Natalya Anatolyevna Koreeva,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Federal Research Center “Kazan Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, Каzan, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Merchant Shipping along the Volga and the Kama in the First Half of the 19th Century: Problems of Delivery and Safety Provision of Transported Goods
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-5-14
The Volga-Kama transport basin, which occupied central and eastern parts of European Russia, was important for the development of economic ties between different regions of the country, and for the movement of goods. Goods were exported along the Kama River from almost all of Siberia and the Urals. The Volga connected the territories from Tver to Astrakhan provinces, which contributed to the emergence and development of the most important transit trade centers. Due to the peculiarities of the fairway of this river, Rybinsk became the end point of the route for almost all merchants of the lower provinces; the goods were then loaded onto vessels of Vyshnevolotsky, Kashinsky, Uglich, Kalyazinsky and other merchants. The way to St. Petersburg via the Vyshnevolotsk system was complicated by thresholds, the passage of which was regulated by the state. Merchants could overcome them only as part of a caravan. The article attempts to recreate the process of delivering goods by water which existed in the merchant environment of the first half of the 19th century, and show the main operations of the logistics chain such as storage, packaging, loading, selection of a vessel, contractors for transportation, and cargo transportation. In the autumn-winter period, merchants put the purchased bread and flour into barns located near the piers, and concluded contracts with shipowners and ship workers for the future spring navigation. The requirement for the safety of the goods was prescribed in each contract, but there was no liability if the cause of damage to the goods or its loss was “God’s will” (for example, due to a fire caused by a lightning strike, or other circumstances). The main sources of the study were “Books for writing contracts under the Statute of Merchant shipping” issued by the Yaroslavl City Duma to private brokers, broker books of Kazan, Spassk, documents of Rybinsk and Cheboksary city magistrates on the investigation of accidents on the Volga. The data obtained allow us to conclude that by the first half of the 19th century, the system of delivery of goods by waterways was established and gradually improved, the transaction processing mechanism was also quite transparent. However, the obstacles that merchants had to face during transportation were not eliminated: flooding of the ship and damage to goods, or robberies. Legislative measures to protect the interests of merchants could not always compensate for the cost of lost goods.
Publishing: 28/10/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 24/07/2023
How to cite: Koreeva N.A. Merchant Shipping along the Volga and the Kama in the First Half of the 19th Century: Problems of Delivery and Safety Provision of Transported Goods // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 5 (31), pp. 200–214. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-5-14.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2023
Keywords: water transportation; Volga; Kama; Imperial Russia; merchants; broker; grain trade; ship; storage of goods; shipwreck; hardcotes