Merchants Quotes
1st Viscount Bolingbroke. See {627799} for the origin of the bias against merchants and money men. It also represents a rigidity of class structure that characterized England until very recently. The landed gentry were the first class citizens. Usually titles went with the land. In America, someone who would be successful as a merchant or a banker could achieve the highest of social status and political influence. This was not true in England where a merchant that was far more wealthy than a landed lord was not accepted by the aristocracy.
Saloth Sar Pol Pot. His view was that any small merchant or tradesman running a business was a capitalist, and all educated were enemies of the people. He moved entire populations out of the cities into the countryside where they would live as peasants or be murdered as about 20% of the entire population as. Therefore, in his warped view, the capitalists could no longer “control” Cambodia.
“Amor patriae” is Latin for “love of country”. Jefferson had a strong prejudice against cities, merchants, factories and economic entities other than farms or plantations. Despite his brilliance and amazing predictive ability, Jefferson’s prejudice caused him to challenge Alexander Hamilton’s view of the economic future of America. Fortunately, Jefferson and his views did not prevail.
Nasir Khusaro Hamiduddin Abu Muin Nasir bin Khusaro bin Harith al-Qubandiyani
This is one of the earliest examples of the establishment of a type of Commerce Department – a government institution to look after the commercial affairs of the state.
This was an amazing leap in the inducement of foreign trade. The Visigoths valued foreign trade so highly that they realized that many foreign merchants would not come to “barbarian lands” for fear of running afoul of local “barbarian” laws. To motivate trade, they actually gave up their legal sovereignty. Rome and the other larger markets did not have to make such concessions. This is the most formalized and sophisticated compendium of laws of the so-called “barbaric peoples” of Europe. The compilation was in many ways a documentation of the traditional laws of the Visigoths that had evolved over hundreds of years.
Harris opened up trade with Japan for the United States. The problem at the time had nothing to do with the potential economic effects of trade on domestic industry or balance of payments, but for the Japanese was strictly a cultural problem. They were in great fear of what today some call “cultural imperialism”--the adoption of a foreign culture. The Japanese had been so fearful of cultural influence of foreigners that when some Japanese fishermen’s boat had been sunk and they had been rescued by foreign seamen and returned to Japan, they were executed as they had been “contaminated” and could “contaminate” the rest of the population.
This quotation illustrates two important points. First, that foreign and domestic trade and merchants were very much appreciated at the time and an important component of society that there were special protections for traders and merchants. Second, was the national preemption of jurisdiction and control over business and commerce that would enter and leave the city. On most matters the local authorities would handle things, but intercity and international commerce was historically continuously impaired by individual nobles and other authorities making rules affecting merchants who might come to their town or city. The Crown preempted this authority in the 13th century and the “Commerce Clause” of our Constitution was not an unusual concept and had an extensive legal and economic history.
This problem of capitalism needs solving, but has existed as long as capitalism has.
Sealed under duress and later repudiated by the King with Papal assistance. This was one of the most important freedoms that established free trade as a principle—one of the reasons that England became so prosperous." John Lackland
He was right and his leading just a few American marines and capturing much of the area proved it.
North was none-the-less in favor of allowing interest rates be much higher, but was stating the best argument, believed at the time by most English experts, and many American economists today.
Pride, sense of dignity and self-respect are powerful and dynamic forces that have been constantly underestimated by occupiers and invaders throughout history. In the case of China, it was not the foreign militaries per se that were responsible for the resentment but the diplomats, merchants and missionaries using the protection and threat of the foreign military that did most of bullying.
