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The purpose of the thesis is to explore the development of the city markets in the Han Dynasty. Since the Epoch of Spring and Autumn and the Epoch of Warring States, industry and commerce had promoted the development of the cities. The city markets were set up everywhere in the Han Dynasty. A city even had a large number of markets. Due to the development of industry and commerce, many cities were founded in traffic passages and commercial transactions were quite thriving. The establishment of the city market in the Han Dynasty was enclosed. According to the government’s regulations, markets were established in a certain area and had opening and closing time. Markets were managed by government officials; the government had the right to lay a tax on markets to increase the country’s public finance. Therefore, it was very important to make the interior of the market orderly and the finance stable. In addition to tax, food resources, weights and measures, public security, etc were under the control of government officials. The source of merchandise in city markets meant the condition of production process and the breakthrough of production tools, and so on. Especially, the breakthrough of production tools influenced productivity improvement, agricultural development in the Han Dynasty and daily life. Besides, the source of merchandise was various and abundant. That reflected commercial transactions among markets in the Han Dynasty were very common and convenient. However, could it explain that markets were unitary and goods were able to travel everywhere without obstruction? That should be influenced by commercial policies in the Han Dynasty and the Han people’s conceptions of consumption. The commercial development in the Former and Later Han Dynasties showed different situations. This thesis is divided into five chapters.
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