Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
GCE-HSG Annual Conference Environment, Energy and Economy in the Black Sea Region, Constanta, Romanya, 14 - 16 Eylül 2023
This project examines the course of the Russian trade firstly in the Black Sea and then the Mediterranean and suggest that the higher growth during the first quarter of the nineteenth century marked a turning point when, under the impact of imperial competition and changes in demand for wheat, a new pattern of trade emerged. By holding the fortresses of Kerch and Yenikale, the Russians had secured communications and transportation between the Azov and Black seas. Nevertheless, they were not sufficiently strong either to consolidate their military power on the north-eastern coast of the Black Sea or to turn the region into an economic and logistical base for further expansion even by the end of the eighteenth century. The north-eastern waters of the Black Sea basin, some four hundred kilometres long, had the handicap of being shallow and poorly sheltered and the absence of roads also hindered the transport of goods to the seaboard. In the Kuban basin, navigation was risky, and the basin did not possess convenient natural or port facilities. The Russian ports further to the west on the Black Sea coast developed in order to import Mediterranean products in large amounts in exchange above all for the wheat of the newly cultivated steppes. In the decades following Catherine II’s conquest of the region its population and economy grew enormously. By 1827 colonists had poured into the three coastal provinces of Ekaterinoslav, Kherson and Tauride whose male population was now almost 800,000. Less than 5% of Russia’s foreign trade passed through the Black Sea ports in 1802 and nearly one quarter by 1816. By then almost 70% of Russian wheat exports went through her newly acquired or constructed Black Sea ports. Income from the market-oriented agriculture and other commercial activities was highly significant for the Russian treasury as well as for economic development in the region.