Trade and empire: Merchant networks, frontier commerce and the state in western Siberia, 1644–1728

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" Trade and empire: Merchant networks, frontier commerce and the state in western Siberia, 1644–1728 "
Erika Monahan Downs N. Kollmann

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	53094
Doc. No	:	TL23048
Call number	:	‭3281907‬
Main Entry	:	Erika Monahan Downs
Title & Author	:	Trade and empire: Merchant networks, frontier commerce and the state in western Siberia, 1644–1728\ Erika Monahan Downs
College	:	Stanford University
Date	:	2007
Degree	:	Ph.D.
student score	:	2007
Page No	:	438
Abstract	:	This dissertation, a study of trade life in western Siberia in the early modern period, focuses on the careers and practices of merchants groups to whom that Russian state awarded various privileges in early modern and early imperial Russia. These groups were Orthodox Russian merchants—the gosti and the Merchant Hundred (gostinnye sotni) corporations—and Bukharan Muslim merchant communities who settled in Siberia. By analyzing Siberian customs records and state chancery documents, consisting primarily of correspondence between the provincial administration and Moscow, I examine how these groups engaged in Siberian and Far Eastern enterprises, how they interacted with the state, and with each other. In addition to demonstrating extensive trans-Eurasian and regional operations of these merchants, this dissertation illuminates the activist commercial posture of pre-Petrine and Petrine Russia. Like other early modern states, the Muscovite government sought to channel resources to the state through participation in, regulation, and promotion of commerce. The growth of the Merchant Hundred is consistent with a larger trend in administrative growth in seventeenth-century Russia. The expansion of this "commercial corps" underscores the activist stance the Muscovite government took towards the economy. Similarly, the benefits of the Bukharan commercial presence often outweighed concerns such as suspect loyalties. Amidst state intervention, all groups illustrate the strength of private initiative in Siberian commerce. Finally, the study of commercial practice in a frontier setting brings into relief how the Russian state met the simultaneously and inter-woven challenges of state and empire building, and how privileged Russian and Bukharan merchants negotiated these developments.