ABSTRACT
Alongside the simple agrarian-based market economy, a different socioeconomic system emerged: capitalism. Until the nineteenth century this system was generally based largely on foreign trade and private banking. It was, moreover, an activity controlled by a very small number of people concentrated in the major cities: export merchants, bill-brokers, bankers and providers of working capital (credits) in the putting-out system. A large number of people, however, were affected indirectly by their activities. These were the farmers, smallholders and labourers who spun and wove at home in their cottages for the merchant-employers. They were people who had, in various ways, been brought into a growing international trade sector. As Eric Wolff, the anthropologist and historian, had pointed out, there were hardly any people or continents that were not affected by capitalism’s hungry search for desirable goods and markets-not infrequently by means of expropriation, theft and colonialist violence. But for a long time this commercial capitalism failed to make any real inroads into the householdbased market economy. Most people were therefore only indirectly affected by export-based capitalism, although this did not prevent large numbers in the protoindustrial regions becoming directly dependent on this capitalism for their livelihoods.
