ABSTRACT
A t first sight it would appear that domestic or internal trade was by far the earliest, and that foreign commerce came in as a later addition, the result of more advanced economic development; and if the statement is limited to commerce as it exists at present, and to the actual division of home and foreign trade, it is certainly correct. But in another and wider sense of the term it is possible to maintain the seeming paradox that the first exchanges were international (or rather intertribal). Recent investigations of the early history of law and institutions, such as those of Sir H. Maine and De Coulanges, tend to establish that the unit of primi tive communities was the family, rather than the individual who occupies that position in modern times. The elaborate formalities of ancient law were suited to such a conception, and resemble the modes of commercial intercourse that are now retained only between states. The primitive kinds of contract are particularly interesting in this respect, since one of the most important of contracts-sale-is closely bound up with conveyance, the legal form of the fact of exchange whose economical bearings we have been con sidering. Without accepting all the details of any theory of the ancient contract of sale, or barter, it may be confidently held that it was hedged round with complex formalities, most of them indicating that the process was one that affected the community and required its sanction as a condition of validity. This can only be explained by reference to the comparatively small number of exchanges, which were not necessarily within any group, “ as there property was held in common," and only took place between “ house communities ” or “ tribes.” Thus, if the conception of international trade may be so widened as to
7 include all dealings between groups or bodies, or between members of different groups, we may say with truth that it is the oldest and most primitive kind of trade.
