were possible, in-migration of Slavic colonists increased, and several of the northern
fort towns (Berezov, Mangazeia, Obdorsk) fell into disrepair. The future for Russia
was along the southern edge of Siberia.
Following that imperative forces working in the name of the tsar moved
astonishingly quickly across the continent, founding Eniseisk in 1619, Krasnoiarsk
1628, Iakutsk in 1632, and more forts approaching Lake Baikal. Russians reached
the Pacific by 1649 (when Okhotsk was founded) and established Irkutsk on Lake
Baikal in 1652. In all, Russia traversed 5,000 km in seventy years. It was tremen-
dously profitable for Moscow: in 1605, Siberian furs already constituted 11 percent
of annual state income, and estimates of their eventual proportion of the state
budget in the seventeenth century range from a tenth to afifth to a quarter. It is also
thought that far more furs were taken by private entrepreneurs than as state tribute.
At the same time, Moscow pushed expansion across Siberia in order to secure direct
trade relations with China. As early as 1608 Moscow sent delegations to negotiate
with eastern Siberian rulers for safe passage to China; by 1618/19 a Russian
delegation reached Beijing, as did an embassy led by Nikolai Spafarii in 1675/6,
but no deal was negotiated until the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. Caravans
between Beijing and Russia began (accompanied by vast illegal trade that stimu-
lated Russian trapping activities in northeast Siberia), although Beijing tightly
controlled Russian access to the Qing capital; between 1689 and 1727 only eleven
Russian state caravans had been permitted.
Russia’s expanse across Siberia was fast because it was ruthless. The goal was to
collect tribute in furs, and in the process, governors and petty officials, Cossacks
and private merchants extorted furs for themselves. Cossack“iasakgangs”raced
across Siberia, throwing together log fortresses, killing and enslaving natives who
resisted, extorting tribute,fighting among themselves over turf, and moving on
when supplies of sables, ermine, black fox, and marten dwindled. Cossack gun-
powder decimated natives armed with bows and arrows; indigenous tribes were too
small and too scattered to mount effective resistance. Forging a middle ground,
Russians recruited willing native elites into their service and played upon local
rivalries, using, for instance, regiments of“service Komi-Zyriane”from Berezov and
Tobolsk against other tribes.
Independent bands with no overarching political organization, Cossack com-
munities had already been in place on the upper Kama and Iaik Rivers and in
western Siberia when the Russian state moved in. They accepted service to the tsar
in return for privileges and profit—self-governing traditions, military autonomy,
booty from raiding and trade, grain provisions or landholdings, and people to work
them. But their loyalty to the tsar was often tenuous; Christoph Witzenrath argues
that Siberian Cossacks acted in their own interest, reined in with difficulty by
Muscovite governors. Cossack Ermak’s fateful encounter with Khan Kuchum
started out as a private Stroganov foray on which Moscow capitalized; at the end
of the seventeenth century, renegade Cossacks claimed tribute and land in the
Amur Valley in the name of the tsar, prompting a military response from China,
which led to the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689). Cossack revolts against Muscovite
officials or Cossacks going out on their own were not rare, including an uprising of
62 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801