Why were merchants looked down upon in many Ancient societies?
Greeks and Romans considered merchants a shitty career and something no noble ought to do. Ancient Chinese social order placed them in a lower social order than artisans and peasants. Why is this?
I only know the Chinese reason: they don't produce the shit they sell. Ergo they're lower than the people who actually produce the goods. Furthermore they were seen as benefitting off the work of others.
Despite their low status in the Confucian social order, they did have a lot of de facto influence and it was still considered a desirable way of living, particularly by city dwellers. In addition, rural villages - who in China were often all related, clan villages- often sent a member of their village to be a merchant in the city, and basically have him represent their interests in the merchantile scene.
Greeks had the same sentiments.
>While peasants and artisans often sold their own wares, there were also retail merchants known as kápêloi (kάπηλοι). Grouped into guilds, they sold fish, olive oil, and vegetables. Women sold perfume or ribbons. Merchants were required to pay a fee for their space in the marketplace. They were viewed poorly by the general population, and Aristotle labeled their activities as: "a kind of exchange which is justly censured, for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another."[3]
Merchants are also known for their immorality when they do anything to get their sale.
Like the famous Chinese fable about a merchant who is selling both an unbreakable shield and a spear that can pierce any shield
Jews
Feudalism had everyone chained to the nobles lands. Even craftsmen until the cathedrals/palaces. Everybody had allegiances and dependencies, but merchants were the rootless, untrustworthies.
I've been listening to the History of Byzantum podcast, and one thing that they talk about is the fact that because tax was based off of land, it was hard to tax merchants.
>something no noble ought to do
No noble should need to do it.
They were looked down upon in nearly every society.
High/late medieval Europe being the glaring exception. Muslims were also a lot easier on merchants since their prophet was one.
We'll, there's the basic stuff like the notion that merchants profit off the hard work of others, plus the universal experience of being cheated by an untrustworthy vendor.
But also, most pre-modern societies featured an aristocracy or some similarly delineated social hierarchy. Merchants have, historically, been one of the groups actually capable of occupying a grey area in between the commoners and gentry. It was one of a precious few ways that an individual from the former group could amass enough influence to challenge an individual from the latter group.
But everybody hates a self-made man, it's one of the flaws of meritocratic systems. Both the poor and the nobility resent social climbers, albeit for different reasons.
Control, or lack thereof. As already mentioned by other anons, the feudal system was based on land, working on that land, and the hierarchies of owed labour for 'renting' land. Merchants moved around and could be somewhat independent of the systems of control feudalism entailed. Of course, there was still the Church to reckon with, and towns (various degrees of autonomy) with guilds and gatekeepers and so on.
As for nobles, they were supposed to collect wealth via their land and peasants. Merchants were skirting this system, free from certain 'noble' obligations, yet could be just as rich or richer as the nobility. You can bet this caused a lot of butthurt.
I wonder who this sounds like
Jews of course.
jews were forbidden from being merchants in a lot of places like the holy roman empire or the crusader states in the baltic
For the same reasons they will always be despised. They are cowardly, sniveling, double-crossers who have no honor! Motivated by thier only principle, greed, they will sell out thier family, thier planet, and the whole damn galaxy of it profits them. Celebrated of course by the devoted materialist as the hight of truly enlightened and purely natural being, but despised by everyone else for their villany.
Are modern day merchants the Wall Street execs and amazon?
When someone knocks on your door or calls you on your phone to sell you something, what is your immediate reaction?
pretty much anyone who owns/operates their own business or is involved in sales.
Fun fact, nobles would often invest in merchant activities but would not directly participate because of the social stigma and believing it was beneath them
They wanted an excuse to tax them. Rather like today's demonization of the capitalist.
/thread
>Ancient societies.
>Feudalism.
Pre-Smith people assumed trade was a zero-sum game, meaning that one person was a winner (they made a profit) and one person was a loser (they made a loss).
It had a lot to do with who made up the cultural aristocracy of these societies: state bureaucrats, citizen-farmers, and tribal braves, and how they policed their own membership from others that might take their privileged status for themselves. A merchant was someone well positioned to buy his way into an aristocracy by acquiring material wealth and education, which is why social barriers were regularly put in place to provide some way to keep them out.
So merchants and trade were disdained careers because it was very possible to be confused for a nouveau riche upstart threatening to break into high society, while no one was really worried about being mistaken for some peasant just because you liked to dabble in pottery as a hobby.
> Fun fact, nobles would often invest in merchant activities but would not directly participate because of the social stigma and believing it was beneath them
This is one of the critical social / economic elements that contributed to the downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where the nobility looked down their nose on any kinda mercantilism and/or manufacturing, (allowing Polish-Jews and foreigners to do it all, for a fee) as the only job suitable for a true warrior-class noble was managing their quaint farming estates and fighting in glorious wars.
The Pol-Lith-Comm nobility essentially “outsourced” everything in the economy that wasn’t farming and it came back to bite them on the ass.
Because merchants don't produce anything. They are unproductive moochers.
>High/late medieval Europe being the glaring exception. Muslims were also a lot easier on merchants since their prophet was one.
Why was that? Jesus wasn't a merchant, and I'm sure the Arabs and Persians could have just ignored the parts about Muhammad being a merchant if they really cared enough to hate on merchants like everyone else.
Mad poorfags being jealous of merchants earning money without breaking a sweat.
see Both the Arab-Persian and High Medieval Latin world saw the rise and cultural domination of a merchant class centered in comparatively new boom-towns, so they got to decide high culture on their terms for once instead of having to compete with old blood in Imperial capitals.
I can't remember the philosopher/old time person who said but it's because they didn't procure the raw materials or make the stuff out of raw materials.
They had labor sorta divided in 3 classes:
1. People who gather the raw material
(lumberjacks, miners, clay digger guy)
2. People who make stuff out of the raw material
(Carpenters, smiths, potters)
3. People who sell/make a profit off the stuff other people made with their labor
(Merchants, bankers)
But I can't remember who said it, it's kinda like this dude mentioned though but it wasn't Confucius.
Because the (((merchant))) is a threat to the natural order of things.
they looked down on traders, not merchants
they viewed traders as having no skills or strength because all they do is buy from merchants and sell to the public in the market so the merchant could make more runs
traders have a lucrative niche that doesnt really require any talent or skills other than basic math. probably made everyone jelly as hell
not only because their prophet was one but because near eastern culture is literally between the west and east
they are THE middle men buying low and selling high exploiting both sides
discovery of the new world and trade routes to india allowed the west to cut them out
How should I put it politely?
Historically speaking, merchants have repeatedly demonstrated that they do not have much loyalty to their state, clan, or nationality. Nations that are heavily centered around merchant classes are also known to be lacking in social cohesion and show little interest in engaging in conflict
Because why would they?
If your country is fighting a war on the losing side and going bankrupt, the only thing merchants have to do is to move and set up shop in a different country.
The trade of goods is a very common and universal language understood across all human civilizations, regardless of technological progress or values. That's how Europeans first dealt with natives, after all.
Nationalists and ethnocentrists typically hate merchants because of their strange and eclectic ability to communicate on a common level with other societies, which in turn, can be interpreted as duplicity, disloyalty, and fickleness.
My theory is that the anti-merchant sentiment of the west all began with the Punic Wars.
Rome was the basis of western civilization, and Rome's biggest archenemy were the merchant Carthaginians. Make of that what you will.
good guys won then
>Nations that are heavily centered around merchant classes are also known to be lacking in social cohesion and show little interest in engaging in conflict
The Italian City-States literally had something akin to proto-nationalism during their heydey because everyone identified with the pride of the fucking city and were proud to be citizens. In wartime, Merchants served in city militias, affording themselves the finest equipment. Venice was the chief example of this.
Meanwhile a big majority of Europe were composed of Feudal Subjects who dicksucked one family name or the other.
>My theory is that the anti-merchant sentiment of the west all began with the Punic Wars.
See