In the UK the landed gentry ran their estates as businesses. They would have been horrified at the suggestion that they were in 'Trade' but of course they were. The Labour party's punitive tax regimes put a lot of them out of business in the 20thC. The politics of envy thereby killing lots of golden geese who subsequently laid no more eggs. The embittered looney left loosers on this forum will contest most of this of course but it should be noted that some of the landed gentry had enormous beneficial effect on this country's financial well being. One example would be Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. He had a coal mine in a place called Worsley. In order to make it more profitable he built a canal from Worsley to Manchester. One horse could pull, on a barge, ten times the amount of coal it could pull on a cart. The price of coal fell, and this was at a time when deforestation was making wood rather scarce for use as fuel. It is suggested that the whole Industrial revolution was born from this. The embittered LLLs will tell you that the landed gentry were all parasites living off the backs of the downtrodden peasants. Possibly some of them were. The likes of Francis E were not.