffered an accident. In war times involving their city, corporations could participate in fighting organized in urban militias. Linked to corporations, there were the confraternities , entities sponsored by the Church that gathered the craftsmen around the patron saint of their profession.
The form of urban industrial production varied according to the economic development of the Low Middle Ages . At first, the typical form was the artisan production . In it, a master craftsman, who owns the means of production (tools, raw materials, facilities), sold its products directly to consumers. He worked with a variable number of employees (officers or partners), whose remuneration was based on participation in sales made and that could turn out to become master craftsmen with own workshop. In the workshop there were still apprentices, often master of relatives or of an officer, working between seven and nine years without pay, in exchange for housing, food and initiation into the profession.
There were times when the market expansion forced the teachers to increase production; in order to do it quickly, they had to hire day laborers, because there was no time to turn learners into officers. Over time, the teachers realized that it was cheaper to pay the journeymen than the official - which also meant higher profits. Thus, the distance between employer and employees has increased because the number of officers has been reduced and its importance in productive activity decreased. But despite decrease the number of employees with share of sales (replaced by a growing number of employees), the master - craftsman continued to work in the workshop, in the company of their employees. Therefore continued to exist craft production .
But consumption growth over changing the traditional direct relationship between producer and consumer, creating the need for an intermediary - a merchant willing capital to buy the master craftsman of the product and resell it to national or international markets.
This intervention of the trader in the distribution gave rise to manufacturing production . In this, there was no longer the figure of the master craftsman (who worked with his subordinates), replaced by an owner of means of production that hired workers and oversees through foremen also hired.
The manufacturing production is mainly occurred in the textile sector and meant the intervention of commercial capital in the production process - which undoubtedly has been considerably streamlined. Not that the merchant became only producer. He continued to be a merchant, to increase their profits also went on to produce.
Initially, the merchant hired some laborers, just to make the finish of the material purchased from master craftsmen. Then it expanded its facilities to carry out weaving.
Having obtained good results in textile production, traders began to intervene in other productive sectors. In all of them, to streamline the process and increase productivity, the work was divided into specific tasks, always performed by the same workers - who no longer needed successively perform different tasks. This is the essential difference between the craft industry and manufacturing: first, the same worker performs all steps of production, up to the finish of the product; already manufacture, each worker performs only one process step, moving to another employee the task of completing the next step.
The expansion of manufacturing ruined numerous master craftsmen who could not compete with them. Many shops were closed and numerous artisans to survive, began to work in their own homes, aided only by their families. This production process was nameddomestic production or domestic production system .
The manufacturing merchant coexisted with other types of producers until the eighteenth century, when the maquinofatura replaced the three existing forms of production (artisanal, manufacturing and domestic), ushering in the modern industrialization.
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Category: General history
