Page 84 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

trading patterns, eastern european 1861

Russian administrative and fiscal structure—the present that within that area a trader could choose globally
Russian words for customs house, label, money, and among potential partners.The largest state on the eastern
treasury derive from Mongol. The command economy side was, of course Russia, and its trade relations were
itself was to return, albeit in modern and more complex transformed by Peter the Great (1672–1725). His visits
form, in the Soviet system of 1918–91.The Republic of in 1697 to his Baltic provinces, Prussia, Hanover, the
Novgorod resisted the Tatars and became the commercial Netherlands, and England provided the czar with mod-
capital of Russia: until the establishment of Saint Peters- els for far-reaching administrative and fiscal moderniza-
burg in 1703, the Novgorod Fair was the epicenter of tion and the encouragement of trade and industry. The
east–west trade. creation of his “window on the West,” Saint Petersburg on
From the twelfth century the institutional setting for the Baltic Sea, and territorial expansion along the Black
overland trade in Western Europe was the annual fair and Caspian Seas fostered commerce. Trade across the
(Jahrmarkt in German), though its equivalent in Russia, Pacific, however, awaited the founding of Vladivostok in
derivatively the yarmaka, did not appear until the six- 1860 and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway
teenth century. German, Scandinavian, and Greek traders in the ensuing decade. Financial intermediation was
presented their goods for sale, which were purchased by internationalized by the opening of the Petersburg Bourse
Russian gosti, who supplied farm and forest products in (Birzha) in 1703, and by 1914 there were 115 stock and
return, organizing supply chains that for fur pelts stretched commodity exchanges across the country. Nevertheless it
for more than a thousand kilometers. Merchants organ- was not until 1897 that Russia went on the gold stan-
ized as the Hanseatic League were the most important dard, only to suspend convertibility at the outbreak of
Western mercantile community, while the Russians World War I in 1914.
grouped themselves by sources of imports—stetichniki Between 1648 and 1914 the only large state of east-
trading with Stettin, for example, or the gotlandsky dvor ern Europe was Poland until dismemberment into parts
with Swedes. For the rest of medieval Eastern and Central taken by Russia, Prussia, and Austria at the end of the
Europe, the Frankfurt Fair was the cynosure among many eighteenth century. In the Balkans, Montenegro clung to
regional fairs, convened around the feast day of locally a precarious autonomy throughout, with little to export
venerated saints. Seaborne trade remained in the hands of save bandits; in the nineteenth century, Bulgaria, Roma-
foreigners, Venetians and Genoese in the Mediterranean nia, and Serbia gained their independence, but, small and
and Black Sea and English to theWhite Sea, whence Russ- agrarian, their impact on European trade was negligible.
ian forests provided exports directly as timber, and indi- Serbian pigs were herded to Austrian slaughterhouses,
rectly as charcoal for smelting copper and iron and as Bulgarian attar of roses and tobacco had niche markets,
ashes for bleaching linen. and in the later nineteenth century tankers shipped
Romanian oil up the Danube. German occupation of
Trade Between much of the region during the First World War nullified
Modern Nation-States frontiers, but within a controlled Kriegswirtschaft (war
The transition from medieval to modern statehood in economy) there was scant trade to flow across them.
Europe is conventionally dated at the Treaty of West-
phalia in 1648, though the fiction of Europe’s Holy Post-Habsburg Europe
Roman Empire was not to be terminated until The leitmotif for eastern Europe in the Versailles and Tri-
Napoleon’s fiat of 1801. Nation-states became economic anon peace treaties (1919, 1920) was national self-
as well as political entities, limiting by taxes, duties, and determination: Poland and Albania were reborn;
bans the trade of their citizens with others. Thus ended Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and parts of a new Yugoslavia
the long globalization of Christian Europe, in the sense were separated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as