One of the most particular features of the social history of the Low Countries is the early emergence of class struggle in large Flemish cities. The earliest date from around 1250 in cities like Douai, and from the 1280s onward in Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent. These cities numbered at least 30,000 inhabitants, the latter two even more, up to two-thirds of whom were artisans in the textile industry. Flemish cloth, produced mainly from English wool, was exported to all parts of the continent and to the Near East. Merchant entrepreneurs introduced a putting-out system that threw the risks of the international trade on the workers. The social tensions of the later thirteenth century arose as a consequence of major shifts in the international division of labor, which provoked large-scale unemployment in traditional industrial cities.

In Flanders, social antagonism was heightened by a political conflict between the urban political elites (merchant-entrepreneurs), the count of Flanders, and his suzerain, the king of France. When the latter occupied the county in 1297 and 1300, the count's relatives mobilized as many craftsmen and peasants as they could. Together with a relatively small army of mounted noblemen, they destroyed the French mounted knights in 1302. This battle marked the breakthrough of the infantry on European battlefields; it also implied that the count had to recognize the social and political rights of the artisans. In all the major cities of the county of Flanders, dozens of craft guilds were organized; they were awarded autonomy in the regulation and control of their trade and given rights of participation in the new political structure. In the larger crafts in the textile sector, with thousands of workers, the journeymen--salaried artisans working for a master who owned his shop and his tools--could vote in the election of the dean and the board, and could even be elected themselves. The deans of all the crafts formed, together with the delegation of the bourgeoisie, a large council, which voted on taxes and other main issues of the city.

The Flemish guild revolution was an exceptionally early and radical breakthrough made possible by the huge scale of the industry, its vulnerability to international business cycles, and the confluence of economic problems with a major political conflict. In the main cities of other principalities, similar guild revolutions took place, but they were mostly beaten back by more coherent elites. Only in Liege, Dordrecht, and Utrecht did the guild organizations last until the early modern period. The reality of the new power structures differed from one town to another as a consequence of local conditions. The most extreme case was that of Ghent, the largest industrial city of its time, with about 65,000 inhabitants around 1350. After protracted and bloody struggles between the largest crafts of weavers and fullers, the latter were excluded from political power and guild autonomy in 1360. Twenty of the twenty-six seats of aldermen were earmarked for particular crafts, the six others, including the two chairmen, were reserved for members of the bourgeoisie. All delegations of the city, as well as the whole of the city's personnel, were neatly proportioned to reflect each of the sociopolitical sections of the community. This extreme case illustrates the harshness of the class conflicts, even among the small entrepreneurs in the textile sector itself who held the rank of guild masters. At the same time it shows how pacification could be installed through a complicated system of power sharing, which functioned until its abolition after another revolt in 1540. In other cities, more moderate forms of participation and autonomy survived until the French occupation of 1794. . . .

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