The Return of the Guilds: Towards a Global History of the Guilds in Pre-industrial Times

Abstract

The recent emergence of the sub-discipline of ''global history'', and of its branches ''global economic history'' and ''global labour history'', is probably one of the most interesting developments in the social and historical sciences.1 In the age of globalization the question should be asked whether it is possible to analyse and understand global patterns of social and economic change in the recent or more distant past, without taking into account the role of institutions in those developments.2 This * The essays in this issue originate from a conference organized in October 2006 by the International Institute of Social History and the research group in social and economic history at Utrecht University on the theme ''The Return of the Guilds'', as part of a series of conferences on global economic history, a continuation of the Global Economic History Network -GEHN -set up by Patrick O'Brien and his group at the London School of Economics (LSE).The challenge of the conference was to bring together specialists in non-European regions with Europeanists, and to study the similarities and differences between guilds in different parts of the world.It was to be based on the knowledge about guilds that had been built up over many years.Besides the authors who have contributed to this special issue, we should also like to thank the other participants in the conference for their contributions in various ways: the late Larry Epstein (to whom this issue is dedicated),

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