When the twain did meet: foreign merchants and Russia's economic expansion in the seventeenth century

ENThis study examines Russia’s transition from a state of near-autarky in the late Middle Ages to a much more open economy of the Early Modern era. During the 17th century, Russia established extensive commercial links with Western Europe and beyond and became highly dependent on these relations for her fiscal and monetary health. The nation’s entire money supply consisted of imported specie, and customs duties were a crucial category of government revenue. The dissertation focuses primarily on the importance of Russia’s commercial exchange with the rest of Europe, although comparisons are also drawn with Asian trade. It traces the evolution of Western demand for Russian goods and seeks quantify the Russian supply response. Dramatic growth in a number of sectors of the Russian economy can be linked to foreign trade. At the same time, by ensuring a reliable supplier of naval stores, West European powers solidified the basis of their own economic success. This work contains a number of methodological innovations to the field. The traditional micro-level analysis of Baltic and Russian trade historians has been replaced by a broader, more comparative macro-level approach. The narrow time-specific studies of individual cities have given way here to an aggregate analysis of overall trends spanning the entire 17th century.Evolution of Russian exports in the three main regions of exchange — Arkhangelsk, the Eastern Baltic, and the Central European land route — has been quantified and analyzed in a comprehensive fashion to identify cases of trade diversion from one route to the next, as well as periods of overall growth in all areas. In a departure from the traditional reliance of scholars on diplomatic source material, this research has drawn primarily on economic data, especially customs records from Russian, Baltic, and Western European archives alike. This dissertation establishes the key parameters of a highly dynamic open economy in late Muscovy. This economy was very responsive to demand changes, causing the Russian export bundle to undergo an important transformation. The investigation, furthermore, highlights the importance of rational economic behavior and market forces coexisting with an autocratic political culture. This study work also debunks the “Petrine myth” by demonstrating the repeated efforts made by Muscovite administrators to modernize institutions and develop economic policy.