Throughout the seventeenth century the Dutch petitioned for the tax-free privileges that the British enjoyed, but the Russian government shrewdly never gave in. As Romaniello notes, by selling (at lucrative income) the tax-free privilege to the Muscovy Company, Russia forfeited sales tax income. The state stood to profit from the lucrative sale of monopoly rights to certain commodities, for which the British and Dutch vied throughout the century. In the northern arena, these were notably tar, potash, and caviar; Russia constantly raised prices ofthe last. By awarding such monopolies to the Dutch, Russia reaped both sales tax and the premium paid for the monopoly itself. By 1649 the British had lost tax-free status with increasingly protectionist Russian policy and were outpaced by the Dutch in volume ofWhite Sea trade in the seventeenth century. As Kees Boterboem notes, the seventeenth century was the apex of Dutch global importance, its "moment" in history.
The dominant goods in the Arkhangelsk trade hailed from the Northern Dvina basin. Five goods, produced by or collected from state peasants in the north, constituted about two-thirds to three-quarters of its exports in the mid-seventeenth century: furs, prepared leather (iuft'), potash, tallow, and grain. Other products, shipped from Siberia and regions accessed by the Volga, included caviar, wax, linen and wool, Persian silk, hats, and rhubarb. The state also systematically moved trade around the realm in the seventeenth century, directing shipments of goods to the Baltic or Arkhangelsk based on shifting price and demand, despite the distance and costs involved. Hemp and flax from northwestern regions, for example, were shipped to Arkhangelsk through a network of rivers and lakes when prices or circumstances were advantageous.
At Arkhangelsk Russian merchants imported European cloth (from Flanders, England, and central Europe), arms and munitions, paper, pins, herring, and wine. By the seventeenth century colonial products from Dutch and English African and Asian possessions also arrived, including gems, fruit, dyes, pepper, and spices, and above all silver in payment for a favorable balance of trade. Timothy Brook argued that it was the seventeenth century when Europe fully became a partner in global trade, adding maritime empires to Eurasian overland trade that had linked much of the globe for centuries, and "possessing" new lands through colonial, economic, and cultural control.
Arkhangelsk thrived as one of Russia's most important emporia from the mid- sixteenth through the seventeenth century, despite its challenges. The journey there from Europe was possible only in the summer season and took four weeks from Amsterdam in good conditions; the Arkhangelsk trade fair lasted through August and ships returned in September. Most foreigners did not venture inland, prohibited from retail trade and inhibited by transit fees and higher tariffs; in Arkhangelsk merchants of the city of Moscow (but not necessarily the wealthiest and most important ones, called gosti) dominated over merchants from smaller Russian towns, purchasing over half the imported goods in 1630, for example. Economically, it was an advantageous situation for foreign merchants, as the customs duties were lower than Sweden charged in its Livonian and Baltic ports, and the remoteness of the location meant that Russian merchants could be bargained down in price, since they wanted to avoid return shipping or storage costs for unsold goods.
From Arkhangelsk purchased goods went by river south to Vologda, where parties waited out the autumn muddy season; in the seventeenth century merchants from Moscow, Holland, and England had homes and warehouses there. Today a
Figure8.1 This towering Sofiia Cathedral (1568-70) in the now sleepy town of Vologda once presided over a busy trade route between Moscow and Arkhangelsk on the White Sea. It is one of several sixteenth-century cathedrals in the style of Moscow's Dormition Cathedral disseminated around the realm to represent Moscow power. Photo: Jack Kollmann.
sleepy backwater, in its heyday the town boasted an immense cathedral (1587; Figure 8.1) patronized by the ruling family; the region was surrounded by enterprising monasteries also active in trade. With winter freeze, transit resumed overland by sled to Iaroslavl', where some goods took the Volga and others continued on the Moscow. Arkhangelsk, therefore, became Russia's most direct link in a chain that connected its goods with global trade through the Volga route and European maritime routes.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Baltic Sea itself continued to be a constant focus for Russian trade, in spite of regular disruption: in the Livonian War (ended in 1582) Russia lost its port on the Baltic (Narva) and had to use Swedish ports (Riga, Reval), and during Russia's "Time of Troubles" (1605-13) trade virtually collapsed in this arena. Still, the Baltic was much more directly connected to a demographically booming part of Europe than was Arkhangelsk, being open for more months ofthe year. Here the Dutch were dominant in Russian export trade until the 1680s, when the English surged ahead on the strength of colonial goods and naval technology. As in Arkhangelsk, Dutch and English sold European textiles and colonial products to Russian merchants in exchange for linen, hemp, hides, and iuft'produced in Livonia, the Grand Duchy, and Russian western borderlands.
In the Baltic arena local merchants were more active in trade than in the White Sea. By the Treaty of Stolbovo (1617, affirmed in Treaty of Kardis 1661) Russian merchants were allowed to trade in Stockholm, Vyborg, Reval, and Narva, and Russian policy made sure to make goods available for this trade by shifting goods. Russian merchants have a reputation for not venturing abroad (lacking capital to maintain fleets of ships competitive with British and Dutch carriers), but in the Baltic they did, using small craft to venture as far as Stockholm. They traded hides, lard, hemp, and flax for Swedish copper and iron. They created informal trade associations for credit and cooperation, cited from the 1640s: those from Novgorod, Tikhvin, and Olonets formed a loose union for Stockholm trade, while those from Pskov cooperated in trade with Narva, Reval, and Dorpat. Pskov and Novgorod merchants flourished on this trade, providing centers of exchange of Russian and transit goods such as Persian silks between Livonian ports and Volga- based trade.
Through the seventeenth century Russia's balance of trade through the Baltic was favorable, generally in the form of silver and copper money and bullion. By the 1680s and 1690s, on the eve of Peter I's founding of St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland (1703), trade in the Baltic rivaled Arkhangelsk.
Overland trade through the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania had existed for centuries, and flourished in these centuries of European and Polish demographic and economic growth, flexibly adjusting to disruptions of war and conquest. Smolensk, acquired by Russia in 1514, was a key hub east, and in the sixteenth century Russian merchants traveled as far as Vilnius (where their trade center and customs house, or gostinnyi dvor, was cited from 1503), bringing furs, hides, and fish, honey and hops to sell for textiles, wine, and metal products such as knives. With the loss of Smolensk in 1618 and seventeenth-century warfare, the borderland town of Viaz'ma became a key borderland hub of trade into the Grand Duchy. When Russia regained Smolensk after 1667, its trade oriented towards Riga in Livonia, rather than into the still turbulent Grand Duchy.