In Marx's "Capital" there is this example that could illustrate what is
meant, I can imagine, at this time by "commerçant et capitaliste":

"The transition >from feudal production to capitalist production is done in
two ways : either it is the producer who became merchant and capitalist,
breaking with the agricultural economy and natural industry of the cities of
the Middle Ages based on manual labor and on the corporations, which was a
revolutionary way; or else it is the trader who has taken over production.
It is most often this way that the transition has occurred, and thus, for
example, the English clothier of the seventeenth century has enslaved to his
control the weavers, who, it is true remained independent, but to whom he
sold the wool and to whom he bought the cloth. The latter process
revolutionizes much less than the first the former mode of production and
even it keeps it and uses it. Thus until the middle of this century the silk
manufacturers in France and manufacturers of socks and laces in England have
been manufacturers only by the name, because they were actually traders, for
whom the weavers were working".

So maybe this "commerçant-capitaliste" was employing some people in the
villages to produce what he was selling.

Anne Lifshitz-Krams
CGJ- Paris France
www.genealoj.org
www.paris2012.eu