Merchant Women in Business in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

This chapter offers an investigation of the problem of female entrepreneurship in Russia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This topic has not yet become a focus of attention for research in relation to the Russian Empire, although it has attracted increasing interest during the past decade.¹ Commercial activity by women was provided for in the legislation of the Russian Empire: according to the laws concerning persons of the merchant estate, on the death of an owner the management of his business was to pass to his widow. Very often, even when the son or sons were commercially very experienced and active, family businesses were formally and in actual fact headed by the widow. Another, slightly less frequent, variant was to bequeath the management of the firm to the daughters if there were no male heirs. According to Russian law, women enjoyed the same property rights as men. The principle of separate property in marriage made it possible for a woman to be independent in property matters.² Thus the Vedomost’ o manufakturakh v Rossii za 1813 i 1814 gody (Register of Factories in Russia for the Years 1813 and 1814) contains information on eleven Moscow factories, including seven textile factories, belonging to nine women. Among the nine owners of those enterprises, seven women had continued their husbands’ business, one was a daughter inheriting her enterprise from her merchant father, and one was a townswoman (meshchanka). This study examines the statistics on female merchants, their family and marital status, and the effectiveness of their management. It also addresses questions of property. The latter aspect will be studied using a particular source: petitions to the Moscow Governor-General written by female owners such as merchant widows, daughters, and daughters-in-law.