Merchants and Morals: Perspectives High and Low in the Long Eighteenth Century

Abstract:What were the moral effects of commerce for society as a whole thought to be during the long eighteenth century in Europe? To answer, this paper distinguishes between high merchants (leading guild officials) and low (peddlers), and between the self-images of merchants and their perception by articulate elites. It finds surprising convergences between the self-images of peddlers and guildsmen (along with the less surprising divergences), and surprisingly similar positive evaluations of the merchant in paradigmatic eighteenth-century thinkers such as Montesquieu and Rousseau.