Traditionally, the vast majority of the population lived from agriculture and livestock farming. In order to cultivate your land, build your house, run the household or make clothes, tools and implements are needed. Things that you made yourself as much as possible.

Gradually, knowledge and experience were built up, such as extracting metal from ore and processing this metal into tools and implements, weapons and jewellery. Or making wooden constructions such as houses and vehicles. Things for which specific knowledge and tools are indispensable.

Handy boys got to work on this and possibly this is how crafts came into being. According to the Etymological Dictionary, the Dutch word for crafts, Ambacht, first appears in 1083, is derived from Ambactus, servant, and is related to Ambt.

How did the rulers of the time view craftsmen? In the Middle Ages, the concept of Craftsmanship developed further. In the emerging cities, the craftsman was someone who practiced his profession independently and could make a living from it. In the countryside, the situation was different: people lived from the land, the garden and the animals. In contrast to the city, craft life was entirely at the service of agriculture and the household.

Only a few craftsmen could live from their profession, such as the blacksmith, the carpenter, the clog maker and the brewer. Furthermore, all other professions were additional incomes by, among others, day laborers, cottagers and/or people who were physically unable to work the land. This created a new group among the farming class and above the day laborers and cottagers. Their interests were the same among themselves. This group united and called itself: the Middle Class.