The Far East and Prospects of Shipping Operations of the Voluntary Fleet

Abstract

I study the role of Voluntary Fleet in the expansion of shipping operation in 1891-1914 between the European and Far Eastern regions of Russia. My paper presents the first comprehensive assessment of the efficiency of the state shipping enterprise and contributes to a valuation of commercial performance of sea freight and passenger transportation during Russian Empire. Empirical analysis reveals a robust relationship between the state support and the stability of cabotage operations. I also find that revenue growth of a state-owned company was mainly driven by an increase in transportation of commercial cargo incomes. Using archived papers, the corporate statistics, and duma debates, it establishes that the attempts to volume and activity of interregional transportation led to a major changes in the principles of government regulation that the origins of the reform lay in the desire to support cargo transportation rather than passengers that reform was characterized by cooperation between officials and business circles and that the legislative acts (of 1892, 1902, 1912, 1914), although deficient in some respects, created the bases for future public-private partnership. This parallels findings, that development of the transport business was to a large extent caused by increase top earned incomes, owing to infrastructure sector of Russia transformations, regional innovations of the government, and private interests associated with the processes of international trade cooperation. My findings offer support to arguments that the government support may have accelerated the transformations in the shipping business and contributed to commercial orientation in the state-owned company's activities.