Merchant

While there have always been traders, in the last few centuries, commerce has developed from being handled largely by nobles and lower class peddlers into a wealthy upper middle class, risen up from the common rabble (or at least, those in skilled labour roles and were thus already relatively well off.)   This began with the idea of trading shares in a venture to insure against the possibility of disaster. In this system, if a peddler's goods were stolen by bandits, they would still earn a share of proceeds from several other peddlers who made a successful trade. With peddlers no longer being ruined by random happenstance, growing weathly from trade became a matter of skill rather than luck, and over only a couple of decades, hundreds of peddlers grew to be wealthy enough that they could hire others to move goods around, spending their own time managing their employees, from the comfort of their (increasingly lavish) homes in trade hubs like the city of Caelester.   Over time, the practice of selling shares has shifted - rather than mutually insuring profits between a dozen or so peddlers, these new city-based merchants started selling shares in their own operations, sometimes to fund a specific undertaking or expedition, but more often to contribute to all of the operations they manage in return for a comparable share in the profits. Increasingly, this practice has concentrated into larger merchant companies such as the South Seas Company, made up of several leading partners making top level decisions and hiring a number of staff to look after detailed operations. This also led to a huge increase in sea trade, as merchants tend to be much more willing to take the risk of sea travel in exchange for the rewards than relying on the low risk traditional income sources many nobles rely on.