Newcomers, Migrants, Surgeons: Making Career in the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Like many current-day organisations, the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild recruited its members from the ranks of locally born citizens as well as migrants. But how a surgeon’s migration status impacted his chances of being admitted by, and making a career within, the Surgeon’s Guild, remained before this day unknown. The current article therefore investigated enrolment lists of apprentices, journeymen, and master surgeons in order to find out how a surgeon’s birth-place origin influenced his chances of a career within the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild. While the Guild itself was open to new members born within and outside of Amsterdam, migrants who lacked Amsterdam-based work experience were disadvantaged. These results reveal mechanisms of integration that can be generalised to cases outside the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild.