Ranking: Scholars, Merchants, Craftsmen, and Peasants

Tengda Hua ()
Additional contact information
Tengda Hua: Shanghai University of Political Science and Law

Chapter Chapter 7 in Merchants, Market and Monarchy, 2021, pp 211-247 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Based on the last chapter, this chapter discusses the relative status of merchants compared with scholars, peasants, and craftsmen. Whether the new theory of four occupations put forth by Wang Yangming holds valid is the core element to investigate when comparing the relative status of scholars and merchants. According to my research, the order of the occupational groups in Ming China should be as follows: scholars remained indisputably alone in first place followed by artisans and merchants side by side in the second tier. Peasants were placed alone on the last tier, despite still deeply rooted agricultural-based preferences among scholars. This clearly differs from the traditional classification.

Keywords: New theory of four occupational groups; Scholars; Peasants; Artisans (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:pshchp:978-3-030-77189-8_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783030771898

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-77189-8_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().