Nikita A. Bilenko

PhD in History, Associate Professor of the Department of the History and Archeology

Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University

(Tula, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2022-1-23-38

Abstract. The article is devoted to the problem of the development of commercial entrepreneurship of peasants in the Tula province in the second half of the XIX century. The research was based on mass historical sources – fiscal and administrative documentation ("Journals of general verification of trade and industrial establishments"), created as a result of inspections of the activities of entrepreneurs of the county towns of Tula province (local administrative and economic centers of the province, which combined the features of the Central Industrial and Central Agricultural districts). The standard form of the Journals allowed automating the processing of large amounts of information from historical sources by creating a source-oriented machine-readable database (based on the Microsoft Access 2007 DBMS) and answering the questions: "What is the significance of county towns in the formation and development of commercial entrepreneurship of peasants in the second half of the XIX century?", "There was is the specificity of the commercial activity of peasants in county centers compared with their similar economic activity in provincial or metropolitan cities?", "Was there a difference between commercial and, for example, an industrial peasant entrepreneur in terms of organizing "his own business", managing it in various cities?". As a result of the study, a relationship was established between the peasant entrepreneurial activity in the field of trade and the economic and geographical characteristics of the county in which the city was located. The forms of stationary commercial entrepreneurship of peasants in the county towns corresponded to similar forms in the provincial center. In the absolute majority of cases, the management of trading establishments was carried out by the owners themselves, which was due to the presence of small capital and orientation to the short-term perspective of economic activity in the field of trade. In contrast to the industrial entrepreneurship of peasants in county towns, relatives more often participated in the management of a trading establishment
Keywords: economic history, post-reform Russia, city, peasantry, trade, mass historical sources.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Bilenko, NA 2022, Commercial entrepreneurship of peasants in the county towns of Tula province in the second half of the XIX century, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 1 (9), pp. 23–38, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2022-1-23-38 (in Russ.)

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