the.com/commerce
the agreement that your stuff and my stuff would be happier swapped
means the buying, selling, and exchange of goods and services, especially on a large scale between people, businesses, or nations
from From Latin commercium, a tidy compound of com- 'together' and merx 'merchandise, wares' (the same merx that gives us merchant and market). So at root it simply means 'trading together' — goods passing hand to hand. It reached English in the 1500s by way of French commerce.
- origin word
- Latin 'commercium' — literally 'with merchandise'
- first money
- barley and silver beat coins by millennia
- silk road
- 4,000 miles of trade before any passport existed
- oldest contracts
- Sumerian clay tablets logged debts 5,000 years ago
- e-commerce
- first online sale was reportedly weed in 1972
silk road — trade network connecting china to mediterranean from 2nd century bce through 15th century ce
hanseatic league — merchant confederation of german and baltic towns dominating northern european trade 13th-17th centuries
venetian republic — maritime city-state controlling mediterranean spice trade and eastern goods 9th-18th centuries
east india company — english trading corporation established 1600, monopolized trade between britain and asia