The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia

Erika L. Monahan

Published by Cornell University Press 2016

The Merchants of Siberia

Trade in Early Modern Eurasia

Erika L. Monahan

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501703973

Overview
Contents

About this book

In The Merchants of Siberia, Erika Monahan reconsiders commerce in early modern Russia by reconstructing the trading world of Siberia and the careers of merchants who traded there. She follows the histories of three merchant families from various social ranks who conducted trade in Siberia for well over a century.

Author / Editor information

Erika Monahan is Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico.

Reviews

Eloquent and rich in detail, the book can be read in many different ways.... Monahan helps to break new ground for a comparative and integrative history of Eurasia that bridges the artificial divide between the East and the West.

Scott C. Levi, Ohio State University:

In The Merchants of Siberia, Erika Monahan draws on a substantial amount of archival research to bring clarity to Russian expansion into a vast and complex territory. Monahan’s observations are insightful and her conclusions important. She analyzes Russian interactions with the various peoples they encountered as the Russian presence stretched into seventeenth-century Siberia, and she presents these peoples as historical actors with agency and agendas of their own. The book represents an important contribution to Russian imperial history, and those with interests in Central Asian, Chinese and early modern world history will find that it has much of value to offer them as well.

Janet Hartley, London School of Economics and Political Science:

This excellent book is an impressive account of the world of trade, and of trading families, in Siberia in the seventeenth century. Erika Monahan not only provides a detailed and nuanced account of day-to-day commercial activity, but also contributes significantly to our understanding of the evolution of commercial relations and trade networks in Russia and of the relationship of the Tsars and their local officials with merchant families.... This is a rich and important study in which Monahan displays an impressive mastery of the archival records. It makes a major contribution to our understanding of Russian commercial activity and to the development of the Russian state in the seventeenth century and should be of interest to all historians and students of early modern Europe.

Valerie A. Kivelson, Thomas N. Tentler Collegiate Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History, University of Michigan, author of Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia:

In The Merchants of Siberia, Erika Monahan demonstrates that trade in Siberia from the late sixteenth through eighteenth centuries was more extensive and significant than has been acknowledged heretofore. Commercial activity in general, not just furs, was the motivation for the Muscovite government's extension of its interests. Monahan tells the reader a great deal about European trade and merchants and uses that evidence to improve our understanding of commercial activity and merchants in Russia in general. In this important book, Monahan sets out nothing less than a revision of the way we imagine the Muscovite economy in the early modern era.

Donald Ostrowski, Harvard University Extension School and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, author of Muscovy and the Mongols :

The Merchants of Siberia is ambitious, original, readable, and significant. In this important book, Erika Monahan sets out nothing less than a revision of the way we imagine the Muscovite economy in the early modern era. With a deeply researched examination of trade and commerce across Eurasia, she challenges a number of ingrained assumptions about Russian trade policies as backwards, xenophobic, state-driven, and monopolistic. She finds that the Russian state encouraged trade across Siberia with farsighted policies that granted temporary tax exemption to lure merchants into the area. The state worked in tandem with merchants pursuing their own agendas and fostered private enterprise as well. By examining central decrees, local customs books, merchants' correspondence with their Siberian agents, and petitions between entrepreneurs and central administrative offices, she finds that the state understood the importance of supplying settlements with the necessary food and materials for survival and the need to negotiate attractive deals with foreign states and itinerant merchants.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
List of Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One: Commerce and Empire
1. “For Profit and Tsar”: Commerce in Early Modern Russia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
2. Siberia in Eurasian Context Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
Part Two: Spaces of Exchange: From Center to Periphery
3. Spaces of Exchange: State Structures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
4. Spaces of Exchange: Seen and Unseen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
5. Connecting Eurasian Commerce: Lake Yamysh Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Part Three: The Merchants of Siberia
6. Early Modern Elites: The Filatʹev Family Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
7. Commerce and Confession: The Shababin Family Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	254
8. Middling Merchants Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	302
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	334
Afterword: Meanings of Siberia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	359
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	365
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	369
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	399

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 424
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 13
- Images: 13
- Other: 16 halftones, 1 map, 2 tables
Keywords: Russia; Russian history; Muscovite economy; Siberian trade; commerce

eBook

Published: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 9781501703973