Moving and Measuring Grain across Imperial Borders, 1790s-1830s

• In Event: The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Global Grain Markets

Abstract

Assessing the quantities and values of goods crossing Russian imperial borders became an especially vexing task for officials towards the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. As the empire expanded into the Black Sea’s northern coastline, Finland, the Baltics, and the Caucasus, the movement of commodities—particularly grain—emerged at the center of a conversation about how to connect the empire’s constituent parts and, in turn, how to integrate the empire with international markets.Standardization reforms and the debates that informed them illustrate the tensions between imperial and international integration, and the relationship between each and the autocratic politics of the Russian empire.

Author

• Geoffrey Durham, U of Wisconsin-Madison