| Summary: | 碩士 === 玄奘大學 === 中國語文學系碩士在職專班 === 98 === In the ancient books of past dynasties, chapters that record the economy of goods are very rare. “Biography of Important Merchants” in Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian not only gives an account of merchants' achievement, but also closely combines the background of eras from the end of Chunqiu Period to Xi-Han Dynasty, describing societal objective factors that produced these wealthy merchants. Hence, the natural conditions, products, cities, population, agriculture, industry and commerce, politics, and economic conditions in all parts of this era all obtain vivid and detailed records. The records also contain economic history, economic geography, regional cultures, and the like.
“Biography of Important Merchants” in Records of the Grand Historian also records subjective factors that helped the rich merchants to make a fortune, including management methods, personal abilities, styles and the like, illustrating their ways to success. Furthermore, it records the background, social status, profession course of event of how they made a fortune, management scale, activity range, number of maids and slaves, relationship with the proprietor and the like. The precious information provides the development of economy at that time, especially the condition of currency-economic development. It reflects a historical era of merchandise-economic development.
“Biography of Important Merchants” in Records of the Grand Historian is an important milestone for ancient China’s gradually- matured economic philosophy, and also one of Sima Qian masterpieces ,which makes his opinions unique and notable. He used profound philosophical and historical thoughts as a base and profuse economic historical materials as accordance, originating the biography of economic history. Through inspecting products, customs, and city development conditions in all parts of the country, Sima Qian’s proposed a series of economic concepts that contains characteristics of regional economic and geographic economics. This possesses epoch-making meaning for not only Chinese economic philosophy but also for the developing history of world cultures.
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