The Artisan and the European Town, 1500û1900

by Crossick,Geoffrey

• ISBN13: 9781859282328
• ISBN10: 1859282326
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2018-07-18
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Artisans played a central role in the European town as it developed from the Middles Ages onwards. Their workshops were at the heart of productive activity, their guilds were often central to the political and legal order of towns, and their culture helped shape civic ritual and the urban order. These essays, which have all been specially written for this collection, explore the relationships between artisans and their towns across Europe between the beginning of the early-modern period and the end of the 19th century. They pay special attention to the processes of economic, juridicial and political change that have made the 18th and early 19th centuries a period of such significance.Written by leading historians of European artisans, the essays question the myths about artisans that have long pervaded research in the field. The leading myth was that shared by the artisans themselves - the myth of decline and the belief in each generation that artisans in the past had inhabited a better age. These essays open up for debate the nature of artisanship, the way economic change affected craft production, the political role of artisans, the cultural identification of the artisans with work and masculinity, and the way changing urban society and changing urban structure posed threats to which the artisans had to respond.

Table of Contents

List of tables	ix	(1)
List of figures	x	(1)
Notes on contributors	xi	(4)
Preface	xv
1 Past masters: in search of the artisan in European history	1	(40)
Geoffrey Crossick
2 Artisans and urban politics in seventeenth-century Germany	41	(15)
Christopher R. Friedrichs
3 Cultural analysis and early modern artisans	56	(19)
James R. Farr
4 `Broken all in pieces': artisans and the regulation of workmanship in early modern London	75	(17)
Michael Berlin
5 The aristocratic hotel and its artisans in eighteenth-century Paris: the market ruled by court society	92	(24)
Natacha Coquery
6 Craftsmen and revolution in Bordeaux	116	(15)
Josette Pontet
7 Craftsmen in the political and symbolic order: the case of eighteenth-century Malmo	131	(20)
Lars Edgren
8 Women and the craft guilds in eighteenth-century Nantes	151	(21)
Elizabeth Musgrave
9 Worlds of mobility: migration patterns of Viennese artisans in the eighteenth century	172	(28)
Josef Ehmer
10 Artisans in Hungarian towns on the eve of industrialization	200	(18)
Vera Bacskai
11 Urban renovation and changes in artisans' activities: the Parisian fabrique in the Arts et Metiers quarter during the Second Empire	218	(21)
Florence Bourillon
12 Artisans and the labour market in Dutch provincial capitals around 1900	239	(18)
Pim Kooij
Index	257