How did guilds influence business practices in medieval towns?

Answer 1

Certainly, the rise of towns and cities in the Middle Ages made guild masters very important people, and made apprentices young people with great potential.

Guilds existed throughout most, and possibly all, of the Middle Ages. The earliest medieval guilds of which we have records, stonemasons guilds in Italy, seem to have quite possibly survived since Roman times. The apprentice probably was also a part of the system from the earliest times, though the formal system of apprenticeship, with specified times of service, came into being later.

The earliest guilds were did not have a great deal of power. As towns and cities became more numerous and populous, however, they came to be very important politically. The reason for this was that the town and the city were both market oriented. Naturally, tradesmen and craftsmen needed to have a voice in the organization of the marketplace, and the market was the defining feature of a town. So such towns and cities were nearly always run differently from feudal society. Since the political system was market oriented, the towns and cities benefited financially, and the guild members were able to get quite wealthy and powerful.

The result was the appearance of republican governments, in which the ideas of aristocracy or nobility were not particularly relevant. The dominating political system in many towns and cities was guild based. Guilds or confederations of guilds came to rule whole communities. This made the individual guild members, especially the masters, sometimes the most important people around. An apprentice, under such a system, was a young person who was up and coming.

Towns and cities of this type were called free, meaning that their citizens were not serfs and were free to go where they chose. They are also called medieval communes.

Some towns and cities were within kingdoms and owed their allegiance and support to a monarch. Others, such as Venice, were independent and governed the surrounding territory. Some had authoritarian governments headed by a single, very strong, individual, and others came very close to modern democracy. There was a lot of variation.

Members of trade guilds traveled from one city to another a lot. This put them into constant contact with people of other countries who had lives much like their own. Free towns and cities, both those within monarchies and those that were independent, signed treaties with each other, binding themselves into confederations of guild run communities. The Hanseatic League is an example of one such confederation. It was quite capable of raising its own international military forces and going to war, independently of any country its members might be in. The people who governed the Hanseatic League were guild masters.

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Answer 2

the guilds provided security in trading and reduced losses

Answer 3

It created a middle class