Economy of the Han dynasty (Extract)

There were two categories of Han merchants: those who sold goods at shops in urban markets, and the larger-scale itinerant traders who traveled between cities and to foreign countries.

Itinerant merchants were often wealthy and did not have to register. These itinerant merchants often participated in large-scale trade with powerful families and officials. Nishijima writes that most of the biographies of “wealthy men” in the Records of the Grand Historian and Book of Han were those of itinerant merchants.

In contrast, registered marketplace merchants had a very low social status and were often subject to additional restrictions. Emperor Gaozu passed laws levying higher taxes, forbidding merchants from wearing silk, and barring their descendants from holding public office. These laws were difficult to enforce. Emperor Wu targeted both the registered and unregistered merchants with higher taxes. While registered merchants were not allowed to own land, if they broke this law their land and slaves would be confiscated. However, wealthy unregistered merchants owned large tracts of land[56]. Emperor Wu significantly reduced the economic influence of great merchants by openly competing with them in the marketplace, where he set up government-managed shops that sold commodities collected from the merchants as property taxes.