why did merchants employ peasants and artisans from the villages in 17 th century ??? class 10 ,age of industrialisation chapter
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Answer:
Urban crafts and trade guilds were more powerful in Europe during 17th century. So as competition was tight in urban areas merchants from the towns in Europe began moving to the countryside, supplying money to peasants and artisans, persuading them to produce for an international market.
Crafts and trade guilds where the associations of producers that trained craftspeople, maintained control over production, regulated competition and prices, and restricted the entry of new people into the trade. Rulers granted different guilds the Monopoly right to produce and trade in specific products. It was therefore difficult for new merchants to setup business in towns, so they turned to countryside.
In the countryside, peasants and artisans begin working for merchants. Cottagers and poor peasants who had earlier depended on common lands for their survival, gathering firewood, berries, vegetables, hay and straw, had to now look for alternative sources of income.
Many of them had tiny plots of land which could not provide work for all members of the household. So when the merchants came around and offered advances to produce goods for them, peasant households agali agreed. By working for merchants, they could remain in countryside and continue to cultivate their small plots. Income from proto- industrial production supplemented their shrinking income from cultivation. it also allowed them a fuller use of their family labour resources.
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