Given the extent of mercantile and manufacturing activity in India, how was this managed? We have seen that already in the ancient Near East merchants created a number of partnership arrangements in the course of running their affairs, anticipating the later commenda and fraterna of the Mediterranean. From the early records (at least from 1900 BCE), two kinds of joint endeavour existed in business. The first was the family enterprise consisting of kinsfolk; this is often called a firm although strictly that involves a partnership based on contract. The second is a partnership of interested parties, based on just such a contract. Since co-operation with kin or kith, with family or friends, is a general feature in pre-industrial society, it is hardly surprising to find similar arrangements in south and east Asia. Some scholars, including Weber, have argued that the importance given to caste in India and to clan in China placed inhibitions on the development of ‘capitalist’ activity which was said to depend upon bureaucratic (that is, essentially non-familial, non-nepotic) organisation allied with an individualistic approach to entrepreneurship. In this theory, not simply the extended group but the family itself was a hindrance to development. A common European view runs as follows. ‘When western traders first came to India in numbers, they found her people organised in a rigid economic and social system, the unit of which was the agricultural village … The villagers were divided into castes and within the castes were “joint families” – grown brothers and their families – who often owned property in common. ’