Europe's first universities were guilds nobody officially authorised
No king or pope founded the earliest European universities. According to the historian Hastings Rashdall, they formed on their own as guilds of teachers or students, part of an urge to band together that swept European towns in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They are among the most famous products of voluntary association.
A voluntary association is simply a group of people who agree, usually as volunteers, to form a body for some purpose. Learned societies, professional bodies, trade associations, service clubs and environmental groups all qualify. In principle members can join or leave freely, though some, such as unions in certain trades, work best when membership is effectively expected, which is why a few people prefer the phrase common-interest association.
The form is ancient. Classical Greece had everything from exclusive clubs of rich men, the hetaireiai, to private religious and professional groups. Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist, singles out the explosive growth of such associations as a hallmark of preindustrial Western Europe, where guilds often ran towns. Merchant guilds enforced contracts through embargoes and settled disputes, though they had largely vanished by the 1800s, while in Britain craft guilds proved more durable and became influential livery companies. Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting the young United States, thought Americans' eagerness to form associations set them apart from Europeans.
The legal status of such groups varies widely. In many places no paperwork is needed to start one, while elsewhere groups must register with the police or another authority, which can protect against fraud but also serve as a means of political control. In some countries independent associations are banned outright or harassed in practice.
The distinction between incorporated and unincorporated groups matters. Usually only a registered body is a legal person whose members are shielded from its debts; in an informal group, whoever signs a deal on its behalf is personally responsible. An English judge, Lord Justice Lawton, gave a standard definition in a 1981 case: people bound by mutual undertakings for shared non-business purposes, under rules saying who controls the funds, free to join or leave at will.
Source: Voluntary association
