Answer:
tradesmen, merchants, and shopkeepers
Step-by-step explanation:
The term middle class has a long history and has had many, sometimes even contradictory, meanings. Once it was already defined as an intermediate class between the nobility and the peasants in the continent of Europe. While the nobility held the land, the peasantry worked in these lands, and a new middle class emerged, the so-called "new bourgeoisie" (literally the "city walkers") exercising mercantile functions in the urban environment. The first references to the expression middle class appeared in the late eighteenth century. This class had tradesmen, merchants, and shopkeepers as members.