Siberian merchants: trading in Eurasia Early New Age. Monakhan E.

The key role in the approval and expansion of the power of the Moscow state, and then the Russian Empire in the ethnically color of the Siberian Border region, was played by continental trade. The book of Eric Monakhan is an attempt to analyze the connection between the merchant world and state construction in the early New times, as well as shed light on the social history of several merchant dynasties in Russia.

The focus of the researcher is several generations of three families who were trafficking in Siberia for more than a century: Filafiyevs who belonged to the merchant elites of Russia; Shababin, Muslim immigrants who have mastered local and long trade, while successfully combining private entrepreneurship with the service of the Russian state; and Noritsyns, merchants of a more modest status who actively participated in the developing Russian-Chinese trade. The author of the book explores the way of life that they led, the strategies to which they resorted to relations with the state, as well as the social niches that they occupied in the Siberian borderland.

Erica Monakhan-historian, professor of the University of New Mexico, USA.