Peter the Great fostered the idea of a commercially prosperous Russian empire conducting widespread trade with China and the rest of East Asia. (Library of Congress)
A Russian tsar who sought to bring west European culture and trade to his empire.
Peter the Great, the tsar of enlightenment, realized at the end of the seventeenth century the economic and social backwardness that separated Russia from western Europe. Trade was for centuries hampered because, unlike the merchants in the West, Russian townsmen did not enjoy any tax privileges. In the Muscovite state, foreign trade was put under the control of the state administration. Not until 1699 did merchants receive the right to move freely within Russian borders. In pre-Petrine Russia, English merchants, who were the representatives of the Muscovy Company, which developed the trade by way of the Baltic and White Seas, were the most active in commercial relations between Russia and the outside world.
At the end of the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic, now commercially the most advanced state in the world, replaced the English as representatives for the company. By way of Arkhangelsk and the Swedish Baltic ports such as Narva and Riga, Dutch trade companies exported Russian raw materials such as tallow, pitch, grain, leather, and furs. In 1698, Peter the Great started his “Great Expedition” to western Europe, including the Netherlands, whose commercial vigor made a strong impression on the young emperor. By 1690, there were over 300 Dutch merchants in Russia. After his return from western Europe, Peter the Great systematically opened Russia to Western trade.
In 1689, Russia signed a trade agreement with Prussia. Western merchants saw at that time in Russia a very important transit route to develop a trade of luxury goods with Persia and China. Peter the Great was himself strongly interested in colonial trade when he had been guest of the East India Company, and he then fostered the idea of a commercially prospering Russian empire through trade with the Orient. The Petrine era was characterized by many Russian commercial expeditions to Persia, India, and China. Trade with Oriental powers transformed Russian border cities into intercultural outposts. The range of merchandise was quite varied—from furs, to tea, silk, gold, porcelain, and carpets—and the commercial ties enriched the state treasury.
Peter the Great fostered the idea of a commercially prosperous Russian empire conducting widespread trade with China and the rest of East Asia. (Library of Congress)
The extensive wars with Sweden and Turkey intensified Peter the Great’s demand for economic trade with his Western and Oriental neighbors. Saxon Baron Luberas and Peter S. Saltykov, who supported Peter the Great’s willingness for economic experiments, advised him in his commercial policy. For example, he employed English and Dutch brewers to make beer, and he ordered the import of sheep from Silesia to Kazan to improve sheep bearing. However, in his late reign, from the 1720s onward, he pursued an increasingly protectionist policy toward the outside world, as in 1724, when he imposed duties of up to 75 percent on imported goods.
Although with Peter the Great private initiative entered Russian trade, there were many difficulties in regards to the poor infrastructure, the shortage of capital, technological backwardness, the weakness of the Russian merchant class, and the lack of a strong “commercial spirit.” It has been estimated that by 1726, the year after the emperor’s death, half of all Russian exports consisted of simple manufactured commodities (e.g., linen, canvas, and iron). In contrast to their fellow merchants in western Europe, Russian merchants were at a great disadvantage as they had, under Peter the Great, to pay higher rates of interest on borrowed capital and higher freight and insurance rates. As such, Peter the Great’s achievements in Russian commercial life were uneven.
Eva-Maria Stolberg
See also: British East India Company.
Hughes, Lindsey. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Kahan, Alexander. “Observations on Petrine Foreign Trade.” Canadian American Slavonic Studies 8 (1974): 222–236.
Stolberg, Eva-Maria. “Interracial Outposts in Siberia: Nerchinsk, Kiakhta, and the Russo-Chinese Trade in the Seventeenth/Eighteenth Centuries.” Journal of Early Modern History 4, nos. 3–4 (November 2000): 322–336.