The Russian Empire 1450–1801

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 ...

Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350– 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Erika Monahan,The Merchants of Siberi ...

9 Co-optation Creating an Elite One of the great challenges of empire was to maintain stability in a multi-ethnic, multi-confess ...

underscore the possibility of access to the ruler. Thefirst grouping would be his inner circle—kinsmen, boyar in-laws, and his c ...

THE INNER CIRCLE AND BOYARS The court elite received the best deal. In Muscovy, these were the boyars, the great men of the real ...

Well into the seventeenth century, the personal, face-to-face relationship of the ruler and his boyars endured. A boyar’s positi ...

46 in 1555), and the number of men in boyar orokol’nichiirank accordingly expanded, from about 15 to 55, in pursuit of reconcili ...

chanceries and important provincial governorships. Some amassed multiple posi- tions for power and income: in the 1620s, for exa ...

GENTRY CAVALRY AND MILITARY REFORM Moscow also co-opted the landed elite with gifts of land, serfs, and status. Princes of the R ...