The Vologda salt market in the 1630s–1650s and the development of commercial knowledge in Russia in the seventeenth century

Abstract

The article presents the results of an experimental application of complex analysis methods to account books of monasteries: exploiting these documents helps fill in the gaps in the historical sources on trade in seventeenth-century Russia caused by the lack of customs books for a number of large markets. Consideration of the history of salt trade in the compounds of the Solovetskii, Spaso-Prilutskii and Kirillo-Belozerskii monasteries in Vologda and a comparison of these data with each other and with the information provided by the only known fragment of the Vologda customs book of 1634-1635 make it possible to demonstrate both the potential and limitations of such an approach. On the one hand, this approach allows, under certain conditions, to restore some key indicators of commodity markets with a sufficient degree of reliability. On the other hand, it does not give grounds for judging the long-term development of trade in the market of a city or region as a whole since it does not allow us to get an idea of the dynamics of the turnover of various groups of goods. Such work requires other methods which have yet to be created.