What Happened to Guilds in the 19th Century? Standard view: when Egyptian or Ottoman traditional handicrafts and trades encountered European manufacturing competition in the nineteenth century (especially after 1830), the traditional guilds largely unable to resist or adapt the changes were displaced and destroyed.

What Happened to Guilds in the 19th Century? An Alternative View: guilds were not simply destroyed ‘from above’ by European competition and investments. Economic adaptation and restructuring on the part of the Ottoman artisans, merchants and entrepreneurs made an important contribution to the end of manufacturing guilds.

Case Study: Damascus A famous textile-manufacturing center. This reputation rested upon luxury fabrics, especially a silk cotton combination known as alaja. The industry was not powered by steam but by people. Some five thousand hand weavers (Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims) were working on looms.

Guilds of Weavers Master-Journeymen-Apprentices The guild provided weavers with a collective means of dealing with outsiders the guild was not a democratic institution. A small groups of masters, the elite of the weaving community, monopolized power and exercised control over the journeymen’s life. Despite the inequalities inherent in the guild structure, journeymen had still hopes in this structure.

Changes in the 19th Century An increase in the number of non-guild workshops In the 1840s, new and cheaper silk-cotton combinations began to come from Europe. employment opportunities contracted and the number of silk looms in use fell from five thousand in 1839 to one thousand in 1845. Declining effectiveness of guild structure

Recovery in the 1850s By the 1850s, the local textile industry entered a boom period. The number of weavers reached 3,500 by early 1860 and by the mid-1860s the number had reached 5,000. By the late 1860s, the crisis appeared to be in the past. With the industry out of acute danger, merchants increased the prices in an effort to restore profit margins. He passed on some of his profits to the master weaver.

What About the Journeymen? Higher piecework rate in the late 1860s and 1870s. Yet many journeymen were still dissatisfied Another adverse development: workshops run by merchants Journeyman lost his prospects for self employment, had to suffer a decent standard of living, and began to see the master as unable and unwilling to look out for his interests.