ABSTRACT
In recent years, a great deal of research has been carried out and questions raised since the study of the late modern Italian craft guilds began to move away from the obstinately reductive approach. This approach did little more than give an historical assessment of the controversial themes of the eighteenth-century debate.' Since, that is, the decline of Italian guilds began to take on its appearance of a centurieslong period of transition. During this period the gradual disappearance of the guild organisation has to be seen in relation to the particular characteristics of the social and economic structure of the history of early modern Italy.2 Therefore, the close link between the role of the Italian production system in Europe, the forms in which it survived beginning with its peripheral conditions brought about by the Atlantic revolution and the Ottoman conquest, and the craft guild system, did not take long to come to light. What was particularly important was the defence that, more or less everywhere, the major guilds (above all the silk and wool guilds) set up against the dismantling of the so-called 'luxury products' which in the light of most recent comments no longer appears (unlike the approach taken by cultural reformers of the eighteenth century) to be the hard line taken by the few in defence of craftsmen, but rather a realistic preoccupation concerning both the internal and the international market. 3 The Neapolitan guilds wondered what outlet could be found for the 'average product' which it was thought should replace the luxury product in the same way as had occurred in English, Dutch and French manufacturing, in a context in which there was neither a great demand for this type of production internally, nor (because of general political and
military conditions) any great opportunity to expand into foreign markets. Also of interest are those questions where even less research has been
carried out, until now, than on those which are of a purely economic nature: that is, the political dynamics in which the guilds found themselves involved. In this case too an over-schematic view of the idea of eighteenth-century 'decline' contrasted with the leading part played by the guild system in previous centuries has led us to underestimate the strong political role taken on by the guilds. Each had a role according to its individual importance and above all as a whole 'system', even in areas of activity, such as Naples, which are thought to be characterised by a lengthy latency of the guilds from the life of institutions. But there is more to it than this. Not only does a close analysis of the guild system reveal - particularly at a time when discussion on their suppression is becoming more intense - their extensive ramification in the social texture and, consequently, the power they possessed, but also the ability they had to impose themselves in the context of the articulated powers of the Italian states of the ancien regime.
