Kyakhta trade

The Kyakhta Trade refers to the trade between Russia and China through the town of Kyakhta on the Mongolian border south of Lake Baikal from 1727. Trade was mostly Siberian furs for Chinese cotton, silk, tobacco and tea.

Russia and China came into contact when in 1582-1639 Russians made themselves masters of the Siberian forests. The border in "Manchuria" was delineated by the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. This treaty said nothing about Mongolia since this area was not yet under Chinese/Manchu control. The fifth article of the treaty allowed trade with proper documents but was otherwise vague. Russian merchants began organizing caravans from Nerchinsk to Peking, the round trip usually taking 10–12 months. In 1692-93 Eberhard Isbrand Ides went on a commercial-diplomatic mission to Peking. He left Peking in February 1694 and reached Moscow 11 months later. Peter the Great now decided that trade should be a state monopoly. There were 14 state caravans to Peking between 1689 and 1722. Private trade continued, much of it going short distances to places like Urga and Tsitsihar. In 1721 Lorenz Lange estimated that the Urga trade alone was four times greater than the state caravans. The first state caravan left Moscow in 1697 and returned two years later. The fourth under Ivan Savateev left Moscow in 1702, used the usual Nerchinsk route but returned via Urga and Selenginsk which took only 70 days. It carried a letter from the Lifanyuan suggesting that this become the standard route since Mongolia was now under Manchu control and local relations could be managed by the Tushetu Khan at Urga. There was a fifth caravan under Petr Khudiakov in 1705-09. The First Oirat-Manchu War had forced the Dzungar Khanate out of Mongolia and made border control more important. The journey of Tulishen in 1712-15 gave the Manchus more knowledge of the western regions. From 1717 the Manchus began to pressure the Russians to delineate the Mongol border. In 1717-20 went to Peking to negotiate a trade treaty, but this failed because of the border problem. A caravan under one "Ifin" was stopped at the Great Wall and another under Fedor Istopnikov was detained in 1718. In 1722 the Manchus blocked trade until the border problem was settled. This led to the Treaty of Kyakhta.

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