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# Commerce of Towns

## Definition

The commercial activities and trading relationships that develop in urban
centres, creating markets for rural produce and generating wealth that flows
back to improve agricultural lands and rural conditions through land purchases,
improvements, and the introduction of order and good government.

## Source Chapter

Book III, Chapter 4

## Context

This chapter's central concept explaining how urban commercial activity drives
rural improvement through three mechanisms: creating markets for agricultural
produce, wealthy merchants purchasing and improving uncultivated lands, and
gradually introducing order and good government to rural areas that previously
lived in continual war and servile dependency.

## Economic Domain

Exchange

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