The reconfiguration of North Eurasian trade in the first half of the nineteenth century

This chapter shows that the reconfiguration of North Eurasian trade in the first half of the nineteenth century had its roots in the opening of the Black Sea for international trade, the onset of industrialization in (small) parts of North Eurasia, and the emergence of competing productive areas in Western Europe, the Mediterranean, the United States, and Latin America. It draws attention to the role of ‘modern’ commercial infrastructure (or its absence), as a driving force for change in commodity flows through North Eurasia and substantiates that North Eurasia’s role in the supply of foodstuffs and raw materials was already under threat at the start of the nineteenth century. Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War, its subsequent reorientation towards the vast and disputed land border between North and South Eurasia and the rise of diplomatic tension and commercial competition with the British Empire, which itself longed for controlling these borderlands, mark the end of the quest for North Eurasian trade.