ABSTRACT
Villages were naturally engaged more extensively in primary-sector production of agricultural goods, while urban production centred more strongly on secondary-sector manufacture of finished goods. In most fields of urban production, however, it proved impossible to move significantly beyond the technological level that had already been reached by the end of the middle ages. Not only the methods of production but also the list of goods produced and type of work done in cities remained relatively stable during the early modern era. Local exchange was closely linked to production: to a large extent it was supposed to be handled by the primary producers themselves, with much of the activity taking place in their own shops. The very emphasis on foreign exchange meant that some of the biggest banking operations, such as the great Medici bank of fifteenth-century Florence, had vast international connections. Of course exchange relations existed in the rural economy as well.
