Pre-industrial society
Related: society - industrial revolution
Definition
Pre-industrial economies often rely on sustenance standards of living, whereby large portions of the population focus their collective resources on producing only what can be consumed by them, though there have also been quite a few pre-industrial economies with trade and commerce as a significant factor, enjoying wealth far beyond a sustenance standard of living. Famines were frequent in most pre-industrial societies, although some, such as the Netherlands and England of the 17th and 18th centuries and the ancient Classical civilisation were able to escape the famine cycle through increasing trade and commercialisation of the agricultural sector. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-industrial [Dec 2005]
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