The theories of proto-industrialization paint a clear picture of the social framework within which proto-industries are supposed to have developed in early modern Europe. Before proto-industrialization, they claim, Europe was a ‘peasant’ society in the sense used by Alexander Chayanov. ‘Traditional Europe’, according to Franklin Mendels, was a society in which peasant agriculture ‘had priority over all other activities’. Agriculture was a ‘backward, non-capitalistic sector’ wage rates were ‘set by “custom”’, and consequently there was ‘surplus’ labour. The rural population ‘remained isolated from market forces’. According to Kriedte, Medick and Schlumbohm, too, European society before proto-industrialization was a Chayanovian ‘peasant economy’. In rural areas, production, consumption and reproduction were strictly controlled by the strong peasant family. These families in turn were rooted in self-subsistent, ‘autonomous’ and highly regulated communities. Taxation and regulation by landlords and princes were the only outside contacts. Markets were largely irrelevant: ‘Only a small part of the total output of the peasant economy entered the market.’ Urban society was similar: life was strictly regulated by strong partriarchal families of craftsmen and merchants, and economic and demographic behaviour were ‘tightly controlled’ by ‘guild relations of production’, which ‘imposed limits on the expansion of industrial commodity production by merchant and putting-out capital’.

Proto-industry, the theorists argue, changed all this. In contrast to farming, proto-industries were ‘market-oriented’ and created ‘market connections’, according to Mendels.