To This City The Hanseatic Merchants
Removed Their Mart From Revel.
The conquest of Samoieda and Siberia near
the close of the sixteenth century, contributed to encrease the exportable
commodities of Russia by their furs, salmon, sturgeon, &c.
In the mean time the Russian commerce in the Caspian was increasing: the
Persian vessels brought into Astracan dyed silks, calicoes, and Persian
stuffs, and returned with cloth, sables, martens, red leather, and old
Russia money. The trade from Archangel also increased in a still more rapid
manner, principally, as we have already seen, with the English and Dutch.
In the year 1655, the exports were valued at the 660,000 rubles, two rubles
at that period being equal to one pound sterling. The principal articles
were potash, caviare, tallow, hides, sables, and cable yarn; the other
articles of less importance, and in smaller quantities, were coarse linen,
feathers for beds, tar, linen yarn, beet, rhubarb, Persian silk, cork,
bacon, cordage, skins of squirrels, and cats; bees' wax, hogs' birstles,
mice and goats' skins, swan and geese down, candles, &c.
Peter the Great became emperor in 1689; he soon unfolded and began to
execute his vast plans of conquest, naval power, and commerce. He gained
for his country a passage into the Black Sea, by reducing Asoph, at the
mouth of the Don, and he soon established a navy on this sea. His personal
exertions in Holland and England, to make himself acquainted with
ship-building, are well known. The event of his reign, however, which most
completely changed the relative situation of Russia, and established her as
a commercial nation, was the conquest from Sweden of Livonia, Ingria, and
Carelia.
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