The Russian Empire 1450–1801

On sixteenth-century criminal law and tax reforms, see Robert O. Crummey,“Reform under Ivan IV: Gradualism and Terror,”in Crumme ...

8 Trade, Tax, and Production No one was going to get rich from taxing the peasant economy in Russia’s extreme climate and locati ...

“modernization.”The term should be used with caution, as it evokes a model that has been critiqued as Euro-centric (for discount ...

produce the commodity they most desired for export. They also bought tallow,flax, wax, and other items essential to Britain’s gr ...

from Europe was possible only in the summer season and took four weeks from Amsterdam in good conditions; the Arkhangelsk trade ...

sleepy backwater, in its heyday the town boasted an immense cathedral (1587; Figure 8.1) patronized by the ruling family; the re ...

town of Viaz’ma became a key borderland hub of trade into the Grand Duchy. When Russia regained Smolensk after 1667, its trade o ...

They brought to Russia silk, cotton, linen, processed hides, sabers, dyes, spices and gems, and Turkish horses. Most of Russia’s ...

collateral winners. Russia took this step not only for the lucrative income of the monopoly license, but also as an overture to ...

From Central Asia Bukharan merchants reached Astrakhan by several routes: traveling across the plains between the Aral and Caspi ...

to formalize trade relations repeatedly— 1618 – 19, 1653, 1658, 1666, 1675, 1684/5— succeeding only in 1689 with the Treaty of N ...

colonial outpost of Dutch, English, or Persian trade. Therefore, as noted, Russia was stingy with trade monopolies: the English ...

1646 and in 1649 by depriving the British of their remaining tax immunities and of permission to reside in the interior (this wa ...

discuss in Chapter 11; these roles had potential for great earnings, but also exposed the merchant to the state’s confiscatory p ...

Experiments with cheap copper coinage in the 1660s provoked widespread riots and were short-lived. If the seventeenth century ma ...

arrears, abandonment of settled lands, followed by enserfment, as discussed in Chapter 10. In the seventeenth century the econom ...

consistentfiscal policy that smaller, more developed states like England were developing, what John Brewer called the“sinews of ...

export. Central and northern towns such as Kostroma, Vologda, and Mozhaisk, where livestock production was more profitable than ...

subsidies and charters went to foreigners for gunpowder factories; in the 1630s Dutch merchant Andrei Vinius—father of Andrei Vi ...

Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Anthony Pagden,European Encounte ...