Commercial Geography / A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges

by Jacques W. Redway

A network of railways covers the grain-growing districts; trunk lines, mainly for strategic purposes, extend through Russian Turkestan to the Chinese border. For many years Russia has endeavored to acquire the territory that would afford commercial outlets to the Indian Ocean and into China. In this the state has been thwarted by two great powers—Great Britain and Japan. The construction of canals and the improvements of river-navigation are under government management, and the internal water-ways aggregate about fifty thousand miles of navigation.

The foreign commerce is changing in character as manufactures develop. Wheat, flour, timber products, flax, and petroleum are the chief exports. Cotton, tea, wool, and coal are the leading imports, the first-named coming mainly from the United States. Germany, Great Britain, France, Holland, and the United States are the chief European countries utilizing Russian trade. The commerce between Russia and China is growing rapidly. The Transsiberian railway is its chief northern outlet, and a branch of this road, now under construction, extends through to the leading commercial centres of Manchuria, to Port Arthur. A considerable amount of manufactured goods is sent to Asia Minor and the Iran countries.

The most available ports opening into the Atlantic are on the Baltic Sea, but these are blocked by ice in winter; the best ports are on the Black Sea, but the Russians do not control the navigable waters that connect them with the Atlantic.

Much of the internal trade is carried on by means of annual fairs. The most important of these are held at Nijni, (lower) Novgorod, Kharkof, Kief, and other points. At the first-named fair goods to the amount of $80,000,000 have changed hands during a single season, and the annual fair is the recognized common ground on which the oriental traders meet the buyers of European and American firms.

Unlike the schemes of colonization of other European states, the various possessions of the Czar are practically in a single area, the dependencies being contiguous. The lines between them, with few exceptions, are political rather than natural boundaries.

St. Petersburg, the capital, is the centre of finance and trade. Riga is the port from which most of the lumber is exported; it receives the coal purchased from Great Britain for the factories of the Baltic coast. The harbor of Riga is not greatly obstructed by ice. Archangel has an export trade of lumber and flax during the few months when the White Sea is free from ice. Odessa and Rostof are the grain-markets of the empire. Astrakhan is the centre of trade for the Iran countries, and Baku is the petroleum-market. Moscow is the chief focal point of the railways; and in consequence has become a great centre of manufacture and trade. Warsaw, next to Moscow, is the most important city.

Siberia.—This great territory resembles Russia in surface and climatic features. Like the former "west" of the United States, Siberia is the open "east" into which much of the surplus population of Russia, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries is moving, attracted by fine farming lands. The European emigrant becomes a producer when settled in Siberia, and, at the same time, a consumer of Russian manufactures. In five years more than one million people thus became occupants of the new country in Siberia. Russian trade is encouraged by a heavy tariff on foreign goods brought into Siberia.

Tobolsk, Tomsk, and Semipalatinsk are collecting stations for Siberian products, and each is built on navigable waters. Irkutsk receives the caravan trade that goes from Peking through Urga and Kiakhta, the frontier post of Chinese trade. Vladivostok is the great Pacific outlet and the terminus of the Transsiberian Railway. It is ice-bound in winter. Harbin, in Manchuria, China, is a Russian trading post of great commercial importance.

Bokhara and Khiva are Russian vassal states. The former was acquired chiefly as a trade-route. A railway from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea extends through Merv, Bokhara, and Samarkand to Kashgar, where it meets the caravan trade from central China. The building of this railway has caused a great development of cotton-growing in these countries, which furnish Europe and America with the choice Afghan, Khiva, and Bokhara rugs.

Transcaucasia, now joined to Russia, is a part of the plateau of Iran. A railway extends across the country from Batum to Baku, connecting the Black and Caspian Seas. Transcaucasia is the petroleum region of the East. It is also noted for the Shirvan, Kabistan, Daghestan, and Kazak rugs which are sold all over Europe and America. The so-called "Cashmere" rugs are not a product of Kashmir, but are made in the town of Shemaka. Kabistan rugs are made in Kuba. Kazak fabrics are usually the sleeping-blankets of the Kazak (Cossack) rough-riders.