Corporate collective action and the market cycle of the cloth industry in Nieuwkerke, Flanders, 1300-1600

This article addresses the connections between corporate collective action and economic development in the pre-industrial Low Countries. It focusses on a micro-historic case study: the textile industry of the village Nieuwkerke in the county of Flanders. This rural cloth centre witnessed an exceptional industrial expansion between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Following the recent proposition by Bas van Bavel that market economies follow a fixed pattern of development, the chronology of the evolution of Nieuwkerke’s cloth industry can be discussed in terms of three phases. This artic... Mehr ...