Book contents
- Making Merchants
- Making Merchants
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Currencies and Monetary Values
- Introduction
- Part I The Selbstzeugnisse in Context
- 1 The Historiographical Context
- 2 The Sociocultural Context
- 3 The Problem of Merchants’ Self-Perception
- Part II The Merchants’ Selbstzeugnisse
- Part III Merchants in the Round
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - The Problem of Merchants’ Self-Perception
from Part I - The Selbstzeugnisse in Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2025
Book contents
- Making Merchants
- Making Merchants
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Currencies and Monetary Values
- Introduction
- Part I The Selbstzeugnisse in Context
- 1 The Historiographical Context
- 2 The Sociocultural Context
- 3 The Problem of Merchants’ Self-Perception
- Part II The Merchants’ Selbstzeugnisse
- Part III Merchants in the Round
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter discusses the problem that most of the information we have about merchants’ character in this period comes from sources written not by merchants, but by critics of various kinds, many of them churchmen, but others secular poets and playwrights whose texts circulated among ordinary people. It also reviews two studies that have tried to discover and analyze merchants’ “self-perception” using, for the most part, sources produced by non-merchants.
Keywords
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Making MerchantsThe Cultural Construction of a Merchant Class in Early Modern Germany, pp. 24 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown
and may be updated in the future.