mercantile
adj.relating to trade, business, or the work of merchants.
adj.relating to merchants or trading activity. Often used to describe historical systems or the commercial character of a city or era.
“The city has a long mercantile history.”
“The port grew into a powerful mercantile center where goods from across the ocean were traded daily.”
“The shift from agrarian to mercantile economies in the late Middle Ages facilitated the rise of a wealthy middle class that challenged traditional feudal structures.”
Typically used attributively before a noun like 'system', 'interest', or 'power'.
Borrowed from French mercantile, from Italian mercantile, from mercante (“merchant”), from Latin mercāns (“trading”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.