Tatar Pedlars in the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In the 1880s, the arrival of a new group of traders was noted in Finnish- and Swedish-languagenewspapers published in the Grand Duchy of Finland. The newcomers were Muslim Tatars, pettytraders originating in a few villages south of Nizhny Novgorod. They found a livelihood in marketand itinerant trade in the Russian Empire. This article examines depictions of Tatar mobile tradersin the late nineteenth-century press in Finland. While petty trade has left fragmentary traces inhistorical sources, the Finnish National Library’s digital newspaper database offers new possibilitiesto create an overview of how the press depicted relations between the early Tatar itineranttraders and the local sedentary society. Through the concepts of space and practices, the articlediscusses the following topics: fairs as a space for ethnic encounters, Tatar trading practices andinteraction with local customers, the traders’ use of space and tactics in relation to formal regulationand the fairs as a “threatening” space. The article contributes new knowledge on the earlyperiod of Tatar presence in Finland, relatively invisible in previous research, and on the multiethniccharacter of late nineteenth-century petty trade.