The incredibly wealthy and powerful merchant class.

非常富有和强大的商人阶层。

The maps that appear in Vermeer's paintings, for example, were considered fashionable and worldly by the merchant class of what is known as the Dutch Golden Age.

例如维梅尔的画中会出现地图，商人阶级将地图视为时尚同时也宣告着 荷兰黄金时代引领着世界潮流。

They gained agricultural staples like potatoes and tomatoes, which contributed to population growth, and provided new opportunities for trade, while also strengthening the power of the merchant class.

他们获得了土豆和西红柿等农产品， 这促进了人口增长，并提供了新的贸易机会， 同时也加强了商人阶级的力量。

The merchant class that grew along with the Silk Road came to have a lot of political clout, and in some ways that began the tension that we still see today between wealth and politics.

与丝绸之路一起成长起来的商人阶层开始拥有很大的政治影响力，并且在某些方面开始了我们今天仍然看到的财富与政治之间的紧张关系。

After the plague, the English-speaking labouring and merchant classes grew in economic and social importance and, within the short period of a decade, the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was largely over.

瘟疫过后，讲英语的劳工和商人阶层在经济和社会中的重要性不断提高，在短短十年内，贵族和平民之间的语言鸿沟基本结束。