Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A History of the World in Three Castes

A bold new interpretation of modern history as a struggle between three economic groups

We are now living in an age of merchants, but it was not always so. The history of civilization, in large part, is a story of a battle between agrarian aristocracy, the military, and a class of learned experts, or priests. Yet in seventeenth-century England and in the Netherlands, another group entered the mêlée for power: the merchants. For the last four decades, the merchant's power has been unfettered.

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