COMPETITION IN THE FATE OF A PROVINCIAL MERCHANT: TOUCHES TO THE PORTRAIT OF VASSILY POPOV FROM ARKHANGELSK, 1767–1847

Abstract

The article studies the activity of the Arkhangelsk merchant of the first guild Vassily Alekseevich Popov in the first two decades of the 19th century. It clarifies the reasons for the rise and fall of his trading house, which failed to withstand the fierce competition with foreign merchants. The author chose V. A. Popov as an object of study because, firstly, he was one of the largest and most enter-prising among the native merchants of Arkhangelsk of this period, and, secondly, he was able to analyze and generalize his commercial experience, proposing to the government measures aimed at the revival and support of the domestic merchants. His economic reflections embodied a number of typical features of the development of the foreign trade in Russia at the end of the 18th — the first quarter of the 19th century, which influenced the careers of domestic entrepreneurs, namely: the instability of the foreign policy and economic course of the Russian government; conducting trade mainly at their own expense, in contrast to foreign merchants who actively used income from com-mission trade; extreme dependence on patrons among supreme and local officials.