Apprenticeship and Learning by Doing The Role of Privileged Enclaves in Early Modern French Cities

In France, formal guild training was not as ubiquitous a means of socializing young people into a trade as it has been portrayed by scholars. Guilds were limited geographically, and in many French cities privileged enclaves controlled by clerical or noble seigneurs curbed the sway of corporate struc...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inHistorical reflections Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 97 - 113
Main Author Horn, Jeff
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Waterloo Berghahn Books, Inc 01.12.2021
Subjects
18th century
Apprentices
Apprenticeship
Apprenticeships
Book publishing
Cities
Competition
Guilds
Immigration
Industrial production
Industrial Revolution
International economic relations
Learning
Market positioning
Skilled workers
Socialization
Tacit knowledge
Training
Youth
France
United Kingdom
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:In France, formal guild training was not as ubiquitous a means of socializing young people into a trade as it has been portrayed by scholars. Guilds were limited geographically, and in many French cities privileged enclaves controlled by clerical or noble seigneurs curbed the sway of corporate structures, or even created their own. Eighteenth-century Bordeaux provides an extreme example of how limited guild training was in France’s fastest-growing city. The clerical reserves of Saint-Seurin and Saint-André that housed much of the region’s industrial production had quasi-corporate structures with far more open access and fewer training requirements. In Bordeaux, journeymen contested masters’ control over labor and masters trained almost no apprentices themselves. Formal apprenticeship mattered exceptionally little when it came to training people to perform a trade in Bordeaux.
ISSN:0315-7997
1939-2419
DOI:10.3167/hrrh.2021.012001