Through the Filter of Tobacco: The Limits of Global Trade in the Early Modern World

Through the Filter of Tobacco:The Limits of Global Trade in theEarly Modern WorldMATTHEW P. ROMANIELLO

History, University of Hawa’i

In 1663, an English Embassy lead by the Earl of Carlisle traveled to MuscoviteRussia. Failing to make any significant breakthroughs in Anglo-Russian traderelations, a member of the Earl’s Embassy observed that the Russians “will intime leave off that rustick and barbarous humor, which is so natural to them,and learn by degrees to live with more civility. . . . And were they under agentler Government, and had a free Trade with every body, no doubt but thisNation would in short time be taken with our civility and decent way ofliving.”1 Even in this short passage, the plan for English economic expansionwas clear. The first step was the establishment of free trade between thecountries, which would produce widespread cultural change as the Russiansadopted the superior English customs. In the end, a transformed Muscovywould become a natural market for English goods, producing only increasedprofits. This plan remained essentially unchanged from the beginning of regu-larized trade between England and Muscovy in the sixteenth century to thebeginning of the eighteenth, despite the lack of success in changing Muscoviteculture in the direction of an English-inspired model.2

In fact, while they remained committed to the cause of increasing trade withMuscovy, English traders struggled during the seventeenth century. Theyexpected tremendous advantages from “free trade,” by which they meant their

Acknowledgments: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Cultures in Conflictconference at the University of Toledo, in April 2006. I thank the participants of this conference,the readers for CSSH, and Steve Harris, Paul Hibbeln, Eve Levin, Tricia Starks, and Rex Wadefor their comments and suggestions.

1 Guy Miege, A Relation of Three Embassies from His Sacred Majestie Charles II to the GreatDuke of Muscovie, the King of Sweden, and the King of Denmark (London, 1669), 62.

2 On the nature of Anglo-Russian trade, see M. S. Anderson, Britain’s Discovery of Russia,1553–1815 (New York, 1958), 1–48; Geraldine M. Phipps, Sir John Merrick: EnglishMerchant-Diplomat in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Newtonville, Mass., 1983); and Samuel H.Baron, “Thrust and Parry: Anglo-Russian Relations in the Muscovite North,” Oxford SlavonicPapers, New Series, 21 (1988), 19–40.

Comparative Studies in Society and History 2007;49(4):914–937.0010-4175/07 $15.00 # 2007 Society for Comparative Study of Society and HistoryDOI: 10.1017/S0010417507000801

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right of unrestricted trade with foreign countries, with severe restrictions on anycompetitors. Thus, as the Dutch successfully entered the Muscovite market,English merchants protested repeatedly against the injustice of Dutch trademonopolies to both their king and the Muscovite tsar.3 When they failed tomotivate Moscow to expand their mercantile rights, English merchants placedtheir hope in tobacco, a commodity that Muscovy had not accepted, as theirbest chance to create a new market that only they could successfully exploit.Earlier studies of the English tobacco trade in Russia focused upon either

the part it played in the broader history of Anglo-Russian trade or the detailsof Peter the Great’s tobacco contract.4 None of these studies questioned theplausibility of a successful tobacco market in Muscovy, and instead theyaccepted the hopeful predictions of English merchants despite the vastcultural divide that separated England and Muscovy. The English expectationthat trade would inspire the adoption of English customs and createconsumers of their goods was predicated on a fundamental misapprehensionregarding the relative weights of trade and cultural prohibitions againstforeign customs. When tobacco was introduced into Muscovy in theseventeenth century, most Muscovite authorities, including the RussianOrthodox Church and the tsar, condemned its use. Furthermore, Muscovy’songoing reforms created a mercantilistic economic system that dependedon the strict regulation of all foreign trade for Moscow’s benefit.5 Neitheran argument based on the idea of the benefits of free trade nor one thatsuggested a rapid cultural transformation would successfully persuadeRussians to abandon their long-held opposition to tobacco. The tobaccotrade exemplifies the failure of seventeenth-century English economic

3 For a discussion of the Dutch breakthrough into the Muscovite market, see Inna Lubimenko,“The Struggle of the Dutch with the English for the Russian Market in the Seventeenth Century,”Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fourth Series, 7 (1924), 27–51; Jonathan I. Israel,Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Oxford, 1989), 43–48; and E. Kh. Veinroks, “Mezh-dunarodnaia konkurentsiia v torgovle mezhdu Rossiei i Zapadnoi Evropoi,” in, Iu. N. Bespiatykh,ed., Russkii Sever i Zapadnaia Evropa (St. Petersburg, 1999), 9–41.

4 I. Razskazov, “Istoricheskiia svedeniia o tabake,” Zapiska Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo ekono-micheskogo obshchestva, 1, 1 (Jan. 1854): 16–17; C. M. MacInnes, The Early English TobaccoTrade (London, 1926), 171–77; O. J. Frederickson, “Virginia Tobacco in Russia under Peter theGreat,” Slavonic and East European Review 21 (1943): 40–56; A. A. Nikiforov, Russko-Angliiskieotnoshenia pri Petre I (Moscow, 1950), 37–41; Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., “The Beginnings of Tradebetween the United States and Russia,” The American Neptune 21 (1961): 207–15; Jacob M. Price,The Tobacco Adventure to Russia: Enterprise, Politics, and Diplomacy in the Quest for a NorthernMarket for English Colonial Tobacco, 1676–1722 (Philadelphia, 1961); Walter Kirchner, Commer-cial Relations between Russia and Europe 1400–1800: Collected Essays (Bloomington, Ind.,1966), 176–77; George Barany, The Anglo-Russian Entente Cordiale of 1697–1698: Peter Iand William III at Utrecht (New York, 1986), 25–40; A. V. Demkin, Britanskoe kupechestvo vRossii XVIII veka (Moscow, 1998), 107–14.

5 For an excellent introduction to the topic see Jarmo T. Kotilaine, “Mercantilism in Pre-PetrineRussia,” in, Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe, eds., Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and SocialChange in Seventeenth-Century Russia (London, 2004), 143–73.

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ideology, which resulted in Muscovy remaining outside of the English sphereof influence and demonstrated the strength of Muscovite religious and politi-cal resistance to Western culture. By showing how the presumed influence ofthe exporting power failed to alter the importer in any meaningful way, thetobacco trade reveals the limited significance of early-modern globalization.6

I N T R O D U C I N G T O B A C C O

English expectations for the importance of tobacco as a trade good reflectedEngland’s own reaction to its importation in the late sixteenth century. Upontobacco’s first arrival, English responses varied from praise to condemnation,but it remained legal for both importation and sale.7 Among the mosteminent of tobacco’s opponents was King James I, who summarized theprimary objections to the product in his well-known Counterblaste toTobacco. The king argued that while many assumed tobacco possessed ben-eficial medicinal properties, a common belief for most of the new commoditiesof the early-modern world, no one had yet proved these claims. The greatdanger of tobacco arose from its suspicious origins as a result of its nativeAmerican discovery. James I wondered, “what honour or policie can mooveus to imitate the barbarous and beastly maners of the wilde, godlesse, andslavish Indians, especially in so vile and stinking a custome?”8 Despitehis objections, James did not forbid the importation or sale of tobacco inEngland, and it only became more popular as the seventeenth centuryprogressed.

Growing tobacco consumption failed to assuage all English concernsabout its medicinal and spiritual dangers, but it was economic fears that domi-nated the public debate. Because England could not produce sufficient quan-tity within its imperial borders, Spain prospered as the great exporter oftobacco in the early seventeenth century. Not surprisingly, concernedEnglish merchants voiced their fears about the long-term impact of tobaccoimportation on England’s economic health.9 Edward Bennett, for example,raised the public alarm about the loss of specie in his pamphlet, TreatiseTouching the Importation of Tobacco out of Spaine. Bennett argued that itwould be in the kingdom’s best interest to develop tobacco plantations

6 In this way, the Anglo-Russian tobacco trade contributes to the ongoing discussions of theimpact of conflicting cosmologies in the reception of new commodities. For an introduction tothe topic, see Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History(New York, 1985); Marshall Sahlins, “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of‘The World System,’” Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988): 1–51.

7 For a discussion of English cultural reactions to tobacco, see Jeffrey Knapp, “ElizabethanTobacco,” Representations 21 (1988): 27–66.

8 James I, A Counterblaste to Tobacco (London, 1601; repr. Amsterdam, 1969), 6.9 This is reflective of the growing public concern about trade. See Robert Ashton, “The Parlia-

mentary Agitation for Free Trade in the Opening Years of the Reign of James I,” Past and Present38 (1967): 40–55.

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in Virginia to avoid a dependence upon imported tobacco.10 Other Londonmerchants concerned about England’s balance of trade echoed hisassessment. In Thomas Mun’s England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade, heinstructed his fellow merchants that England must “prevent the importationsof Hemp, Flax, Cordage, Tobacco, and divers other things which nowwe fetch from strangers to our great impoverishing.”11 As the Virginianplantations became commercially viable by the 1620s, likeminded merchantsprospered from the new product.12 The growth and success of the industrywas sufficient that, despite reiterating James I’s objections to tobacco,Oliver Cromwell failed to halt its sale.13

Meanwhile, the fortunes of the English merchants in Muscovy, who traded ina joint-stock organization known as the Muscovy Company, were enteringa long period of declining influence and returns. The Russians had restrictedthe English ever since the Muscovy Company’s establishment, and limitedits trading to a few cities in the north. The English could only operate alonga direct line between their port of entry at Arkhangel’sk and Moscow.14 Thisprecluded significant English trade with most of Muscovy, leaving them predis-posed to equate Muscovy’s demand for tobacco with that of the small freepeasant population of the Russian north. The restrictions, in this sense, didlittle to moderate the English idea that their product and methods were suffi-cient to open the Muscovite market. When Muscovy suffered through itslong civil war at the beginning of the seventeenth century, James I and his gov-ernment considered establishing a protectorate over northern Russia in order toprevent any further influence from Sweden or Poland.15 The idea ofannexation ended with the conclusion of the civil war, but the Dutch entranceto the market early in the seventeenth century created a new economic threat tothe English right of “free trade.” As the Dutch successfully claimed exportmonopolies, the Muscovy Company believed its commercial interests in

10 Edward Bennett, A Treatise Touching the Importation of Tobacco from Spaine (n.p., 1620;repr. Amsterdam, 1977). For a discussion of the development of American tobacco plantationsto avoid the loss of further specie to European competitors, see Neville Williams, “England’sTobacco Trade in the Reign of Charles I,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 65(1957): 403–49, and John R. Pagan, “Dutch Maritime and Commercial Activity in Mid-Seventeenth Century Virginia,” The Virginian Magazine of History and Biography 90 (1982):485–501.

11 Mun’s study was first published in 1664. Thomas Mun, England’s Treasure by ForraignTrade (London, 1713), Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature, no. 5034, 15–16.

12 Alfred Rive, “A Brief History of the Regulation and Taxation of Tobacco in England,”William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Second series, 9 (1929): 1–12.

13 Rudi Matthee, “Exotic Substances: The Introduction and Global Spread of Tobacco, Coffee,Cocoa, Tea, and Distilled Liquor, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in, Roy Porter and MikulasTeich, eds., Drugs and Narcotics in History (Cambridge, 1995), 33.

14 Tsar Feodor Ivanovich to the Muscovy Company, Feb. 1586, The National Archives, Kew,England (hereafter NA), State Papers (hereafter SP) 91/1, ff. 55r–58r.

15 Chester Dunning, “James I, the Russian Company, and the Plan to Establish a Protectorateover North Russia,” Albion 21 (1989): 206–26.


Muscovy were diminishing.16 By the time the tsar revoked its tax-freetrade status during the early years of the English Civil War, the obstacles tothe Company’s trade seemed overwhelming.17 It needed a panacea to recoverits position.

Tobacco had already been exported successfully to other foreign countriesthat had restricted English trade practices. The English East India Company(EIC), for example, had been organized along the lines of the MuscovyCompany and faced equal difficulties trading in Safavid Iran and MughalIndia. In both countries, tobacco had been prohibited upon its initial entry,but each government reversed its decision shortly thereafter. The EIC begancuring tobacco in its India factories as early as 1612. In response, EmperorJahangir forbade smoking by decree in 1617, but profits from Mughal taxeson tobacco rendered the ban moot. By the 1620s, the Mughals allowed com-mercial tobacco production inside their borders, creating new opportunitiesfor the EIC as exporters of tobacco throughout Asia.18 The EIC followeda similar course in Iran, where Shah ‘Abbas prohibited tobacco early inthe 1600s and banned it again in 1621, but then conceded legalization whileheavily taxing consumption. The taxes became a valuable source of staterevenue and tobacco remained legal, and the EIC began selling tobacco inIran by 1628–1629.19 In both countries prohibitions had been based on reli-gious objections, as well as the personal distaste of each monarch. In bothcases profits from the trade overrode prohibitions. Therefore, the MuscovyCompany had two favorable examples from the recent past that suggestedthe tsar’s initial objections could be overcome easily, regardless of his beliefsor inclinations.

However, the tsar’s ban on tobacco remained in force for more than eightyyears. Muscovy’s seemingly anomalous reaction to tobacco stemmed from itsparticular cultural frameworks. Unlike the contemporary English, Safavids, orMughals, Russians resisted all foreign habits and customs, including tobacco,as a matter of doctrine. Tsar Ivan IV’s reforms, imposed in the middle of thesixteenth century (coincidentally, just before the original agreement betweenthe tsar and the Muscovy Company), included the Stoglav.20 The hundred

16 In a recent study of the Muscovy Company, it has been demonstrated that this was only a per-ceived decline. Maria Salomon Arel, “The Muscovy Company in the First Half of the SeventeenthCentury. Trade and Position in the Russian State. A Reassessment” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University,1995).

17 Geraldine M. Phipps, “The Russian Embassy to London of 1645–46 and the Abrogation ofthe Muscovy Company’s Charter,” Slavonic and East European Review 68 (1990): 257–76.

18 B. G. Gokhale, “Tobacco in Seventeenth-Century India,” Asian Agri-History 2, 2 (1998):87–96.

19 Rudi Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900(Princeton, 2005), 117–43.

20 For a brief discussion of these accomplishments, see Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivanthe Terrible (London, 2003), 41–78.


chapters of this 1551 document had the primary purpose of standardizingOrthodox rituals within Muscovy’s borders, but it also included a comprehensiveban on all foreign habits, declaring that the “evil customs” of other countries andfaiths defiled Russia with their “lawlessness.”21 Furthermore, since tobaccowas not mentioned in the Bible it could be singled out as a particularlyillicit commodity.22 While the Russian Orthodox Church’s objections did notfully prevent Muscovite acceptance of foreign customs, they did become asignificant barrier.As in many other early-modern states, a religious condemnation could have

the force of law if the state and Church agreed. The Stoglav was part of a con-tinuing process of defining Muscovite national identity based on its Orthodoxfaith. Part of both the tsar’s and the Church’s conception of Muscovy’s status inthe world was a belief that the country had become a “New Israel,” andMoscow itself was its Jerusalem.23 For example, when the Stepennaia kniga,written during Ivan IV’s life, traced out the origins of Muscovy, it beganwith the creation of the world based on the Old Testament and then traceda lineage of emperors from Alexander the Great through the Romans andByzantines until at last arriving at Ivan and his empire, Muscovy.24 The associ-ation was clear—Ivan was both a world conqueror like Alexander but also aholy defender of true Christianity, just as Rome had been until the Schism of1054 and Byzantium until the fall of Constantinople. Ivan’s success in conquer-ing the Muslim Khanates of Kazan’ and Astrakhan, the first Orthodox victoriesagainst Islam since 1453, justified his role as defender of the faith.25 As a result,the concept of Muscovy as a holy kingdom became an inherent feature ofMuscovite political culture.For the remainder of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Muscovy’s

tsars exploited their subjects’ belief in the validity of this message to providethemselves with a charismatic aura of authority.26 Throughout his reign IvanIV traveled on pilgrimages to the holy sites of Orthodox Russia, whichbecame public exhibitions of political hierarchy and his dominance over

21 This resolution is published in chapter 39 of the Stoglav, the canons of the 1551 council.E. B. Emchenko, ed., Stolgav: Issledovaniie i tekst (Moscow, 2000), 302.

22 Sidney W. Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom (Boston, 1996), 76–77.23 Daniel B. Rowland, “Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Limits on the Power of the Tsar

(1540s–1660s)?” The Russian Review 49 (1990): 125–55; and “Moscow—The Third Rome or theNew Israel?” The Russian Review 55 (1996): 591–614.

24 Chronograph, last quarter of the seventeenth century, Aronov Collection, no. 18, HilandarResearch Library, Columbus, Oh. The text from ff. 10r.–722v. closely resembles the Stepennaiakniga of the sixteenth century; published in Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, v. 21, pts. 1 and 2(St. Petersburg, 1908–1913; repr. Dusseldorf, 1970).

25 Jaroslaw Pelenski, Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438–1560s) (TheHague, 1974), 251–75.

26 Here I borrow the idea of charismatic authority from Clifford Geertz, “Centers, Kings, andCharisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in, Joseph Ben-David and Terry NicholsClark, eds., Culture and Its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils (Chicago, 1977), 150–71.


Muscovite territory.27 Ivan also celebrated his conquest of Kazan’ with the con-struction of the Church of the Intercession on the Moat (popularly St. Basil’s)on Red Square, as a public sign of the connection between Orthodoxy and hispersonal victory. Later tsars demonstrated their sacred aura through their par-ticipation in two of the most famous yearly spectacles held on Red Square,on the holy days of Epiphany and Palm Sunday. There, the tsar’s court, theRussian Orthodox hierarchy, and even the public witnessed the tsar presenthimself as one of the holiest figures in Orthodoxy.28 When a later revision ofthe Stepennaia kniga added Ivan IV’s successors, Fedor Ivanovich, BorisGodunov, and Mikhail Fedorovich, as equally sacred defenders of the faith,it simply confirmed the public perception of the tsar’s sacred aura and hiskingdom’s holy status.29

The effect of this cultural conception of Muscovy should not be overstated,and Muscovy was not insulated from all cultural contact with Europe and Asia.However, Orthodoxy did raise significant barriers to the success of the Englishtobacco venture. The Russian Orthodox Church had a decades-long ban onall foreign customs, and Muscovy’s tsars had far more to gain by supportingthe Church’s position than opposing it. When tobacco arrived in the bags ofEnglish merchants, the “lawlessness” feared by Russian authorities wasquickly demonstrated. Isaac Massa, the Dutch emissary to Moscow early inthe seventeenth century, blamed the English ambassador in Iaroslavl for start-ing with his tobacco smoking a “great conflagration that caused muchdamage.”30 That this incident might also sabotage English efforts most likelyoccurred to Massa. Physical damage to property as a result of tobacco’sillegal entry through smuggling created a rationale for Orthodoxy’s rejectionof tobacco even before the Russians had a chance to adopt the habit.

The first tsarist ban on tobacco occurred in Siberia. The tsar’s non-Russianand non-Orthodox subjects were always a suspect population for acquiringimmoral habits. Therefore their tobacco habit was no surprise, and only reaf-firmed tobacco’s lawlessness. In March 1627, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovichinstructed the governor of Tobolsk in Siberia to stop the sale of tobacco that

27 Nancy S. Kollmann, “Pilgrimage, Procession and Symbolic Space in Sixteenth-CenturyRussian Politics,” in, Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland, eds., Medieval Russian Culture,vol. 2 (Berkeley, 1994), 164–81.

28 Robert O. Crummey, “Court Spectacles in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Illusion and Reality,”in, DanielWaugh, ed.,Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin (Columbus, Oh., 1985), 130–58; Paul A. Bush-kovitch, “The Epiphany Ceremony of the Russian Orthodox Court in the Sixteenth and SeventeenthCenturies,” The Russian Review 49 (1990): 1–17; and Michael S. Flier, “Breaking the Code: TheImage of the Tsar in the Muscovite Palm Sunday Ritual,” in, Michael S. Flier and DanielRowland, eds., Medieval Russian Culture, vol. 2 (Berkeley, 1994), 213–44.

29 Chronograph, last quarter of the seventeenth century, Aronov Collection, no. 18, HilandarResearch Library, Columbus, Oh., ff. 723r.–785v.

30 Isaac Massa, A Short History of the Beginnings and Origins of these Present Wars in Moscowunder the Reign of Various Sovereigns Down to the Year 1610, G. Edward Orchard, trans. and ed.(Toronto, 1982), 190.


was being exported to Siberia from the central provinces from Muscovy. Theprice of tobacco in Siberia was too high, and was driving servitors into debt.This law may have been a reiteration of a law passed as early as 1618.31 Thetsar’s government ultimately prohibited the presence of tobacco in all citiesof his kingdom “on pain of the death penalty” in 1633/34.32 Adam Olearius,a secretary in the embassy of the Duke of Holstein, during his travels inMuscovy observed on 24 September 1634 eight men and one woman beingbeaten with a knout for selling tobacco and vodka, demonstrating the immedi-acy of the tsar’s order.33

Initial attempts to control tobacco were likely unsuccessful, because the statecontinued to promulgate even more comprehensive restrictions against its use.When Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich published the Law Code of 1649 (Ulozhenie),the first compendium of Muscovite law, it included eleven articles supportingthe prohibition of tobacco, and upheld the earlier death penalty for Russiansand foreigners (inozemtsy) trading or possessing tobacco.34 In addition, any-one caught with tobacco would be interrogated, by torture if necessary, touncover its origin.35 Tobacco consumers would not be executed, but: “Ifmusketeers, and wanderers, and various people are brought in for arraignmentwith tobacco twice, or thrice: torture those people many times, beat them with aknout on the rack . . . . For many arraignments slit the nostrils and cut off thenoses of such people.”36

While the Law Code enacted a comprehensive ban against tobacco, even thiswas not sufficient to completely suppress tobacco usage. By 1664, Tsar AlekseiMikhailovich added another restriction for Siberia: any dealer in tobacco,whether Russian or foreign, would be whipped publicly and imprisoned forone week. Furthermore, all confiscated tobacco was to be burned “to discou-rage the people.”37

Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church actively promoted a public aware-ness of tobacco’s sinfulness. High Church officials advised Tsar MikhailFedorovich on his first ban against tobacco. By the second half of the seven-teenth century tobacco’s evil nature had become a recurring motif in edifyingand miracle tales. For example, two miracles attributed to the Icon of theSavior in Krasnoborsk recorded visions in which the recipients were warned

31 Audrey Burton, The Bukharans: A Dynastic, Diplomatic and Commercial History 1550–1702 (New York, 1997), 508–9.

32 Richard Hellie, trans. and ed., The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649: Part 1, Text andTranslation (Irvine, Calif., 1988), ch. 25, article 11, p. 228. Adam Olearius, The Travels of Oleariusin Seventeenth-Century Russia, Samuel H. Baron, trans. and ed. (Stanford, 1967), 230–31.

33 Olearius, The Travels of Olearius, 146, 230–31.34 Hellie,Muscovite Law Code, ch. 25, article 11, p. 228. Inozemtsy, literally “people of foreign

lands,” includes both non-RussianMuscovite subjects as well as all foreigners; that is, non-subjects.35 Hellie, Muscovite Law Code, ch. 25, article 13, 228–29.36 Hellie, Muscovite Law Code, ch. 25, article 16, p. 229.37 Burton, Bukharans, 515.


against possessing or smoking tobacco.38 While the Church’s recording ofthese visions reflected its official endorsement of them, the belief of being mir-aculously saved from the evil of tobacco had to emerge from the experiences ofthe cured.

The combination of the legal restrictions against tobacco sales and theRussian Orthodox Church’s longstanding objection to foreign customs fulfilledmore than one purpose for the tsar’s government. By the seventeenth century,the Muscovite government was consciously crafting a set of mercantilistic pol-icies designed to control economic development. All foreign merchants, includ-ing the Muscovy Company, had their movements restricted and monitoredboth at the border and within the country. The tsar’s government increasinglyfavored export monopolies as the best solution to provide steady revenue and tocontrol all foreigners within the borders, and this was the origin of the Dutchexport monopolies.39 Imported tobacco would drain revenues just as it hadin England, Mughal India, and Safavid Iran. Each of those countries hadresponded by legalizing tobacco production, but Muscovy’s environmentcould not sustain a tobacco crop. Therefore, it held no interest for any of thetsarist chancelleries. English merchants saw no reason why their trading strat-egies would not operate as planned there, but any English proposal that con-tained so little benefit for the tsar had little chance of success.

Just as Muscovite political cultural and religion were not perfect insulatorsagainst foreign influence, the legal and economic barriers to tobacco werenot entirely successful, and tobacco continued to be sold and consumedinside Muscovy. As early as 1634, shortly after the first comprehensive banon tobacco, a foreign observer in Moscow commented: “the Russians alsogreatly love tobacco . . . . The poor man gave his kopek as readily fortobacco as bread.”40 With evidence of consumption, but without legal per-mission to import tobacco, foreign merchants relied on smuggling, as notedby the Dutch envoy Massa. The most reliable smuggling route into Muscovywas overland via Sweden. Swedish middlemen purchased tobacco fromEnglish and Dutch merchants in the Baltic entrepots, particularly Narva andRiga, and in turn sold the tobacco to Russian merchants, who then smuggledit across the border. Among the seventeenth-century responsibilities for theSwedish resident in Moscow was that of updating Queen Christina onthe tobacco trade in Muscovy, particularly its visibility in the capital.41 Bythe late seventeenth century, the Western tobacco being smuggled into

38 Solovetskoe sobranie 661/719, last miracle dated 1695/6, Russian National Library,St. Petersburg, fols. 16v and 36v, courtesy of Eve Levin.

39 For an extensive discussion of foreign trade, see J. T. Kotilaine, Russia’s Foreign Trade andEconomic Expansion in the Seventeenth Century: Windows on the World (Leiden, 2005).

40 Olearius, Travels of Olearius, 146, 230–31.41 For example, K. Iakubov, “Rossiia i Shvetsiia v pervoi polovine XVII vv., VI: 1647–1650 gg.

Doneseniia koroleve Khristine i pis’ma k korolevskomu sekretariu shvedskogo rezidenta v Moskve


Muscovy comprised as much as 7 percent of Riga’s total trade.42 A second,southern route developed at this same time, traveling from the OttomanEmpire through Moldova.43

Smuggling’s success encouraged the English to attempt to seize the entiremarket, and their demands for “free” trade also led them to experiment witha more direct method of illegal importation. Wary of the growing southernroute, which they could not control, the English went north and tried to cir-cumvent the Swedish middlemen by smuggling tobacco directly throughArkhangel’sk, their port of the entry to Muscovy. This was risky, and theMuscovite port authorities were vigilant, as Phillip Coffy discovered in1634 when he was arrested and imprisoned after tobacco was discoveredamong his possessions. King Charles I entreated Tsar Mikhail Fedorovichto free Coffy, who was “altogether ignorant and innocent” of the charges,adding this request to another complaint against the persistent searches ofall English merchants in Arkhangel’sk.44 However, just two years laterthe king again had to call for an Englishman’s freedom, this time for JohnCartwright, also arrested for smuggling tobacco.45 Nevertheless, profitablesmuggling continued for the remainder of the century. As an amazedmember of the Earl of Carlisle’s embassy of 1663 remarked, tobacco pur-chased for only nine or ten pence a pound in London could be sold forfifteen shillings in Moscow.46 Increasingly, the responsibility of theEnglish envoy to Muscovy in the 1670s was to intervene in arrests ofthese tobacco entrepreneurs. If an English trader was arrested or harassedfor smuggling tobacco, the envoy offered the Muscovite government“Wryting Instituted [Several pretended Reasons, etc.] Marked No. A” topreclude punishment.47

Karla Pommereninga,” Chteniia v imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiskikh priMoskovskom universitete 1 (1898), p. 426, 19 Sept. 1648.

42 V. V. Doroshenko, Torgovlia i kupechestvo Rigi v XVII veke (Riga, 1985), 147, 222. TheSwedish tobacco imports during the seventeenth century and the smuggling of tobacco intoRussia are discussed in Price, The Tobacco Adventure, 5–17.

43 E. M. Pogradskaia, “Moldavskoe kniazhestvo i torgovlia Ottomanskoi imperii s Russkimgosudarstvom (XVII v.),” in, I. G. Budak, et al., eds., Voprosy ekonomicheskoi istorii Moldavii:Epokhi feodalizma i kapitalizma (Kishinev, 1972), 90–99.

44 Letter from Charles I to Mikhail Fedorovich, 22 June 1634, NA, PRO 22/60, English RoyalLetters in the Soviet Central State Archive of Ancient Records, 1557–1655, no. 62.

45 The tsar’s reply to the king’s plea for Cartwright is reprinted in, “Seven Letters of Tsar Mikhailto King Charles I, 1634–8,” Oxford Slavonic Papers 9 (1960): 52–54.

46 Miege, A Relation of Three Embassies, 101–2. For an overview of the price fluctuations oftobacco, see Richard Hellie, The Economy and Material Culture of Russia, 1600–1725(Chicago, 1999), 106–7.

47 This was instruction no. 5 (of twenty-four) presented to Hebdon to explicate his responsibil-ities in Moscow, given to him on 16 September 1676 in London. Instructions from the fellowship ofEnglish Merchants, NA, SP 91/3, pt. 2, fols. 210r–212v.


Institutionalized English smuggling confirmed the Muscovite market fortobacco. The Earl of Carlisle’s embassy failed to convince the tsar to lega-lize the trade, but subsequent envoys continued to press for the privilege. In1676, for example, Envoy John Hebdon protested to King Charles II that hewas unable to secure permission to trade. He hoped Charles’ personalrequest to the tsar might produce a legal tobacco market.48 A year later,Hebdon tried again, believing that only a few individuals blocked the lega-lization of the trade. Perhaps Patriarch Filaret and Tsar Mikhail Fedorovichobjected to tobacco, but now “this present Government have found a Gappto cleare that Scrupell of conscience, and doe find it is more for the Advan-tage of themselves and the Empire, to graunt a Pattent for the same [tobacco]for they finde that theire Subjects spend a greate quantity which is brought inby stelth.”49 Hebdon proved no more successful than earlier envoys, and fellinto considerable disrepute in Moscow after his second appeal. First hefailed to provide goods that he had promised the tsar, and then, “he enter-tained severall Foreigners in his house, with whom he went up and downat unseasonable howers of the night, contrary to the practice of Ambassa-dors. That his Servants being drunk did very often affront and abuse theEmperour’s Subjects.” All of this might have been forgiven, but shortlyafter these complaints one of Hebdon’s servants, at his “instigation,”assaulted and ultimately murdered one of the tsar’s musketeers who hadbeen placed as a guard near Hebdon’s residence.50 Such proponents of thetrade as Hebdon provided convincing evidence of the inherent “lawless-ness” of foreign habits, and did more harm than good for economic argu-ments in support of the tobacco trade.

Vocal public proponents of the tobacco trade in London were dedicatedever more to forcing open the Muscovite market, and they remained ignorantof local failures and the entrenched official opposition to the weed. The ideaof a favorable balance of trade promoted early in the seventeenth century bymerchants such as Bennett and Mun was still in favor.51 Josiah Child, writingin the 1660s, called for an immediate expansion of trade to Muscovy asnecessary to break the growing English dependence on Dutch exports fromMuscovy. In particular, he worried that nine-tenths of the English timbersupply was purchased from Dutch middlemen; an English return to

48 Letter from John Hebdon in Moscow to the King, 1676, NA, SP 91/3, Secretaries of State:State Papers, Russia, pt. 2, fols. 225r–226v.

49 The Humble Proposalls of John Hebdon Esq., [1677], NA, SP 91/3, pt. 2, fol. 243r.50 Extract of the Emperor of Russia’s Letter to the King, 27 Feb. 1678, NA, SP 91/3, pt. 2, fols.

285r–286r.51 Historians have studied extensively the free trade debates. For recent contributions to the

topic, see Edward J. Harpham, “Class, Commerce, and the State: Economic Discourse andLockean Liberalism in the Seventeenth Century,” The Western Political Quarterly 38 (1985):565–82; and Barbara Arneil, “Trade, Plantations, and Property: John Locke and the EconomicDefense of Colonialism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 55 (1994): 591–609.


preeminence in Moscow would correct this situation.52 Similarly, John Pol-lexfen decried the diminishing returns from the Muscovy Company’s trade,which resulted in further lost revenues to the Dutch and the ongoing supplyproblems with limited access to timber, tar, pitch, and hemp.53

To these opinions being expressed in London were added those of Americantobacco plantation owners, who were plotting an entry into the Russian mar-ket. As the price of American tobacco began to drop in the second half ofthe seventeenth century, plantation owners petitioned the British crown fornew markets.54 One of the most desirable markets for American tobacco wasMuscovy, and the plantation owners explicitly advocated an expansion ofexports to Narva, through which tobacco was already being smuggled.55 Theexpectations for Muscovite tobacco consumption were as high as 20,000 hogs-heads a year. The owners anticipated a virtuous circle from the trade: theincreased demand for tobacco would necessitate an expansion of the marketin slaves, which would in turn increase demand for English produce, and theemployment of as many as “ten thousand poor people” to manufacturetobacco products in England for export.56

Advocates of English mercantile power in London, American plantationowners, and English merchants in Muscovy combined as a united voice pres-suring the English crown to take action on the tobacco issue, but it came tonaught. The English misunderstood the seriousness of the Muscovite tobaccoban. Rather than slowly accepting the product based on the success of salesor taxes over time, the Muscovite government only reiterated its prohibition.While non-Russians in Siberia and along the western border with Sweden,Poland, and Ukraine became steady consumers of tobacco, its use by non-Russian and non-Orthodox subjects only encouraged further restrictions in eth-nically Russian areas. To an early-modern Russian there was no legal differencebetween a foreign subject of another monarch and one of the tsar’s own sub-jects if he was not Orthodox—both were in the same legal category: inozemtsy(literally “people of different lands”).57 Therefore, the adoption of tobacco bythe tsar’s non-Russian subjects only corroborated the view that the product was

52 In his preface, Child placed the importance of trading in Muscovy as the first priority ofEnglish trade. Sir Josiah Child, A New Discourse of Trade (London, 1693), Goldsmiths’-KressLibrary of Economic Literature, no. 2804, preface, and p. 105.

53 John Pollexfen, A Discourse of Trade, Coyn and Paper Credit (London, repr. 1700),Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature, no. 3665, 90–91.

54 For a discussion of the price decline and its impact, see Lorena S. Walsh, “Plantation Manage-ment in the Chesapeake, 1620–1820,” The Journal of Economic History 49 (1989): 393–406.

55 Simon Dixon, ed., Britain and Russia in the Age of Peter the Great: Historical Documents(London, 1998), no. 14, Jan.–Feb. 1698, 11–12.

56 “Further Reasons for Inlarging the Trade to Russia, humbly offer’d by . . . the Plantations ofVirginia and Maryland” (London[?], 1695), Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature,no. 3081.6.

57 Inozemtsy is the only collective noun used to identify foreigners and the tsar’s non-Russiansubjects in the Ulozhenie, for example.


a corrupting influence. By 1686, the Muscovite government explicitly bannedthe importation of Ukrainian tobacco into the central provinces surroundingMoscow in an attempt to prevent tobacco smuggling from the south.58 Sostrongly did Muscovite authorities object to the existence of Ukrainiantobacco production that it became a contentious point in the treaty negotiationswith the Cossacks that ultimately resulted in the union with Ukraine in the1660s.59 Throughout the remainder of the century, new laws continued torestrict tobacco sales, demonstrating the state’s unwillingness to compromiseon its long-held objections to it.60

The subtleties of the Russian response to tobacco were lost on the English,who saw a nation of eager consumers ruled by a small elite unwilling to overturnthe ban. Yet even where the English traded, tobacco did not take root. Thereremains no evidence of any sales in the territory between Arkhangel’sk andMoscow between the general ban of 1649 and the end of the century.61 Smug-gling continued across the western border with Sweden and the southern borderwith Ukraine, and the English remained convinced by rumors of a tobacco tradein Siberia. However, the New Commercial Code of 1667 prevented Englishmerchants from traveling further south than Moscow, much less to Siberia.Under the Code all foreign trade was restricted to four cities on the border,and the English had no access to Muscovite goods outside of Arkhangel’sk.According to English experience with the tobacco trade both at home andabroad, economic opportunity should have trumped Muscovite religious andpolitical objections, but Muscovite authorities remained unpersuaded. Further-more, the conflict between Muscovy’s mercantilistic reforms and the Englishgoal of favored trading status were inherently opposed. As a result, theMuscovy Company and its English merchants found the second half of theseventeenth century to be an endless quest of unrealized promise.

For Muscovite authorities, the rationale for the ban on tobacco never lost val-idity. Widespread smuggling along all of the borders flouted both restrictionson tobacco and the government’s attempt to regulate the economy moretightly. The inherent “lawlessness” of the foreigners using tobacco onlyreinforced the moral objections of the Russian Orthodox Church. As economicand religious objections reinforced each other, the ban became ever more firmlyentrenched. Furthermore, that tobacco was being consumed in the periphery of

58 Polnoe sobranie zakonov Russiskoi Imperii (hereafter PSZ), Series 1 (St. Petersburg, 1830),II, no. 1225, 842–43.

59 F. P. Shevchenko, Politychni ta ekonomichni zv’iaski Ukrainy z Rosieiu v seredyni XVII st.(Kiev, 1959), 430.

60 In 1698, the instruction sent to the governor of Kazan’ province warned him to beware ofTatar, Chuvash, and Udmurt consumers of tobacco. If tobacco was discovered in the possessionof non-Russians, it should be seized and destroyed, though the governor was not told to interrogateor torture the tobacco users. PSZ, Vol. 3, no. 1579, article 11, 287.

61 Hellie, Economy and Material Culture, 107.


the empire where the tsar’s non-Orthodox subjects lived underscored theinherent danger of both tobacco and those subjects. Because foreigners andthe non-Orthodox were both inozemtsy, their adoption of the same illicithabit would not have surprised any seventeenth-century Russian, and it wasample justification for maintaining a comprehensive ban on tobacco.

S U C C E S S A N D FA I L U R E

For Muscovy, the pivotal moment in tobacco’s history arrives with Peter theGreat, who was responsible for many of Russia’s Western cultural adoptions.It was Peter who finally legalized tobacco sales in Russia. Partly from personalinclination, and partly from a need to raise revenue to finance his GrandEmbassy, Peter granted an exclusive contract over all tobacco sales in Siberiato Martin Bogdanov for one year starting in 1 December 1696. Another laweased restrictions on carrying tobacco into Astrakhan that same year. Tobaccowould be confiscated from foreign merchants upon their arrival in Astrakhan,but then returned to them upon their departure, and individual merchants couldcarry into the city approximately eighteen pounds for their personal use.62 Thefollowing year, as a further revenue-raising effort Tsar Peter and King WilliamIII signed the very first Anglo-Russian contract for tobacco, legalizing itsimportation and sale. The contract also served in lieu of payment for someof Peter’s naval negotiations with the English.63 While the English couldfinally celebrate a victorious result from a decades-long pursuit, the contractstrongly favored Russian interests. The English received only an agreementthat they could sell tobacco to the central provinces of Muscovy, the veryarea where resistance to tobacco remained the most entrenched. The tsar, forhis part, gained revenue and new technology, which immediately resolvedmost of the economic objections to tobacco, if not the cultural concerns.The signed tobacco contract allowed a newly formed Tobacco Company to

import 3,000 hogsheads of tobacco (about one and a half million pounds) in thefirst year (1699), and 5,000 hogsheads in the second. After the second year, thecontract was renewable annually for another 5,000 hogsheads. Tobacco couldbe sold anywhere in the kingdom, and the tsar agreed to ban all other tobaccoimports. He agreed that domestic Ukrainian tobacco could only be sold inUkraine to prevent it from cutting into English sales. With the money receivedfrom tobacco sales, English merchants had the right to buy and export any Mus-covite product, keeping Muscovite specie in the country. If all the importedtobacco was not sold at the end of the second year of the contract, its clausesremained in effect until it was. For this exclusive privilege, the English

62 Burton, Bukharans, 495, 525.63 W. F. Ryan, “Peter the Great’s English Yacht: Admiral Lord Carmarthen and the Russian

Tobacco Monopoly,” Mariner’s Mirror 69 (1983): 65–87.


tobacco contractors paid £12,000 in advance customs duties.64 The contractappeared to mark a new area of English trade success in Muscovy, not justin the tobacco market but also in the trade for naval supplies. The Swedish resi-dent in Moscow, for one, reported with increasing alarm about the potentiallydevastating loss of revenue for Narva’s middlemen in the wake of the Englishcontract.65

Considering tobacco’s history in Muscovy, it should not have surprised theEnglish that implementing their new contract was difficult and complicated.The problems began in April 1699, when the tsar wrote to William III with aclarification to the contract that forbade the Company to import any other com-modity into Muscovy or to purchase any commodity for which other merchantsheld export contracts. Peter responded that allowing those contractors to exportproducts would limit future “free trade with the usual goods.”66 It is noteworthythat Peter appropriated the English concept of “free trade,” with its connotationof restricting trade to the advantage of one party, but now with his own govern-ment in place of the English. King William replied that the tobacco contract hadbeen honorably fulfilled with the Company’s first delivery of tobacco, and thathe would dispatch a negotiator to the tsar to settle any disputes over the contractthat might arise.67

Giving lie to the Tobacco Company’s initial optimism, only 5,500 hogsheadswere imported in the two years of the contract, though it called for imports of8,000. Even at a lesser volume, the contractors failed to sell all of their tobacco.From the success of smuggling, English merchants believed the Russian marketto contain willing tobacco consumers; therefore, the Company speculated thatits low sales must have been the result of Russian merchants smuggling lessexpensive Ukrainian tobacco into Moscow, and their own inability to accessSiberian markets.68

Since tobacco and the balance of foreign trade were of public concern inEngland, the tobacco contractors quickly published a broadside, in 1700, toexplain their early setbacks. Their defense began with an admission: “ThatInquisitive and Disinterested Persons, who have lately Publickly treated ofTrade, have look’d upon the Trade of Russia as almost wholly lost to this

64 The complete contract is reproduced in Pis’ma i bumagi imperatora Petra Velikago(St. Petersburg, 1887), I, no. 234, 243–49.

65 I. P. Shaskol’skii, Ekonomicheskie sviazi mezhdu Rossiei i Shvetsiei v XVII veke, vol. 3(Moscow, 1981), no. 56, 1698, 464–66; and no. 57, 20 Dec. 1698, 466–70.

66 Contemporary translation of letter from Peter Aleksevich to William III, 10 Apr. 1699, NA,SP 104/120, fols. 17r–18r.

67 The negotiator was Charles Goodfellow. Letter fromWilliam III to Peter Aleksevich, 12 Sept.1699, NA, SP 104/120, fols. 16r–17v.

68 These points are explicitly made in: Letter from William III to Peter Aleksevich, 29 May1701, SP 104/120, fols. 31r–32r; Letter from Anne to Peter Aleksevich, 20 Jan. 1702, SP 104/120, fols. 35r–36r; and also Britain and Russia, no. 44, Petition from the British Merchants toPeter I, Feb. 1703, 39–40.


Nation, either by ill Management or Negligence.” It then proceeded to outline“some proper Methods to recover that Trade.” In particular, the Company esti-mated potential profits in Russia of £200,000 per year, of which £150,000would be from the tobacco trade. Tobacco would turn “the Balance of all ofOur Northern Trades in Our favour,” and end England’s need to expend“great Sums” to purchase naval commodities it required from the Dutch.69

The only arguments the contractors offered were those that had been unsuccess-ful throughout the seventeenth century—in essence, the hope of economic prof-itability justified the trade, regardless of its continuing failure. Public discussioncontinued in London, but also was reflected in private reports from Moscow. Inthese reports, the fault for the contract’s failure fell solely on the tsar and hisgovernment, which continued to frustrate the noble English cause of “freetrade.”Apparently unknown to the English were attempts by the Petrine govern-

ment to fulfill the contract’s terms. The contract was not doomed by obduracyfrom Peter, and in fact he tried to facilitate the trade. When the English com-plained of domestic (Ukrainian) tobacco devaluing their imported stock, heinstructed his own government officials to stop purchasing tobacco from anysource other than the English. In 1701, Peter wrote to Andrei Vinius, aRussian official of Dutch descent, directing that tobacco imported throughSiberia could no longer be purchased in Moscow because of the English con-tract. If the English tobacco trade diminished or suffered financial losses, Peterwarned, Vinius “would be questioned.”70 Peter also never wavered in his com-mitment to the importation of tobacco from Western Europe. In 1706, after thefailure of the English attempt, he discussed the possible importation of tobaccowith Aleksei Kurbatov, future governor of Arkhangel’sk, though with theDutch or the Swedish as the importers.71 Furthermore, it remained illegal tosell Ukrainian tobacco in Muscovy’s central provinces until 1727.72 Longafter the failure of the English tobacco monopoly Peter maintained incentivesto encourage the trade in imported tobacco.Yet despite the English expectation of a high volume of tobacco consump-

tion, and Peter’s personal commitment to the trade, tobacco was not popularupon its legal introduction in Muscovy. In the wake of the English tobaccoimports, increased supplies devalued tobacco by one-third to one-half of whatit had been during the height of smuggling in the seventeenth century.73

69 “Some Considerations Relating to the Enlarging the Russia Trade, and the Contract forImporting Tobacco into that Countrey,” Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature, no.3675.8.

70 Pis’ma i bumagi imperatora Petra Velikago, I, no. 369, 443.71 Pis’ma i bumagi imperatora Petra Velikago, IV, no. 1142, 147; and IV, no. 1189, 201–2.72 PSZ, VII, no. 5164, 26 Sept. 1727, 865–68.73 Specifically, the price of one funt of tobacco (409.5 oz.) dropped from 30 kopeks to 9 to 15

kopeks in 1705–1706. Hellie, Economy and Material Culture, 107.


Having expected unlimited sales, the tobacco contractors must have beenastonished at their failure to sell tobacco even at a sharply discounted price,and disheartened at the meager value of their stocks. On all fronts, tobaccoimports proved to be a failure.

By 1705, five years after the original end-date of the contract, and with fewprofits and large quantities of unsold tobacco, the Company improvised, andfound at least one method of subverting the long-held suspicion againsttobacco and creating new customers. Having had little success with traditionaltobacco products in Muscovy, snuff and leaf tobacco, the English merchantsdecided that new, rolled tobacco might entice Russians. In the spring of1705, the contractors sent two English tradesmen to Moscow with the necess-ary tools and products to manufacture rolled tobacco from their supplies of leaf.Possibly because the new product was not immediately associated with thecentury-long ban against snuff and leaf tobacco, this innovative marketingseems to have paid off. Furthermore, the Petrine government strongly sup-ported the arrival of these new craftsmen, since the Tobacco Company hadagreed to train Russians to work in the shop. In terms of Peter’s goals, anyform of technology transfer from the West would benefit Muscovy.

The tobacco contractors’ rolling methods provided immediate rewards, buttheir action was poorly received in England, where it was seen as an attackon England’s global economic position. The English contractors might haveanticipated this reaction, since tobacco rolling was already a popular methodof increasing the value of re-exported tobacco. The Royal response was deci-sive. Upon receiving word of the new tobacco factory in Moscow, QueenAnne immediately demanded the recall of the tobacco rollers, and orderedthat the Tobacco Company “forbear to send any persons into Muscovyversed in the Mystery of Spinning and Rowling Tobacco or any Instrumentsor Materials for the same or to employ any Persons therein as they tenderHer Majesty’s displeasure and will answer to the Contrary at their Perills.”74

If the stern reaction from London did not create enough difficulties for thetobacco contract, former supporters of the Muscovite tobacco trade alsoturned on the Company. The Queen’s Privy Council received a petition fromtobacco plantation owners of “Verginia and Maryland,” who complained tothe crown about the dangerous actions taken by the Tobacco Company.According to these merchants, the Company’s factory in Moscow wouldcure and roll Ukrainian tobacco as well as the remaining English stores. Inthis way, not only would control over a valuable technology be lost, butEnglish merchants also were promoting the spread of Ukrainian tobacco in apopular form, creating further losses for American tobacconists.75

74 Memo from the Queen at Whitehall to Foreign Secretary Harley, 26 May 1705, NA, SP 104/120, fols. 56r–56v.

75 From the Court at St. James, 31 May 1705, NA, SP 104/120, fols. 54v–56r.


The actions of the tobacco contractors quickly became an international crisisthat removed the last support for the tobacco trade with Muscovy outside ofthose still actively involved in the contract.On 1 June 1705, the Foreign Secretary sent a letter to the English consul in

Moscow, Charles Whitworth, instructing him to destroy this tobacco factory.Ironically, Whitworth had initially been dispatched to Moscow to resolve theongoing problems with the tobacco contract. He was ordered to “destroythose materials brought from hence to Mosco for the carrying on the manufac-ture” and “order the Persons concern’d there in forthwith to return home.”76

Once those tasks were accomplished, Whitworth should inform the tsar thatQueen Anne had demanded these actions. The Foreign Secretary instructedhim to assure the tsar that the English shipwrights, artificers, and “volunteers”in service to the tsar would not be recalled, if there was any “alarm [in] theCourt of Mosco” over the possible loss of those English specialists.77

Upon receiving his instructions Whitworth set about destroying the factoryand deporting its craftsmen. He informed the Company’s Moscow representa-tives of the decision of the Queen’s Privy Council on 15 July 1705, and warnedthem to keep the imminent destruction of the factory “very Secret.”78 Heinformed the contractors that the tobacco rollers must return to England,where they would face “no harm or disgrace” and “receive all fitting incourage-ment and protection from the Government.” Here Whitworth was dissembling,because Queen Anne had already declared that these tobacco rollers wouldsuffer the “pain of Our Highest Displeasure,” and that “our Judges and allother Our officers of Justice that they do proceed with the utmost rigor ac-cording to Our Laws against all persons whatsoever.”79 Even so, by 25 JulyWhitworth had succeeded in removing both the English tradesmen and the por-table equipment from Moscow, and had destroyed the remaining implements inthe factory.80 When the tobacco rollers finally arrived in London early inDecember, the Foreign Secretary congratulated Whitworth upon his victory,but reminded him to assure the tsar of the queen’s esteem and good will.81

Unfortunately for Whitworth and Anglo-Russian relations, the tsar’s govern-ment had discovered the destruction of the factory only two days after therollers had been sent on the road to Arkhangel’sk, leaving Whitworth to waitapprehensively for the consequences. In a typical pattern for the English,

76 Letter to Whitworth from C. Hedges, NA, SP 104/120, fols. 53r–54r.77 Letter to Whitworth from Secretary Harley, 23/24 July 1705, NA, SP 104/120, fols.

56v–57v.78 Letter to Mr. Marshall and Mr. Peacock from Whitworth, 15 July 1705, NA, SP 91/4, pt. 2,

fols. 1r–2v.79 Letter from Queen Anne, NA, SP 104/120, fols. 59r–60r.80 Letter fromWhitworth to Secretary Harley, 25 July 1705, NA, SP 91/4, pt. 2, fols. f 11r–12r.81 Letter from Secretary Harley to Whitworth, 7 Dec. 1705, NA, SP 104/120, fols. 60r–61r; and

Letter from Secretary Harley to Whitworth, NA, SP 104/120, fols. 61r–61v.


their attempts to mollify the Muscovite government failed due to their ownincompetence inside the country. Little had been learned from Hebdon’smany miscues in the 1670s. The English Consul had dismissed a Russianservant from his household, who apparently brought about the factorybreak-in that discovered the missing and destroyed equipment.82 Wordspread through Moscow that Queen Anne wished to remove all her subjectsfrom Russian service during August 1705, which was the precise rumor Whit-worth had been instructed to prevent. He met with several representatives of thetsar’s government during August to assure them that more English shipwrightsfor the tsar’s service would be arriving in Arkhangel’sk shortly, in hopes ofeasing relations between the countries. He added that the Queen had no inten-tion of recalling any Englishmen from Russian service.83

By the end of 1705, the English tobacco contract was finally resolved whenthe tsar and the merchants agreed to have all the remaining tobacco purchasedby Russians, thereby removing the continuing problem from English hands.84

On 12 December 1705, Whitworth wrote to the Foreign Secretary of his suc-cessful proposal to the tsar, but stated that he could not “settle the rate norother particulars” until he consulted with the Tobacco Company.85 In orderto complete the contract, the Company compiled a list of the total volume oftobacco remaining in Moscow, Vologda, and Arkhangel’sk, which comprisedsome 2,300 hogsheads of leaf tobacco to be sold for 187,724 rubles, 7 kopeks,and 10 dengi, payable in installments.86 The final transfer of tobacco fromEnglish to Russian hands was a slow process that lasted several months, butby the end of 1706 the sale of imported tobacco was no longer an Englishproblem.87

While the first legal importation of tobacco was the culmination of a long-term goal of English merchants, the tobacco contract itself was unquestionablya failure. The English government, London merchants, and American tobaccoproducers had all turned against the tobacco contractors. When the contract was

82 Letter from Whitworth to Secretary Harley, 5 Aug. 1705, NA, SP 91/4, pt. 2, fols. 11r–12r.83 Letter from Whitworth to Secretary Harley, 22 Aug. 1705, NA, SP 91/4, pt. 2, fols. 16r–18r,

recounts the rumors and Whitworth’s recent meeting with the tsarist ministers. The first explanationwas not readily accepted, as evinced when Whitworth instructed London of another meeting inwhich he explained that the Queen’s laws banned English subjects from entering into contractswith foreign princes without the monarch’s approval, but the Queen still approved of the Englishshipwrights in the tsar’s government. Letter from Whitworth to Secretary Harley, 7 Oct. 1705,NA, SP 91/4, pt. 2, fols. 32r–34v.

84 Letter from Whitworth to Secretary Harley, 29 Apr. 1706, NA, SP 91/4, pt. 3, fols. 5r–10v.85 Letter from Whitworth to Secretary Harley, 12 Dec. 1705, NA, SP 91/4, pt. 2, fols. 50r–51v.86 Two accounts still exist, both written by Goodfellow. An Account of the Tobacco the

Company Have Lying Unsold in Russia, 26 Jan. 1706, PRO, SP 91/4, pt. 2, fol. 106r; An Account-ing of the Tobacco Holdings, 30 Mar. 1706, NA, SP 91/4, pt. 2, fols. 125r–126v.

87 The tobacco transfer was a frequent subject of Whitworth’s letters to London. Letter fromWhitworth to Secretary Harley, 7 July 1706, PRO, SP 91/4, pt. 3, fols. 23r–24v; and Letterfrom Whitworth to Secretary Harley, 18 Aug. 1706, NA, SP 91/4, pt. 3, fols. 39r–40v.


finally resolved, however, there were potential signs that the glorious predic-tions decades earlier by the Earl of Carlisle’s embassy might have come true.The English had received new commercial rights, and shortly thereafter therewas the spread of a new, “Western” culture under Petrine influence. As partof Peter’s policies of Westernizing Muscovy, Russian elites, at least, wouldsoon face penalties based on their dress, hair, education, and even geographyif they failed to adopt the new customs. Certainly these new Westernizedelites would need increasing supplies of Western commodities in order tofulfill the tsar’s plan. This was clear to Whitworth as early as 1707, and he pre-dicted that once the Great Northern War ended, and “since the Introduction offoreign dress and manners,” there would be “no Small prospect of advantagefor the English nation, particularly by the Tobacco; and cloath which allreadybegins to be in vogue.”88

Whitworth’s assessment, however, was no more accurate than those of theEarl of Carlisle and John Hebdon before him. After a century, the English con-tinued to misinterpret Russian culture. Part of Peter the Great’s ability toenforce Western customs flowed from his intentional rejection of RussianOrthodoxy, which had been a primary source of Muscovy’s resistance toforeign customs in general, and tobacco in particular. Peter created a new sym-bolic framework for his political authority, free from the traditional Orthodoxrituals utilized by his more pious predecessors. Peter borrowed rather heavilyfrom Roman and Western Christian models to create his own charismaticimage, and created a new concept of the Russian Empire in the process.89

This was a serious change in the nature of tsarist political authority, andcould have created the elite society open to cultural innovations that theEnglish had long hoped for.Many of Peter’s actions affirmed his goal of transforming elite Russian

culture, especially by rejecting the centrality of Orthodox religious authority.During the tobacco contract negotiations with the English in 1698, Peter reput-edly claimed that the patriarch was “the guardian of the faith, not a customsinspector.”90 As if to prove his point, Peter almost immediately embracedtobacco as a component of the culture of his new court. In a sensationalisticaccount of the Petrine court, the Habsburg secretary to Muscovy in 1698–1699 recorded an inverted Orthodox ceremony, dedicated to Bacchus insteadof the Christian God. In the ceremony’s opening procession, revelers carried“great bowls full of wine, others mead, others again beer and brandy, thatlast joy of heated Bacchus . . . they carried great dishes of dried tobaccoleaves, with which, when ignited, they went to the remotest corners of the

88 Letter from Whitworth to Secretary Harley, 11 Feb. 1707, NA, SP 91/5, pt. 1, ff. 36v.–36r.89 Richard S. Wortman, Ceremonies of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy,

Volume One: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, 1995), 42–88.90 L. N. Maikov, Razskazy Nartova o Petre Velikom (St. Petersburg, 1897), 16–17.


palace, exhaling those most delectable odors and most pleasant incense toBacchus from their smutty jaws. Two of those pipes through which somepeople are pleased to puff smoke—a most empty fancy—being set crosswise,served the scenic bishop to confirm the rites of consecration.”91

Peter’s use of tobacco transgressed several religious traditions. Tobacco andliquor served as the spiritual host of this mock ceremony, presenting a powerfulimage to a Russian Orthodox audience. The tobacco pipes in place of a cross, aswell as the violation of the palace with the tobacco smoke itself, completed thedestruction of a sacred service.

However, Peter’s embrace of tobacco and other Western customs did little topersuade the public that the condemnation of foreign customs of more than oneand a half centuries was incorrect. While Peter rejected Orthodox mores, theRussian public did not. The Russian Orthodox Church became a center foropposition to Peter’s cultural innovations, specifically because of his embraceof foreign, “lawless” customs. For example, Father Avraam of the AndreevskiiMonastery personally handed a letter to Peter in 1697 that warned him againstthe dangers of European customs and reminded him to “fear God.”92 OrdinaryRussians, too, objected to Petrine innovations, and they offered condemnationsof Peter’s actions that reflected deeply held beliefs that the tsar could do little toalter. Most common among the complaints were that men were forced to shavetheir beards, wear European clothing, and smoke tobacco, all of which weresaid to be destroying the true Christian faith.93 On occasion, individualswent even further. One letter decried seventy different innovations of thetsarist government, such as drinking tea and coffee, German dress, Italiansinging and art, and smoking.94

While the initial acceptance of Petrine cultural changes was slow, by themiddle of the eighteenth century Western customs had become the normamong Russian elite society, even if this created a widening gulf betweenWestern-oriented nobles and their traditional, Russian Orthodox peasants.95

Tobacco was included in this cultural transformation, but it found a place inRussian culture in accordance with its past and under much different termsthan those expected by the seventeenth-century English free trade advocates.For example, in a broadside from the second quarter of the eighteenthcentury (Figure 1), a tobacco pipe appears at the forefront of the picture as

91 F. L. Glaser, ed., Scenes from the Court of Peter the Great: Based on the Latin Diary ofJohn G. Korb (New York, 1931), 126–27. For a discussion of this episode, see Ernest A. Zitser,The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter theGreat (Ithaca, 2004), 1–7.

92 B. B. Kafengauz, I. T. Pososhkov: Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ (Moscow, 1951), no. 5, 174–82.93 Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 283.94 E. Shmurlo, Petr Velikii v otsenke sovremennikov i potomstva (St. Petersburg, 1912), I, prime-

chaniia 1. For other protests, see Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 447–51.95 A good discussion of the emergence of new social values in the eighteenth century can be

found in Barbara Alpern Engel, Women in Russia, 1700–2000 (Cambridge, 2004), 5–67.


one of several images of the illicit habits of Russian elites. Two noblemen in theforeground gamble and smoke, while the peasants in the background areplaying some type of questionable (sexual?) “game.”96 Even as tobacco con-sumption became more widespread later in the eighteenth century, it was notunusual among the elite to possess snuffboxes, pipes, or ashtrays depictingrubenesque, exposed women or even explicit sexual acts.97

Thus even Peter the Great did little to persuade Russians that tobacco was notone of the “evil customs” the Russian Orthodox Church had warned the faithfulagainst in 1551. While the Church never officially condemned tobacco againafter Peter’s legalization, Orthodox Old Believers, free from the official auth-ority of the Church, continued to produce edifying tales that revealed the

FIGURE 1 Paramoshka with Savoska, second quarter of the eighteenth century (V. S. Bakhtin,Russkii lubok, XVII-XIX vv. (Moscow, 1962), image #20, n.p.

96 For a brief history on the emergence of broadsides in Russia, see Iurii Ovsiannikov, Lubok:Russkie narodnye kartinki XVII–XVIII vv. (Moscow, 1968), 5–33.

97 For a selection of such artifacts, see L. Bardovskaia, Sektret dvortsovoi tabakerki(St. Petersburg, 2002).


danger of tobacco. As these sectarians had rejected a reform of Orthodox ritualsin the 1660s, they continued to denounce all of the Peter’s cultural innovations.Some Old Believers believed that Peter was the Anti-Christ, destroying the lastheavenly kingdom on earth, and that tobacco was one of his weapons againstthe faithful.98 In one Old Believer tale, tobacco was an ancient evil, connectedwith the daughter of Jezebel. Having rejected a chance to repent, God cast herdown into the earth, “with the Devil in her belly and the cesspool of filth in herbosom. And then it rained over her grave, and on the very same spot the dirtspewed a weed. The Greeks, in compliance with the Devil’s plan, will adoptthis weed and plant it in their gardens, and call it ‘tobacco.’”99 Here theGreeks take the role of the Devil’s advocate, but Old Believers associatedthe religious reforms of the 1660s with “Greek” innovations, initiating Mus-covy’s slow descent into world-destroying immorality, of which Petrinetobacco was merely the latest offense.

By the nineteenth century Russian society was far more accepting oftobacco. The Russian peasantry, largely unaffected by any of Peter’s inno-vations, eventually accepted tobacco as part of their daily lives. Tobaccopipes even became a recurrent motif to represent prosperity in traditionalgifts such as distaffs, without any of the immoral connotations of the seven-teenth or eighteenth centuries.100 However, it seems to have taken at leasta century before Peter’s legalization of tobacco was accepted by Russiansociety in some version of the free trade and liberty that the English believedto be a natural result of its importation. In other words, the effect of increasedtrade between England and Russia was, in the end, an acceptance of foreigncustoms and merchandise, but it was hardly the overnight process theEnglish expected.

In the early-modern period, new commodities such as tobacco did little tochange any country’s culture upon their first introduction. Rather, each cul-ture found a frame of reference within its own traditions that explained therole of this foreign imposition. In England, where public opinion held influ-ence, and economic concerns were at the forefront of political debate,tobacco was at first a crisis and then an opportunity. Visions of profits andfears of economic ruin forced the acceptance of commodities over religiousand medical objections, and immediate profits created widespread support

98 Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Community andthe Russian State, 1694–1855 (Madison, 1970), 62–64; N. S. Gur’ianova, Krest’ianskii antimo-narkhicheskii protest v staroobriadcheskoi eskhatologicheskoi literature perioda poznego feoda-lizma (Novosibirsk, 1988), 38–60.

99 Pamiatniki starinnoi russkoi literatury, pts. 1–2, 427–34. A translation of the tale is includedin Roy R. Robson, “Old Believers in Imperial Russia: A Legend on the Appearance of Tobacco,”in, William B. Husband, ed., The Human Tradition in Modern Russia (Wilmington, Del., 2000),19–29.

100 Two such examples are included in Alison Hilton, Russian Folk Art (Bloomington, 1995),illustrations 5.2 and 6.5.


for increasing a commodity’s proliferation globally. Early-modern merchantsfound government power and distance to be effective obstacles to global com-merce in this sense. In Muscovy, the tsar’s initial prohibition against tobaccoremained effective because the embargo suited both the Russian OrthodoxChurch’s view of foreign cultures as immoral and the state’s mercantilisticrestrictions on the economy designed to control foreign trade. So effectivewas this ban that once the government reversed course and allowed, if notencouraged, tobacco consumption, Russian society retained its perception oftobacco’s transgressive nature, and its unfavorable view of tobacco as asymbol of growing Westernization.In the end, the tobacco trade reveals the essential misunderstandings that

defined this one arena of early-modern globalization. The English never under-stood that Muscovites possessed a fundamentally different cultural framework,based on a self-defined messianism emerging from Russian Orthodoxy. TheEnglish did not bring “free trade and a gentler government” as suggested bythe Earl of Carlisle’s embassy, but rather moral danger that could destroy thefabric of not only Muscovite society but the entire world. The Anglo-Russiantrade in tobacco transformed Russian culture in its small way only after contactendured for a great length of time, and only with the determined support of thestate. Nothing that the English offered could be successful in the way Englishmerchants and the English crown desired. Without question, Muscovy wastransformed through the contact, but in such a way that tobacco added toRussian society’s internal divides by exacerbating a belief in the inherent differ-ences between Russians and non-Russians and between the Orthodox faithfuland all other religions. It remains remarkable that the Anglo-Russian relation-ship remained so apparently worthwhile to both parties, when its value at anyone point was so questionable and the potential results so disastrous.
