ABSTRACT
The origins and early stages of capitalism, medieval and modern, were of very slow growth. Its rudiments may be traced back to the Crusades. Capitalism, in antiquity, arose from and worked through foreign trade. But throughout the Middle Ages foreign trade was only a small department of economy and revenue. In the Mid-Family phase, the guildsmen, assistants, and apprentices to the family’s trade or business ate at the master’s table and were treated as members of his household: the business employees and domestic servants “lived in”. An immense change has taken place in the relations between men and women, synchronizing with the decline of the old-fashioned family, and mutually interacting with and influenced by that decline. Formerly children were brought up under a system of the stern repression, often with violence, at their parents’ caprice: they were slapped, caned, birched.
