The Abolition of the Guilds during the French Revolution

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed a renewal of interest in the French guild system, marked by a special emphasis on its supra-economic function. Unlike earlier generations that proposed to evaluate, and usually ended by condemning, corporative regulations of work and production,' historians such as William Sewell, Jr., and Steven L. Kaplan have chosen to set aside the obvious criticisms of the system and to pay greater heed to the guilds' self-justifications.2 Both focus, therefore, on Turgot's short-lived abolition and the debate it engendered, crowned by the avocat ge'ne'ral Seguier's famed defense of the organic state or great chain of being.3 The parlementaires' remonstrances are taken to embody the corporate ethos, and the corporate ethos to embody the guilds.

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