THE first modern patent law was introduced in Venice in 1474 to attract skilled merchants to the city-state.
Among simple folk — merchants, skilled workers, the so-called little man — one can still find decent people.
But the Lebanese who tended to leave before were skilled workers and merchants who went to the Persian Gulf or Africa to make money and return.
These prosperous merchants and skilled craftsmen, these professors and clerks and governesses and domestic servants were the last ones to complete their journey in the traditional manner.
Moreover, the Spanish reconquest of the territory caused a major emigration of merchants and skilled artisans.
With capital shifted from the manufacturing and service sectors to agricultural production of cash crops such as olive oil, wine, and raw silk, the number of skilled urban craftsmen and merchants decreased while that of illiterate peasants increased, and landed-noble power intensified.
Will he also open doors to them that allow increased trade and business opportunities - opportunities that make it possible for rural farmers, merchants, and skilled laborers to create their own businesses?
There was a displacement of skilled Cornish engineers, farmers, merchants, miners and tradesmen, but their commercial and occupational expertise, particularly in hard rock mining, was highly valued by the communities they met.
While Mackay's account held that a wide array of society was involved in the tulip trade, Goldgar's study of archived contracts found that even at its peak the trade in tulips was conducted almost exclusively by merchants and skilled craftsmen who were wealthy, but not members of the nobility.
It shows how meanings, functions, and structures develop in social and temporal context and how professions, in the restricted sense of the term, differ from the status groups and occupations of entrepreneurs, merchants and clerks, skilled manual workers (crafts, métiers) and the so-called semi-profession.
