Trade in the Aztec Civilization

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Trade in the Aztec Civilization

While reading the Trade in the Aztec Civilization, I learned a great deal of new and old business ethics. I saw the differences between today’s business and before business and how we have evolved from it. One of the first things I noticed was the different social classes. Just like in today’s society there were the rich, the middle class, and the poor. The pipiltin’s and mayeques considered themselves the common people. They were the first ones to engage in guilds. On the other hand we had the pochteca who thought of themselves as the more great importance of the social classes. They had what you would call a world of their own in my opinion. They had there own religion, their own economic code, and legal system. Each group came from a different part of the Mexican land, anywhere from El Salvador, to Nicaragua to the Gulf of Mexico. Each group had there own individuality, but came together to share their knowledge in the buying, selling and trading of goods.
There were two forms of law that existed in the Aztec community, common law and written law up until around 1325. After that they declared a king what was other wise known to them as a tlatoani. This chief was in charge of the administration of justice, a chief of the army, a head priest, and a royal treasure. They took on those responsibilities with this statement in mind, “what is desirable, what is right” and they were to rule by that order.

As for the political structure the initiation of a legal system was motivated by the fact that they needed a principal role in the religious, economic, and military fields. In having a legal system they were able to distinguish the right from the wrong. Rules and regulations were fixed, the different forms of contracts were deleted, and justice was administered to the markets.

It is stated in the chapter that there were sixty-nine different categories of traders. They all had different goods to trade, but no matter where you came from you went by scale, loans, contracts, and also used a money system called coachtili. Business was negotiated many different ways, but within each trader, buyer and selling, they knew the international language of business.
As I talked about earlier pipiltin’ formed the guilds. Each guild has its own people from there own town.

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