Commerce

ge scale".[1] Commerce includes legal, economic, political, social,

Commerce is "the activity of buying and selling, especially on a lar
cultural and technological systems that are in operation in any country orinternationally.

Contents
1 Etymology
2 History
3 See also
4 References

Etymology
Commerce is derived from the Latin commercium, from cum and merx, merchandise.[2]

History
Some commentators trace the origins of commerce to the very start of transaction in prehistoric times.
Apart from traditional self-sufficiency, trading became a principal facility of prehistoric people, who
bartered what they had for goods and services from each other. Historian Peter Watson and Ramesh
Manickam dates the history of long-distance commercefrom circa 150,000 years ago.[4]

In historic times, the introduction of currency as a standardized money, facilitated a wider exchange of
goods and services. Numismatists have collections of these pokem tokens, which include coins from some
The caduceus
Ancient World large-scale societies, although initial usage involved unmarked lumps ofprecious metal.[5]
has been used
today as the The circulation of a standardized currency provides a method of overcoming the major disadvantage to
symbol of
commerce through use of a barter system, the "double coincidence of wants" necessary for barter trades to
commerce[3]
occur. For example, if a man (or woman) who makes pots for a living needs a new house, he/she may wish
with which
Mercury has to hire someone to build it for him/her. But he/she cannot make an equivalent number of pots to equal this
traditionally service done for him/her, because even if the builder could build the house, the builder might not want
been many or any pots. Currency solved this problem by allowing a society as a whole to assign values and thus
associated. to collect goods and services effectively and to store them for later use, or to split them among several
providers.

During the Middle Ages, commerce developed in Europe by trading luxury goods at trade fairs. Wealth became converted into
movable wealth or capital. Banking systems developed where money on account was transferred across national boundaries.[6] Hand
[7]
to hand markets became a feature of town life, and were regulated by town authorities.

Today commerce includes as a subset a complex system of companies which try to maximize their profits by offering products and
services to the market (which consists both of individuals and other companies) at the lowest production cost. A system of
international trade has helped to develop the world economy but, in combination with bilateral or multilateral agreements to lower
tariffs or to achieve free trade, has sometimes harmedthird-world markets for local products, it has been argued. (See Globalization.)
See also
Accounting
Advertising
Bachelor of Commerce
Business
Capitalism
Commercial law
Distribution (business)

Wholesale
Retailing
Cargo
Eco commerce
Economy
Electronic commerce
Export
Fair
Finance
Fishery
Harvest
Industry
bba
Import
Laissez-faire
Manufacturing
Marketing
Marketplace
Mass production
Master of Commerce
Merchandising
Trade

References
1. "commerce" (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/commerce). Oxford University Press.
2. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Commerce". Encyclopdia Britannica. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
p. 766.
3. Hans Biedermann, James Hulbert (trans.),Dictionary of Symbolism - Cultural Icons and the Meanings behind Them
,
p. 54.
4. Watson, Peter (2005). Ideas : A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud
. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-
621064-X. Introduction......./
5. Gold served especially commonly as a form of earlymoney, as described in "Origins of Money and of Banking"(htt
p://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/origins.html) Davies, Glyn (2002). Ideas: A history of money from ancient times to
the present day. University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1717-0.
6. Martha C. Howell (12 April 2010).Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600(https://books.google.com/bo
oks?id=ZKhZTqkqfkEC). Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-76046-1.
7. Fernand Braudel (1982).Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce
(https://books.goo
gle.com/books?id=WPDbSXQsvGIC). University of California Press. p. 30.ISBN 978-0-520-08115-4.

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