The Merchants in Shiji: An Interpretation in the Light of Later Debates

Béatrice L'Haridon (1)

1 CRCAO - Centre de recherche sur les civilisations de l'Asie Orientale

“Biographies of Merchants” (“Huozhi zhuan”) is one of the most astonishing and debated chapters in the Shiji. A common approach in modern and recent scholarship has been to assert this chapter as a first, but pitifully abortive attempt to appreciate the role of mercantile activity and technics in human history. This chapter possesses in fact a high documentary value as a source for history of pre-imperial and early imperial economy, but this must not obliterate the very specificity of the structure and content of this chapter, as well as its further interpretation. Throughout a careful comparison of the Shiji and the Hanshu “Biographies of Merchants” and a reflection about the probable influence of Yang Xiong’s Fayan (especially its critical approach of the asserted relationship between wealth and filial respect), I will try to encompass the evaluation of merchants and of their activities in the larger frame of time in human society and conception of holiness (sheng).

Mots clés: merchants; chinese studies; historiography

Mots clés: études chinoises; historiographie; Marchands

Domaines: Etudes classiques; Histoire

Béatrice L'Haridon. The Merchants in Shiji: An Interpretation in the Light of Later Debates. Views from Within, Views from Beyond: Approaches to the Shiji as an Early Work of Historiography, 2015, ⟨10.2307/j.ctvc771cb.11⟩. ⟨hal-01494146⟩