The Russia Company and Russo-British Trade after 1600

The British Russia Company (also called the Muscovy Company; henceforth, the Company), founded in the mid-16th century, provided significant economic links between Russia and England in the early modern period, and it was a crucial institution structuring Anglo-Russian relations. Its history offers insights into the bonds between early modern Russia and both its Asian neighbors and Western Europe.

For many years, scholars' understanding of this company was limited, focused on the 16th century and a narrative of its failure to compete against Dutch rivals after the Time of Troubles (1598–1616).¹ This story culminates in the 1649 ban on its activity in the interior of Russia, restricting its members to Arkhangel´sk. Since the 1990s, new works have reassessed the Company's history, seeking to understand its membership and operations, its internal political functions, and its continuing role in the Russian economy in the Romanov era.² Recent works by Maria Salomon Arel and Matthew Romaniello contribute significantly to the reassessment of the Company and to a deeper understanding of its later history. Each work considers the role of the individual merchant and their networks, placing their operations in Russia in wider contexts.

Despite these shared features and arguments for the continuity of Company endeavors, these are substantially different works in terms of methodology and conceptualization of the relationship between British merchant and Russian state. Arel's book addresses the volume and flows of trade in much greater detail in order to challenge claims of Dutch supremacy over the White Sea route after 1600. This analysis relies on state documents—including petitions, diplomatic correspondence, edicts, court records, and the remaining import-export books of the ports of London and Amsterdam. Romaniello eschews a focus on the statistical data, preferring to track individuals moving between Britain and Russia from the late 17th to early 19th centuries. Embracing a framework of entangled histories linked through highlighted individuals, Romaniello's Enterprising Empires makes the case that a merchant could fill many roles within both states, pursuing personal commercial interests while acting as an informant for the Company or entering Russian imperial service. The fate of negotiations between Russia and Britain over commercial treaties was inseparable from their networks and colored by the rhetorical strategies employed by merchants pursuing multiple sets of priorities in Eurasia.

Despite these differences, these books are in some ways complementary. In chronological terms, Arel's analysis continues up to the mid-1600s, where Romaniello begins. More significantly, each addresses the impact of the politics of the Romanov court, of the growth of the Russian domestic marketplace, and of the competition between European states on the Company's fortunes.

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Maria Salomon Arel's English Trade and Adventure to Russia in the Early Modern Era draws upon and updates the author's dissertation on the Russia Company in the first half of the 17th century. Arel's first major claim challenges the notion of declining English trade in Russia due to a failure to compete with Dutch rivals, arguing that the impression of English failure can be traced to qualitative descriptions in much later pamphlets. The idea of failure in competition with the Dutch are at odds with the statistical data of the London and Amsterdam port books. Despite the traditional view of Dutch supremacy in the White Sea trade after the Troubles, Arel argues that English trade expanded significantly until 1649. The growth of this trade derived from a combination of factors, including Russia's place in the global economic networks of English merchant companies. Its members invested in numerous other overseas commercial ventures, including those in India and North America, and connected them through their personal and familial bonds. The Company's place in the market was embedded in Anglo...