After Persia, the second most important trading partner for Russian trade was Central Asia. Since Mongol times goods from Central Asia and parts east were being brought to the Volga by "Bukharan" merchants, a generic term including traders from Bukhara, Khwarazm (Khiva), and other Central Asian centers. They brought hides, saddles, bridles, sheepskin, horses, slaves, Chinese textiles and goods, colonial goods including spices, tobacco, indigo, fine leather, rhubarb, and gems. They purchased European woolen cloth, walrus tusks, Russian hats, and wooden products, and especially furs—it is said that in 1595 they purchased so many that they flooded the market in Iran with black sables and foxes.
From Central Asia Bukharan merchants reached Astrakhan by several routes: traveling across the plains between the Aral and Caspian Seas along the Kazakh steppes, or sailing across the Caspian from Karagan and Kabakly, after the 1630s in barges provided and armed by the Russian government (see Map 3.1). With the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, Bukharan merchants traded in several Volga towns, including Tsaritsyn, Saratov, Samara, Kazan, and Moscow; in the late sixteenth century they were excluded from trade in Moscow, but the policy was relaxed after the Time of Troubles to allow the most important Bukharan merchants with large shipments of valuable goods into the capital.
In addition to bringing goods for the Volga route from Astrakhan, Bukharan traders also developed routes through western Siberia. To encourage the trade, in the 1590s Russia awarded them freedom from customs duties; the same privilege was given to the Nogais, great breeders of steppe ponies who, along with Kazakhs, Kalmyks, Bashkirs, and other steppe groups, sold thousands of horses annually for the Russian, Indian, and Chinese armies. Even when the state was cutting back on such privileges, in 1622 Bukharan merchants were still paying only half the rates imposed on foreigners elsewhere in the empire. This route took them directly north from Bukhara along the Irtysh and Ilim Rivers. Bukharan merchants brought Chinese goods, spices, tea, rhubarb (valued in Europe for medicinal purposes), and gems; in the markets of Tiumen and Tobolsk they bought the familiar basket of Russian exports—furs, and some textiles and European re-exports.
In the seventeenth century Tobolsk was the key center for Central Asian trade, followed by Tara farther up the Irtysh and Tiumen. By the early seventeenth century Bukharans had not only a gostinnyi dvor in Tobolsk but a neighborhood and settled population from which they set out on caravans to China to gather goods. Tobolsk Bukharans were also given trade privileges to travel to Kazan, Astrakhan, and Arkhangelsk and by the end of the seventeenth century they had a trade center in Krasnoiarsk in the Altais and had set up in trade in Irkutsk in eastern Siberia as well.
When the traditional "Silk Road" caravan trade was disrupted at mid-century by turbulence in northwestern China, Uyghuristan, and Central Asia, Siberia offered a more secure route and the Bukharans were in place to manage that trade. By this time, Russia had established a line of fortresses across the southern edge of western and eastern Siberia. At mid-century Bukharan merchants bought a lucrative monopoly (1644, renewed in 1686) on the China trade for Russia that allowed them to bring goods all the way to Moscow and trade at centers in between. Their caravans from China went north from Beijing to Nerchinsk (Figure 8.2), then followed the Amur west to Lake Baikal and Irkutsk and on to Tobolsk; in 1652 the Russian government declared first right of purchase for these Chinese goods. Going in the opposite direction, Russian merchants from Moscow and Ustiug readily brought goods as far as Nerchinsk, traveling from Verkhotur'e across the Urals to Tobolsk, from there overland to Eniseisk and via the Yenisei River to Irkutsk, then across Lake Baikal to Selinginsk and on to Nerchinsk.
The Bukharans enabled Russia to play a significant role in overland global trade, but Russia also strove to win treaties for direct trade. Russia sent missions to China
Figure 8.2 The Angara River, the only river that exits the immense Lake Baikal in Siberia, is visible beyond this village wooden chapel; nearby are Nerchinsk (1689) and Kiakhta (1727), sites of treaties and busy entrepots for trade with China. Photo: Jack Kollmann.
to formalize trade relations repeatedly—1618-19, 1653, 1658, 1666, 1675, 1684/5— succeeding only in 1689 with the Treaty of Nerchinsk, to which China agreed in return for stopping Russian settlement into the Amur valley basin. The treaty forced Russia to yield settlements south ofthe Amur, but establishing durable terms of Russo-China trade. State caravans of monopoly goods and private merchant caravans were permitted to travel annually to Beijing. China guarded its trade even more jealously than Russia did, and this treaty established a single town of entry (initially Nerchinsk, Khiatka in the 1720s) through the eighteenth century and maintained a policy of limited caravans.
TRADE POLICY
Before the eighteenth century, Russian trade policy did not follow a formal philosophy such as mercantilism; rather, it skillfully toed a line between sometimes conflicting goals. The state wanted, on the one hand, to bring in income and specie (customs duties, state monopolies, or selling lucrative monopolies on sales or production to foreigners and natives) and, on the other, to protect domestic merchants and production. Foreign specie was crucial to underwrite military reform and state building, but acquiring it risked turning Russia into a de facto colonial outpost of Dutch, English, or Persian trade. Therefore, as noted, Russia was stingy with trade monopolies: the English received trade monopolies in 1555, but their repeated requests for renewals and expansion were refused, and the English lost those privileges entirely in 1649. Despite repeated efforts, the Dutch never received an official trade monopoly, although many individual Dutch merchants received charters for trade and industry, the premiums for these licenses bringing Russia valuable income. Monopolies granted, for example, to the New Julfa Armenians in 1667 for silk and to the Bukharans for China trade similarly lined state coffers as well as bringing in customs income.
State policy tried to prohibit foreign merchants from retail trade entirely and from the interior as much as possible. Major foreign merchant communities enjoyed neighborhoods, warehouses, and/or markets in key trading towns for wholesale trade only. Nevertheless, many trade centers enjoyed cosmopolitan populations. In the seventeenth century the English had warehouses in Arkhangelsk, Kholmogory, Vologda, and Moscow; the Swedes had access to Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, and Ladoga, while Dutch merchants had warehouses in Arkhangelsk, Kholmogory, Vologda, Iaroslavl' (a key customs depot), and Moscow. As we have seen, in 1684 Moscow hosted a trade center for Bukharan, Persian, Armenian, and Indian merchants; furthermore, Bukharan merchants traded in Volga towns and Persian traders in Kazan and Nizhnii Novgorod.