In Chinese, the person who does business is now called a "businessman", and if the interpretation is more academic, the businessman refers to "a person who trades in goods or services produced by others, or owns an industrial enterprise himself and makes a profit by taking commercial risks through production or commercial activities (e.g., engaging in corporate governance, the purchase and sale of goods)." ”
The trades engaged in by merchants are called commerce; the goods used to buy and sell for profit are called commodities.
This is social common sense, but everyone thinks about it, why is this industry called "business"? There is also a "Shang" dynasty in the history of our country, is there a connection between this and the shang dynasty?
There is really a connection, the reason why it is called this is because the Shang people of the Shang Dynasty established in that year are very good at business! Therefore, later generations called businessmen "businessmen"!
This may be a historical cold knowledge that few people know, but everyone may feel a little different when you look at the explanation I just gave: the Shang clan is good at business, and this explanation may not be understood by many people. Wasn't the Shang Dynasty a dynasty? How did a nation become?
This is really to be said clearly, the three dynasties of Xia, Shang, and Zhou are really different from the great unified dynasties after the Qin Dynasty, and the latter is the real sense of "dynasty", a nation for a ruler, but the civilization of the nation, the culture has not changed much; however, everyone must also have common sense, this "great unification" situation is not naturally formed, before the formation of the Qin Dynasty, China was not a great unification, at that time there were many Fang countries and tribes everywhere, and later there was a "tribal alliance".
Xia, Shang, and Zhou are not actually 3 dynasties in essence, but the allies of the tribal alliance, at first the alliance leader was the Xia tribe, and then the Xia declined, the Shang clan rose, and became the ally again... Later generations also called this period "dynasty" in order to unify the thinking on the "historical narrative".
Therefore, the Shang Dynasty was founded by the Shang people.
So what kind of ethnic group is this "Shang clan"? This is an ancient people, the merchants took Qi (Tang Yao's half-brother) as their ancestor, and their mother Jian Di swallowed the bird's egg and gave birth to Qi. Legend has it that his father Emperor Zhao (one of the Five Emperors) sealed him in Shangqiu, but this is a legend, where did this nation originate? It is uncertain that the General History of the World, published in 1970, holds that the Shang tribe was originally a bronze-age nomadic tribe from the northwestErn Mongolian steppe, and established Shang dynasty rule after invading and conquering the neolithic inhabitants of northern China, but this statement has obvious common sense and empirical errors; some believe that this merchant may have originated from the Dongyi clique; some say that it originated from the south... There are various theories anyway.
However, archaeological excavations have found that the area centered on Handan, north to Xingtai, and south to Anyang has a large number of primitive cultural remains of merchants, which is archaeologically known as the Lower Qiyuan culture. Before the end of Xia, the core area of the merchants was first in Shijiazhuang, Xingtai, and Handan in Hebei, and then gradually developed south to Anyang and Hebi in Henan, becoming a member of the Xia Dynasty tribal alliance; later, needless to say, the merchants replaced Xia as the co-lord of Huaxia, and after Pan Geng moved to Yin, the core of the merchants was also near "Yin".
So why do shang tribes do business? In fact, from the perspective of the general historical background, this is the inevitable result of the further development of productive forces and the increase in surplus products, the Shang tribe gradually developed, the things of their own tribes were more, they wanted to exchange things with other tribes, and the legendary sixth grandson Wang Hai was very good at business, often leading slaves, driving ox carts to pull goods, driving cattle and sheep, and going to the outside to trade.
In the history of Chinese commerce, the record of Wang Hai engaging in commercial trade and being killed as a result is the earliest record of commerce and trade in ancient Chinese literature.
In fact, this is also related to the geographical location of the merchant's residence, the place where the merchant lived belonged to the central area of the "Zhuxia Region" at that time, and it was mostly plain, with convenient transportation and relatively convenient communication with other tribes. It is said that the Shang clan traded some luxury goods like a flower shelf in exchange for a large amount of grain, enriched their strength, and then destroyed the summer in one fell swoop.
This characteristic of the Shang people has been preserved, even after the fall of the Shang Dynasty, after the fall of the Shang Dynasty, according to the rules of the time, the victors could not exterminate this tribe, and the merchants were partially eliminated by the Zhou Dynasty, and part of them were incorporated into the Zhou Dynasty's Marquis (Yan State), Zong Zhou, and so on. After the death of King Wu, Emperor Xin's heir Wu Geng participated in the Rebellion of the Three Prisons and was defeated by the Eastern Expedition of the Duke of Zhou. It is possible that the brother-in-law of the King of Sui, who defected to the Shang Dynasty and surrendered to the Zhou Dynasty, qi Yu Shangqiu, the state name Song.
The Song Kingdom during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period was the state of the Shang people, and the ancestors of the Shang Dynasty were enshrined. The Song dynasty was located in the area of present-day Shangqiu in Henan and Huaibei in Anhui. Located in the Central Plains, the land is rich, and the transportation is convenient (the Song Kingdom is the center of transportation and water transportation, known as "eight waters over the Song"), which can be described as occupying the anointed land. It is precisely for this reason that the Song Kingdom continued to develop the Yin Shang culture, the Song State Shang culture flourished, the rich merchants gathered, the Song people, like their ancestors, were famous for being good at business at that time, the Song Capital Shangqiu on the north bank of suishui, the Taoqiu on the north bank of The Jishui, and the Pengcheng at the confluence of water and Surabaya are all very prosperous industrial and commercial cities.
At that time, the Song State could be described as the center of trade civilization in The Chinese region, Shangqiu, Taoyi, Pengcheng and other Song cities were the gathering places of wealth under the world, and Taoyi could be described as "in the world, the princes are connected in all directions, and goods are traded", but this is also coveted by the surrounding powers, and in 286 BC, the Song State was destroyed by Qi. And where did the Shang clan go afterwards? Of course, like other tribes, they have merged into the Chinese nation as a whole.