RAILWAY NETWORK IN ORENBURG PROVINCE AS A FACTOR OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY OF PROVINCIAL POST-REFORM MERCHANTS

Abstract

The study shows how the level of development of transport communications affected the profitability and convenience of entrepreneurial activity of Orenburg merchants in the second half of the 19th - early 20th century. What is new in the work is that the state of transport and communication routes in the context of everyday work of the Orenburg post-reform merchants has not previously become a separate subject of analysis. The article shows that the commissioning of the Orenburg - Samara and Orenburg - Tashkent railway lines has significantly improved the working conditions of local entrepreneurs, diversifying the list of investment areas. In the first post-reform decades, the goods of Orenburg merchants entered the markets of the European part of Russia and the cities of Central Asia through the system of postal roads and routes of trade caravans respectively. The characteristics of the transport arteries themselves and the terrain through which they ran did not allow merchants to save money on the speed of delivery, transport large volumes of products, and also did not guarantee the safety of cargo. Since the late 1870s Orenburg flour producers, who got the opportunity to ship their goods to other regions of the country, began to build steam flour mills, and the service sector began to develop rapidly in the cities of the province.