ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns with the western European merchants who played the principal role in providing the necessary ties for Russia's sea trade in the west, which was the most significant economically and in turnover for the country in the period. It investigates the organization and status of foreign merchants in eighteenth-century Russia, addressing the organizational and legal status of their groupings and differences in organization and degree of unity of different national groupings of merchants. The chapter focuses on the composition of communities, examining their homogeneous or heterogeneous character from the angle of their kinship ties, ethnicity and contacts with the native land and world market. In Arkhangelsk there were no English merchants at all, though some of them traded through Narva. In 1734 a trade treaty between Russia and Great Britain also gave English merchants in Russia considerable benefits in comparison to other merchants. German merchants arriving in Novgorod were housed in specially built yards surrounded by solid-timbered wall.
