Abstract
From the beginning of direct commercial relations with Western Europe in the mid-sixteenth century until the 1917 Revolution, Russia’s international commerce was conducted predominantly through the intermediary of foreign merchants. And as Arcadius Kahan observed, this foreign element remained a distinct group for an inordinately long time, as has Russian interest in it: ‘Even now the problem of foreigners and nationals in the foreign trade of Russia occupies the attention of contemporary Soviet historians.’1 Certainly it was common in nineteenth-century Russia, and indeed elsewhere, to discuss participation in international commerce in terms of national groups, though the trading houses involved were frequently not so much ‘national’ as international in the sense that they operated simultaneously in two or more countries and were owned by people tending towards a supranational outlook.
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Notes
A. Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout (Chicago and London, 1985), pp. 262–3.
Assessing the German contribution to Russia’s international commerce is problematic for the period before the 1871 unification of Germany, the more so because of the Baltic German component in the Russian Empire’s population. ‘German’ in this chapter refers to nationality rather than citizenship. For an assessment of the ‘German’ contribution to Russia’s international trade in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, see C.F. Menke, ‘Die Wirtschaftlichen und Politischen Beziehungen der Hansastädte zu Russland im 18 und Frühen Jahrhunderte’ (Unpublished PhD, University of Göttingen, 1959) pp. 126–40.
D.K. Reading, The Anglo-Russian Commercial Treaty of 1734 (New Haven, 1938);
J. Ehrmann, The British Government and Commercial Negotiations, 1783–1793 (London, 1962) p. 125; and The Public Record Office (PRO) FO 65/14, 17/11/1787; FO 65/15/164, 24/4/1787; FO 65/36, 21/3/1797.
D.S. Macmillan, ‘The Russia Company of London in the 18th Century: The effective survival of a Regulated Chartered Company’, The Guildhall Miscellany, IV, 4 (1973) pp. 222–36.
G. Jackson, Hull in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1972) pp. 253–4. The close connection between the élite of Russia traders and British politics continued into the 19th century, though to a lesser extent, when the strategic importance to Britain of Russia’s staple commodities had evaporated.
D. Gerhard, England und der Aufstieg Russlands (Berlin, 1933) p. 4.
BCNU 1825, pp. 242–45 and p. 301; and S.D. Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking (London, 1984) p. 73.
J.G. Kohl, ‘Sketches of Russian Commerce’, Hunts Merchants Magazine, X, 3 (1844) p. 216.
E. Kolbe, Unterhaltungen über Russland (1853) p. 30.
L.S. Semenov, Rossiya i Angliya: Ekonomicheskie otnosheniya v sredine XIX veka (Leningrad, 1975) p. 156.
D.C.M. Piatt, Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914 (London, 1972) p. 52;
D. Morier Evans, The Commercial Crisis, 1847–1848 (London, 1849) p. lvi; and
S. Thompstone, ‘Ludwig Knoop: The Russian Arkwright’, Textile History, xv (1984) p. 48.
M.S. Leigh (ed.), James Whishaw: A History of the Whishaw Family (London, 1935); and BCNU, 1849–55, p. 319.
Leigh (ed.) James Whishaw, pp. 85–8; and D.S. Guseinova, Rabochie-moryaki Kaspiya (Baku, 1981) pp. 33 and 37.
T.M. Kitanina, Khlebnaya torgovlya Rossii v 1875–1914 gg. (Ocherki pravitel’-stvennoi politiki) (Leningrad, 1978) p. 156; and BBBG, London Credit Registers, vol. II, p. 209.
M.P. Fedorov, Khlebnaya torgovlya v glavneishikh russkikh portakh i Kenigsberge (Moscow, 1888) pp. 248–50.
J.N. Lodyzhensky, Russia: Its Industries and Trade (Glasgow International Exhibition, 1901) p. 322.
C.B. Jewson, The Timber Trade with Russia (Privately published, Norwich, 1948) p. 1.
L. Bamberger, Memories of Sixty Years in the Timber Trade (London, 1929) pp. 11, 45, 56 and 69; and sundry uncatalogued letters held by Foy, Morgan and Co.’s successors, Price, Pierce & Co., London.
J.G. Kohl, Petersburg in Bildern und Skizzern, 2 parts (Dresden and Leipzig, 1841) part 2, pp. 221–3.
L.H. Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York, 1927) pp. 143, 176 and 271; and BBGH HC10.28.2., 7/3/1864/ HC10.15, 4/2/ 1877 and HC10.28, 29/12/1874.
S. Diaper, The History of Kleinwort & Sons Co. in Merchant Banking’, (PhD, University of Nottingham, 1983) p. 152; and Chapman, Rise of Merchant Banking, p. 107.
The Times, 11/10/1887; and M. Stenton (ed.) Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament, vol. I, 1832–85, p. 270.
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Thompstone, S. (1992). British Merchant Houses in Russia before 1914. In: Edmondson, L., Waldron, P. (eds) Economy and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1860–1930. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22433-3_7
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