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4-1(84) 2014 HISTORY
M.D. Kushnareva
The Role of Fairs in the Development of Fur Trade (North-Eastern Siberia in the Second Half of the 19th – Early 20th Centuries)
The article considers the role of trade fairs in the fur trade in North-Eastern Siberia. The author has determined the structure of fair trade which consisted of several stages. The author has identified four stages of fur goods promotion from trappers and hunters to consumers by means of fairs Each stage was served by different fairs - local fairs in the fur trade areas, Yakutsk fair, Irbit and Nizhny Novgorod fairs. After examining a wide range of previously unpublished sources, the author has established how North-Eastern furs got to fairs. The author has found out that 1880s-1890s saw the greatest flow of furs from North-Eastern Siberia commercial fur-trade districts to fairs. The beginning of the XX century witnessed a decline in major types of furs supply to fairs, resulted from depletion of the hunting resources. Local fairs of furtrade areas played an important role in the organization of the fur trade of the North-Eastern Siberia as the fur trade ceased to be associated with hunters and trappers and the furs became an independent unit of goods in the market process. The role of the Yakutsk Fair was to form large batches of precious Siberian furs and fix the prices in the trade season. The major role of the Irbit Fair was the sales of high-quality furs. The Nizhny Novgorod Fair specialized in selling premium varieties of furs (such as north-eastern squirrel and sable) abroad. In the final part of the research it was concluded that fairs were important regulators of supply and demand, they determined the trends of the fur trade development.
DOI 10.14258/izvasu(2014)4.1-21
Key words: fur trade, fair, North-Eastern Siberia, trapping, dynamics, trade turnover, price, batches of furs
Full text at PDF, 299Kb. Language: Russian.
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