The Treaty of Kiakhta had founded the eponymous border town and designated it the official site of economic intercourse between China and Russia in 1727, and until the Great Reform period of the 1860s Kiakhta was the only conduit through which goods could legally pass between the two empires. In the nineteenth century, the “Kiakhta system” came to signify the whole of Russia’s historic relationship with imperial China, and “Kiakhta tea” served as shorthand for legally imported Chinese tea. In the twentieth century, after the Great Reforms and the Trans-Siberian Railway had rendered the Kiakhta system obsolete, the town acquired a patina of nostalgia for the lost Russian caravan tea trade.
Tea had remained the rarefied luxury of court circles until Russian tea imports suddenly began to rise steeply in the 1790s for reasons that are not entirely clear. While statistics on Russian tea importation before the 1790s are almost wholly absent, some general observations can be made. Between about 1760 and 1780, Arcadius Kahan detected a general shift in the emphasis of Russian luxury imports from textiles to colonial foods and beverages. Kahan speculated that the falling price of textiles freed up the wealthy to spend more on colonial
imports like tea and sugar.14 During that same period, from the 1760s through the 1780s, a significant portion of the tea entering the Russian Empire had been imported through Western Europe and especially through England. Concurrently, frequent interruptions in commerce at the border town of Kiakhta, the only authorized site of Sino-Russian trade, increased the relative importance of tea importation through Europe. Widespread destabilization following the French Revolution of 1789, however, probably adversely affected the amount of tea reaching Russia
from the West.15 As a result, the Middle Kingdom again became Russia’s primary source of tea,
and duties on tea importation a growing source of revenue for the imperial treasury. Between
1762 and 1785, tea had comprised a mere 15 percent of Russian imports from China.16 After
1790, when the Russian and Chinese governments came to a new agreement about the border between their empires, the China tea trade rose rapidly to prominence and would continue to grow steadily. In 1792, the Russian Senate announced the opening of free two-way barter trade at Kiakhta, and consequently, reliable statistics on Russian tea importation date from that year. From that time forward, the Russian government began keeping more detailed records on imports generally, and tea quickly became one of the key commodities in the Sino-Russian
trade.17 Catherine the Great herself designed a new tariff system to protect the Kiakhta trade
shortly before her death in 1796, but after she was gone her son Paul I dismantled this plan along
with many of his mother’s other policies.18 The Kiakhta trade seemingly did not stand in great
need of such protection at this time, however, for it grew by 49 percent between 1798 and
14 Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout, 192, 197. 15 Sokolov, Chai i Chainaia Torgovlia, 29-30.
16 Mancall, “The Kiakhta Trade,” 30. 17 Sokolov, Chai i Chainaia Torgovlia, 31.
1800.19 In 1800, the Russian government passed a law stipulating that all trade at Kiakhta must
be carried out by barter only, in order to prevent specie from draining abroad.20
In an effort to stimulate the economy, which had fallen into disarray during his father’s short and turbulent reign, Tsar Alexander I (r. 1801-1825) lost no time in lifting restrictions on imports and exports, a measure which doubtless added a further stimulus to the growth in Russian tea importation and consumption. That situation changed in 1807, when Alexander entered into a deeply unpopular alliance with Napoleon. The agreement with Napoleon entailed Russia’s joining the Continental System, which was designed to cut off British political and economic relations with the rest of Europe. Alexander’s alignment with Napoleon and the exclusion of Britain from the Continental System probably increased the prominence of French
merchants in Russian markets.21 But Alexander’s administration proved unwilling or unable to
enforce measures against British contraband, and tea imported through England continued to flow in illegally through Russia’s western borders. A January 13, 1807, regulation forbade foreigners from holding shares in Russian companies, and this would have curtailed the activities of the large number of French merchants then active in the Russian tea trade, many of whom
were apparently Catholic.22 The Franco-Russian alliance broke down because of Russia’s
unwillingness to aid French aggression against Austria in 1808 and 1809, and in 1812 Napoleon
19 Mancall, “The Kiakhta Trade,” 31. In response to such aggressive growth in Far Eastern trade, in 1799 Paul
chartered the Russian-American Company, Russia’s first joint-stock company, and charged it with the project of establishing Russian settlements in North America. Throughout its history, the Company would play an important role as a supplier of Chinese tea on the Russian wholesale market.
20Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (hereafter PSZ) 26, no. 19328; Kulisher, Istoriia Russkoi Torgovli,
297; Sokolov, Chai i Chainaia Torgovlia, 61-62.
21 The presence of French tea merchants in Russia may also have been due in part to Paul I’s selective reversal of
some of Catherine’s anti-French policies.
22 This did not render the Russian merchantry homogeneous, however, as its ranks already included a number of
invaded Russia. Russian troops, led by General M. I. Kutuzov, defeated Napoleon in the fall of that year, but not before Moscow had burned to the ground. Unfortunately, the loss of the archives held at Moscow’s Roman Catholic Church in the great fire of 1812 severely limits our demographic knowledge about the French tea merchants who were active in the Russian Empire
during the complex period leading up to the War of 1812.23
Meanwhile, in the first two decades of the nineteenth century Russian tea imports from the east rose unchecked, and despite the logistical difficulties and steep overhead costs, high profit margins on retail tea sales within the Russian Empire motivated more and more merchants
to invest in the China trade.24 This in turn resulted in further growth in Russian tea imports, and
consequently retail prices began to fall. By the time of Alexander’s death in 1825, tea already
comprised more than 87 percent of Russian imports from China.25 The geopolitical position of
China in the early nineteenth century also indirectly contributed to the flowering of the Russian tea trade. While Sino-Russian relations were sensitive and sometimes rocky, increased colonial pressure exerted by Great Britain on China’s southern coasts motivated the Middle Kingdom to
strengthen its ties with Russia, Britain’s economic rival and a rising sea power.26
Thus the dawn of the nineteenth century ushered in the golden age of Russia’s fabled caravan tea trade with China. The Kiakhta system owed its success to the long, comparatively peaceable, and mutually advantageous history of Sino-Russian relations, which had begun with the Treaties of Nerchinsk and Kiakhta in 1689 and 1727, respectively. This relationship long
23 Sokolov, Liudi Chaia (Moscow: Sputnik, 2014), 10.
24 Sokolov, “‘Po chasham temnoiu strueiu uzhe dushistyi chai bezhal…’” in Chainye Zametki (Moscow: Sputnik,
2014), 64.
25 Mancall, “The Kiakhta Trade,” 31.
26 Mikhail Iosifovich Sladkovskii, The Long Road: Sino-Russian Economic Contacts from Ancient Times to 1917
predated, and contrasted sharply with, the unequal treaties that Britain and other Western powers would coerce China into signing in the nineteenth century. That the Kiakhta trade operated by barter only meant that the value of goods exchanged was approximately equal, and this would have important consequences for the Russian tea trade later in the nineteenth century. While the relationship entailed political benefits for both Eurasia’s great land empires, a general Chinese disinterest in Russian exports may have stymied the Kiakhta system had it not been for the
demand for furs among courtiers in Beijing.27 Russian merchants exchanged furs, raw canvas,
processed leather, and other items at Kiakhta for tea, porcelain, silk fabrics, and other goods, which they then transported by a number of different routes to Nizhnii Novgorod for sale at the
annual fair.28 From there, merchants distributed tea throughout European Russia. The city of
Moscow boasted the largest concentration of tea merchants and tea companies until the Russian
Empire’s collapse in 1917.29
The history of the Russian tea trade illustrates the interconnected nature of political and economic developments at opposite ends of the Russian Empire. The table below reveals the
direct impact of Russia’s war against Napoleon on Russian tea imports from China.30
Table 1
Baikhov tea imports via Kiakhta
27 Mancall, “The Kiakhta Trade,” 27. 28 Fitzpatrick, The Great Russian Fair, 9. 29 Sokolov, Chai i Chainaia Torgovlia, 98.
30 Korsak, Istoriko-Statisticheskoe Obozrenie, 110. See also Korsak, p. 71, Smith and Christian, Bread and Salt, 233,
Year Baikhov tea imports via Kiakhta (in pounds)
1792 246,996 1797 460,764 1802 776,916 1807 1,438,956 1811 1,670,580 1812 874,044 1813 2,432,988
The table indicates that between 1792 and 1811, Russian tea imports roughly doubled every five years, until Napoleon’s invasion of Russia cut tea imports almost in half in 1812. The year following Napoleon’s defeat, 1813, saw a spectacular recovery in Russian tea imports from China. It should be borne in mind, however, that not all the tea imported from Kiakhta reached the fair at Nizhnii Novgorod or the market stalls of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Merchants probably sold a significant percentage of it, how much is unknown, in Siberia.
Russian tea culture had been born during Catherine the Great’s reign, which also saw the height of Russian enthusiasm for, and identification with, Western Europe. In addition to
disrupting Russia’s tea supply from the West, the French Revolution of 1789 dampened many Russians’ enthusiasm for Europe. The war with Napoleon in 1812 further damaged Russian ties to Europe and Russia’s perceived identity as a European state, and an intensive cultural search for Russian national identity followed. Despite the fact that Russian tea culture had evolved from
Western precedents, changing Russian attitudes toward Europe in the wake of 1789 and 1812 did not shake Russia’s growing enthusiasm for tea.