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Entangled Competition: Globalization, Imperial Domination, and Local Development in the Port Cities of Riga and Odesa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2025
Abstract
Riga and Odesa (Odessa) rank among the Russian empire's foremost nineteenth-century ports. These port cities, respectively located on the Baltic and Black Seas, enabled imperial Russia to trade huge amounts of goods, boosting its burgeoning economy in the second half of the nineteenth century. We argue that, despite the distance separating the two cities, it is only in relation to each other that their full significance emerges. This article explores the histories of Riga and Odesa, examining their situations within the Russian empire's economic geography and taking a closer look at the interrelationships between the two ports. In our view, this history is more than a narrative of competition for the premier position among the ports of the Russian empire; it is also a tale of local initiatives, engagement with the imperial center, lobbying for imperial financial support, relationships of economic interdependence, and an example of the crucial role that ports at the supposed periphery of an empire played in a globalized economy.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Footnotes
The work on this article has been supported by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media of the Federal Republic of Germany (BKM), the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, and the zukunft.niedersachsen Program which allowed Katja Wezel extensive research at the Historical State Archive of Latvia (LVVA) in Riga, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), whose Ambizione program supported Boris Belge's research on Odesa. In addition, both authors would like to thank Eugene Avrutin, Harriet Murav, the anonymous reviewers, as well as Fabian Baumann, Liliya Bilousova, Svetlana Natkovich, and Frithjof Benjamin Schenk for their valuable comments on previous versions of this paper. We also thank our research assistants Sarah C. Evison and Jan Otto.
References
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14 Most of this research was inspired by Alexander Gerschenkron’s publication and his thesis of state-led industrialization of the country spreading from core to peripheries, see Alexander Gerschenkron, Europe in the Russian Mirror: Four Lectures in Economic History (Cambridge, 1970), 102, 110. See for example Boris V. Anan΄ich, “The Economic Policy of the Tsarist Government and Enterprise in Russia from the End of the Nineteenth through the Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” in Gregory Guroff and Fred V. Carstensen, eds., Entrepreneurship in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union (Princeton, 1983), 125–39. For a more critical discussion, see Manfred Hildermeier, Geschichte Russlands: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Oktoberrevolution (Munich, 2013), 1149–55.
15 See Nick Baron, “New Spatial Histories of Twentieth Century Russia and the Soviet Union: Surveying the Landscape,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 55, no. 3 (2007): 374–400; See also Bassin et al., “Introduction: Russian Space,” 8.
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18 Ulrike von Hirschhausen, Die Grenzen der Gemeinsamkeit: Deutsche, Letten, Russen und Juden in Riga 1860–1914 (Göttingen, 2006); Anders Henriksson, The Tsar’s Loyal Germans: The Riga German Community, Social Change, and the Nationality Question, 1855–1905 (Boulder, 1983); Anders Henriksson, “Minorities and the Industrialization of Imperial Russia: The Case of the Baltic German Urban Elite,” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 24, no. 2 (1982): 115–27; Oberländer and Wohlfart, eds. Portrait einer Vielvölkerstadt; Guido Hausmann, “Kosmopolitisches Odessa? Eine historische Spurensuche,” in Metropolen des Ostens, ed. Angela Huber and Erik Martin (Berlin, 2021), 105–23; Evrydiki Sifneos, Imperial Odessa. People, Spaces, Identities (Leiden, 2018); and Patricia Herlihy, “The Ethnic Composition of Odessa in the Nineteenth Century,” Harvard Ukraine Studies 1 no. 1 (1977): 53–78.
19 Orlando Figes, Crimea: The Last Crusade (London, 2010); and Charles King, The Black Sea: A History (Oxford, 2004), 177–92.
20 On the blockade policy of the British navy during the Crimean War, see Edgar Anderson, “The Crimean War in the Baltic Area,” Journal of Baltic Studies 5, no. 4 (1974): 339–61, here 342.
21 Ben Eklof, John Bushnell and Larissa Zakharova, eds., Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855–1881 (Bloomington, 1994); and W. Bruce Lincoln, The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, IL., 1990).
22 Johann H. Hartl, Die Interessenvertretungen der Industriellen in Russland 1905–1914 (Graz, 1978), 21.
23 In Riga, the Merchants’ Association (Kaufmannschaft), organized in the Riga Exchange Association (Rigaer Börsenverein), elected the fifteen members of the Exchange Committee (Börsen-Comité). Membership in the Exchange Association was voluntary; members were liable to election to serve on the Exchange Committee, with only severe health problems considered legitimate grounds to refuse the role.
24 Hartl, Die Interessenvertretungen, 22.
25 See Riga City State Archive (PRVA), fonds 2941, apraksts 1, lietas 11, lappuse 3. (henceforth: f., apr., l. and lp.); (Programm einer durch die Rigasche Kaufmannschaft contrahierenden Anleihe von einer Million Silber Rubel, April 26, 1850, in Riga Port Construction Committee).
26 PRVA f. 2941, apr. 1, l. 11, lp. 12–13. (The Governor-General of the Baltic Provinces, appointed by the tsar, supported the splitting of the tax, approved by the tsarist Ukaz on February 28, 1842).
27 State Historical Archive of Latvia (LVVA) f. 3143, apr. 1, l. 11, lp. 16 (Statut der Rigaer Börse, Paragraph 15, April 12, 1867).
28 On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Riga Exchange Committee’s establishment, its vice-president, Edmund Bornhaupt, spoke of the “cosmopolitan nature” of his organization in contrast with the city council’s conservatism; see Hermann von Stein, Der Rigasche Börsen-Comité in den Jahren 1866–1872 (Riga, 1873), 7.
29 On policies of unification in the Baltic region, see Michael Garleff, Die Baltischen Länder: Estland, Lettland, Litauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Regensburg, 2001), 81; Guido Hausmann, “Stadt und lokale Gesellschaft im ausgehenden Zarenreich,” in Guido Hausmann, ed., Gesellschaft als lokale Veranstaltung. Selbstverwaltung, Assoziierung und Geselligkeit in den Städten des ausgehenden Zarenreiches (Göttingen, 2002), 99–102; and Karsten Brüggemann, Licht und Luft des Imperiums: Legitimations- und Repräsentationsstrategien russischer Herrschaft in den Ostseeprovinzen im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 2018), 17–23. These works explore the alignment (sliianie) and results of these policies.
30 G. D. Hernmarck, Erinnerungen aus dem öffentlichen Leben eines Rigaschen Kaufmanns, 1849–1869: hinterlassene Niederschrift des weil. Rigaschen Bürgermeisters (Berlin, 1899), 2.
31 Ibid., 5.
32 one chetvert = 209.91 liters.
33 Konstantin Zelenskij, Zapiski o bombardirovanii Odessy 10-go aprelia 1854 goda (Odessa, 1855).
34 Charles King, Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams (New York, 2011), 118–21.
35 Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) fond. 173, opis΄ 1, delo. 301 (Delo po summe naznachennoi na raboty po uglubleniyu i rasprostraneneniiu Odesskogo porta); and RGIA f. 95, op. 1, d. 57 (Odessa: Konkursnye proekty Odesskogo porta).
36 Hausmann, “Stadt und lokale Gesellschaft,” 38–41.
37 Guido Hausmann, Universität und städtische Gesellschaft in Odessa, 1865–1917: Soziale und nationale Selbstorganisation an der Peripherie des Zarenreiches (Stuttgart, 1998), 462; and “Gorodovoe polozhenie 16 iuniiia 1870g.,” Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii ser II (hereafter PSZ II), vol. 45, no. 48498 (1870), 823–39.
38 Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 1794–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 151–56.
39 “Gorodovoe polozhenie 16 iuniia 1870g.,” PSZ II vol. 45, no. 48498 (1870), 823–39.
40 Hausmann, Universität, 463.
41 Hausmann, “Stadt und lokale Gesellschaft,” 58.
42 For example, the Russian Steam Navigation and Trading Company (ROPiT) was established as a public-private enterprise, with significant involvement from Odesa merchants who held a large share of its ownership. During the 1870s and 1880s, ROPiT took the initiative to invest in reconstruction work to improve Odesa’s port for steam navigation. See Anna Sydorenko, “The Russian Steam Navigation and Trading Company: The Transition from Sail to Steam in the Russian Black Sea (1856–1914),” in Apostolos Delis, Jordi Ibarz, Anna Sydorenko, and Matteo Barbano, eds., Mediterranean Seafarers in Transition. Maritime Labour, Communities, Shipping and the Challenge of Industrialization 1850s–1920s (Leiden, 2022), 478–505.
43 Hausmann, Universität, 467.
44 The number of documents from imperial sources that occur, for instance, in the files of the Riga Exchange Committee rises exponentially for dates after the Crimean War. The limited number of letters or ukazy found in the files of the Exchange Committee pertaining to the 1840s and 1850s gives way, from the 1860s onward, to a notable increase in communication among imperial offices, particularly documents sent by the Ministry of Ways of Communication. Accordingly, commencing in the 1860s, the direct intervention of the St. Petersburg ministries of Finance and Ways of Communication in Odesa’s and Riga’s economic development, and their monitoring of the same, left a considerable paper trail in the Russian State Archive (RGIA).
45 Sidney Harcave, Count Sergei Witte and the Twilight of Imperial Russia: A Biography (Armonk, 2004), 67–71; and Ekaterina Pravilova, The Ruble: A Political History (Oxford, 2023), 186–211.
46 Manfred Hildermeier, Geschichte Russlands: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Oktoberrevolution (Munich, 2013), 1129.
47 On the commercialization of Russian agriculture, see Arcadius Kahan, “The Russian Economy, 1860–1913,” in Roger Weiss, ed., Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1989), 1–90, here 7.
48 National Archives, London, FO 65–1633, 248–253. (Arthur Woodhouse, British Consul in Riga, “Report on the Establishment of a Special Line of Fast Steamers Between Riga and London in Connection with the Siberian Butter Trade,” May 1, 1901).
49 See LVVA f. 3143, apr.1, l. 1530, lp. 2. (Polozhenie o vremennom Biuro Birzhevykh Komitetov΄, December 13, 1904); See also LVVA f. 3143, apr. 1, l. 1530, lp. 77–78 (Pervyi Vserossiiskii S΄΄ezd΄ Predstavitelei birzhevoi torgovli i sel΄skago khoziaistva, November 27, 1906).
50 See exchange between the Odesa and the Riga Exchange Committees about new rules, which would have created additional impractical obstacles for Jewish traders. Jews were represented within both the Odesa and the Riga Exchange Committees; the two bodies tried to protect them against bureaucratic excesses from the central government and were joining forces in this matter. LVVA, f. 3143, apr. 1, l. 2079, lp. 93 (Odesskii birzhevoi komitet v Rizhskii birzhevoi komitet, May 24, 1912).
51 Dan Diner, Das Jahrhundert verstehen: Eine universalhistorische Deutung (Munich, 1999), 16.
52 Sifneos, Imperial Odessa, 12.
53 Herlihy, Odessa, 105.
54 Boris Belge, “(Dis-)Connected. Railway, Steamships and Trade in the Port of Odessa 1865–1888,” Journal of Balkan and Black Sea Studies 5 (2020): 49–69.
55 Alfred Rieber, “The Debate over the Southern Line: Economic Integration or National Security,” in “Synopsis: A Collection of Essays in Honour of Zenon E. Kohut,” eds. Serhii Plokhy and Frank Sysyn, special issue, Journal of Ukrainian Studies 29 no.1–2 (Edmonton, 2005), 371–97; and Belge, “(Dis-)Connected,” 49–69.
56 RGIA f. 1287, op. 7, d. 728, Choz. Dep. MVD. (Ob upadke i o merakh razvitiya torgovli v Odesse).
57 Herlihy, Odessa, 223.
58 Robert Vasilevich Orbinskii, O khlebnoi torgovle Soedinennykh Shtatov Severnoi Ameriki (St. Peterburg, 1880).
59 Ibid.
60 On Riga’s Hanseatic history and its development up to the eighteenth century, see Kevin O’Connor, The House of Hemp and Butter: A History of Old Riga (Ithaca, 2019).
61 Handelsstatistische Sektion des Rigaschen Börsen-Komitees, ed., Beiträge zur Statistik des Rigaschen Handels, 1. Abteilung: Rigas Handelsverkehr auf den Wasserwegen, Jg. 1914 (Riga, 1915), XIII; Handelsstatistische Sektion des Rigaschen Börsen-Comités, ed., Beiträge zur Statistik des Rigaschen Handels, Jg. 1867 (Hamburg, 1868), 80. Please note that the figures for “Germany” in 1867 are an aggregation of the figures for Prussia, Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen.
62 On Riga’s trade economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Elisabeth Harder-Gersdorff, “Riga als Handelsmetropole des Ostseeraums in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Ilgvars Misans and Horst Wernicke, eds., Riga und der Ostseeraum: Von der Gründung 1201 bis in die Frühe Neuzeit (Marburg, 2005), 261–94.
63 Darwin, Unlocking the World, 80–81.
64 See Wilhelm Held, ed., Führer durch das industrielle Riga: Zur Jubiläumsausstellung 1901 (Riga, 1901).
65 LVVA f. 3143, apr.1, l. 2849, lp. 22–23 (Rechenschaftsbericht der Direction der Dünaburg-Witebsker Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft pro 1873). See also Alexander Tobien, ed., Ergebnisse der Handelsstatistik Rigas aus den Jahren 1891–1898 mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Periode 1891–1895 (Riga, 1900), 69.
66 Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv (RWWA), Cologne, XIVe 2813, 19–20 (Paul van der Zypen, “100 Jahre van Der Zypen & Charlier 1845–1945,” 19–20).
67 Hernmarck, Erinnerungen, 26, 33.
68 Ibid.; and Henriksson, The Tsar’s Loyal Germans, 70.
69 Hernmarck, Erinnerungen, 34.
70 Kozin, Ocherki ekonomicheskoy istorii Latvii, 529.
71 Ibid.; and Burchard von Schrenck, ed., Beiträge zur Statistik der Stadt Riga und ihrer Verwaltung (Riga, 1909), 134.
72 For a direct comparison of grain exports from the Russian hinterland and the Liepāja’s rise, see Oscar Mertens, Zur Frage der Zufuhrbahnen in Russland: Nebst statistischer Nachweisung über die in den Jahren 1866–1885 bewegten Getreidequantitäten (Riga, 1889), particularly the included map “Graphische Darstellung der mittleren Zufuhrrayons von 16 Bahnen.” On Ventpils’ role as the main exporter of Siberian butter, see Lenz, Die Entwicklung Rigas zur Großstadt, 66.
73 LVVA f. 3143, apr. 11, l. 28, lp. 3. (Letter from the Rigaer Kühlhaus-Gesellschaft Union “An den Hafenbau-Ingenieur A. Pabst,” May 17, 1910).
74 LVVA f. 3143, apr. 1, l. 1530, lp. 160 (Ministerstvo torgovli i promyshlennosti nachal΄nik rabot po uluchsheniyu Arkhangel΄skago porta, Rizhskomu Birzhevomu Komitetu, December 24, 1910).
75 This number is based on the average value of exports of eggs for the period 1906–10, when Riga’s egg export reached its first peak. See Gernet, Entwicklung, Table 26, 42.
76 Lenz, Die Entwicklung Rigas, 66.
77 Darwin, Unlocking the World, 297.
78 On the railroad from Riga to Daugavpils see Henriksson, The Tsar’s Loyal Germans, 70. On the loan to the city of Riga, see LVVA f. 2736 apr. 1, l. 36, lp. 59–61 (protocols of the Riga Gorodskoi Dumy, August 19, 1913). On the cold storage facility, see Arnold Pabst, Der Hafen von Riga: im Auftrage des Rigaer Börsen-Komitees (Riga, 1908), 37.
79 Taras Hryhorovych Honcharuk, Odeske porto-franko: Istoriya 1819–1859 gg. (Odesa, 2005).
80 Herlihy, Odessa, 202.
81 Ibid
82 Ibid., 203.
83 LVVA f. 2765, apr. 1, l. 84, lp. 47 (Die Industrie Rigas 1913, compiled by the Riga Factory Owners’ Association).
84 LVVA f. 1773, apr. 2, l. 26, lp. 19 (Statut der Gesellschaft der russisch-französischen Gummi-Guttapercha- und Telegraphen Werke in Firma Prowodnik)
85 Katja Wezel, “The Most Successful Trading Hub in Late Imperial Russia: Using Historical GIS to Map Riga as a Global Port City,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 70, no. 3 (2021), 389–415, esp. 409–11, explores this topic in more detail.
86 See several documents in the file LVVA f. 3143, apr. 1, l. 1478 (Anlage eines Export Hafens in Riga).
87 Pabst, Der Hafen von Riga, 14.
88 On the matter of direct investments and subsidies from the imperial government, see RGIA f. 95, op. 11, d. 480, l. 8 (The report on the imperial contributions for the electrification of the Riga railroad station in the export harbor, 10 August 1906).
89 Tanja Penter, Odessa 1917. Revolution an der Peripherie (Cologne, 2000), 19–29.
90 See LVVA f. 3143, apr. 1, l. 200, lp. 92. (A comparative overview by the Riga Exchange Committee in the timber trade files: Eichenstäbe in Wagenladungen von 610 Pud pro Wagen von Kiew, Mohilew Pod., Berditschew, Kowno, Brest, Homel nach Odessa, Riga, Memel). Transporting oak bars weighing 610 pud from Mohilev-Podilskyi to Odessa, a distance of 467 Werst, cost 59.17 rubles, whereas transporting the same amount of timber to Riga (distance: 1277 Werst), cost 103.88 rubles.
91 Ibid.
92 See LVVA f. 3143, apr. 1, l. 200, lp. 100–3 (A copy of the letter from the Odessa Exchange Committee to the editorial board of the journal “Vestnik Finanzov”: Kopiia Odesskii birzhevoi komitet v redaktsiiu Vestnika Finansov, Promyshlennosti i Torgovli, June 20, 1894).
93 For the steamship revolution, see Darwin, Unlocking the World, 80.
94 LVVA f. 3141, apr. 1, l. 200, lp. 101. (“Vestnik Finanzov”: Kopiia Odesskii birzhevoi komitet v redaktsiiu Vestnika Finansov, Promyshlennosti i Torgovli, June 20, 1894)
95 Manfred Hildermeier, Geschichte der Sowjetunion 1917–1991: Entstehung und Niedergang des ersten sozialistischen Staates (Munich, 2017), 37.
96 Darwin, Unlocking the World; Evrydiki Sifneos, Valentina Shandra and Oksana Yurkova, eds., Port-Cities of the Northern Shore of the Black Sea: Institutional, Economic and Social Development, 18th- Early 20th Centuries (Rethymnon, 2021).
97 LVVA f. 3143, apr. 1, l. 11a, lp. 476–479. (Letter to the imperial trade department of the Ministry of Trade and Industry in response to an article in Novaya Vremya, September 25, 1914, whose author had accused the Riga Exchange Committee of violating imperial interests and collaborating with the German and Austrian empires)
98 Hartl, Die Interessenvertretungen, 22.