Page "Guild" Paragraph 16

As production became more specialized, trade guilds were divided and subdivided, eliciting the squabbles over jurisdiction that produced the paperwork by which economic historians trace their development: there were 101 trades in Paris by 1260, and earlier in the century the metalworking guilds of Nuremberg were already divided among dozens of independent trades, in the boom economy of the 13th century.

In Ghent as in Florence the woolen textile industry developed as a congeries of specialized guilds.

The appearance of the European guilds was tied to the emergent money economy, and to urbanization.

Before this time it was not possible to run a money-driven organization, as commodity money was the normal way of doing business.