Continuity of Vocational Training in the Regulations of French Manufactories

Abstract

The article examines the regulation of the terms and process of vocational training in Modern History by the common to French kingdom and separate manufacturing regulations. Their prescriptions are compared with guild traditions, which allows to raise the question of the continuity of ideas and practices, as well as the traditional and new terminology of normative acts. Manufactories set the training duration, which was its main normative characteristic, and, like the guilds, assumed the continuity of this process as an unconditional rule, as well as for professional activity in general, but they could not ignore objective life circumstances and personal conflicts (the death of a master, lack of work, escapes of apprentices, etc.). The author analyzes how the regulations qualified “the absence” or presence of an apprentice and a master in the workshop during training, its duration and consequences.