[
64 ] The Great Transformation
fairs and staples disappeared again with an abruptness disconcerting
to the dogmatic evolutionist, the
portus was destined to play an enor-
mous role in the settling of Western Europe with towns. Yet even
where the towns were founded on the sites of external markets, the lo-
cal markets often remained separate in respect not only to function
but also to organization. Neither the port nor the fair nor the staple
was the parent of internal or national markets. Where, then, should we
seek for their origin?
It might seem natural to assume that, given individual acts of bar-
ter, these would in the course of time lead to the development of local
markets, and that such markets, once in existence, would just as natu-
rally lead to the establishment of internal or national markets. How-
ever, neither the one nor the other is the case. Individual acts of barter
or exchange—this is the bare fact—do not, as a rule, lead to the estab-
lishment of markets in societies where other principles of economic
behavior prevail. Such acts are common in almost all types of primi-
tive society, but they are considered as incidental since they do not
provide for the necessaries of life. In the vast ancient systems of redis-
tribution, acts of barter as well as local markets were a usual, but no
more than a subordinate trait. The same is true where reciprocity
rules; acts of barter are here usually embedded in long-range relations
implying trust and confidence, a situation which tends to obliterate
the bilateral character of the transaction. The limiting factors arise
from all points of the sociological compass: custom and law, religion
and magic equally contribute to the result, which is to restrict acts of
exchange in respect to persons and objects, time and occasion. As a
rule, he who barters merely enters into a ready-made type of transac-
tion in which both the objects and their equivalent amounts are given.
Utu in the language of the Tikopia* denotes such a traditional equiva-
lent as part of reciprocal exchange. That which appeared as the essen-
tial feature of exchange to eighteenth-century thought, the volunta-
ristic element of bargain, and the higgling so expressive of the assumed
motive of truck, finds but little scope in the actual transaction; insofar
as this motive underlies the procedure, it is seldom allowed to rise to
the surface.
The customary way to behave is, rather, to give vent to the opposite
motivation. The giver may simply drop the object on the ground and
* Firth, R.,
Primitive Polynesian Economics, 1939, p. 347.