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Retail guilds and commercialization in North-western Europe
| This paper assesses the impact of retail guilds on early modern commercialization processes in three countries in North-western Europe - The Dutch Republic, England and Germany - who each knew different guild structures and different trajectories of modernization in retail. The paper investigates how guilds in these countries reacted to the upcoming commercialization and whether guilds stimulated or hampered the rise of modern shopkeeping. In the end, the paper may even provide a preliminary answer to the question why commercialization patterns differed in the three countries under scrutiny.
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