=313. Rise of Russia to a position among the European states about 1700.=—Russia was even more backward than the Scandinavian states. Like them it had been dependent on the Hanseatic merchants for its commerce with western Europe, and remained passive after their fall, accepting what wares reached it overland or through the port of Archangel on the Arctic coast, whither English and Dutch shippers ventured. Until Peter the Great opened his “window on the West,” by the founding of St. Petersburg on the Baltic about 1700, Russia was hardly a European state. Peter attempted, with remarkable energy, to bring Russia to the European standard in commerce and industry as well as in politics. He reformed, though he did not abolish, the system which gave the Czar a monopoly of trade in the most important wares; he revised the tolls on trade; he sent young men abroad to study commerce, and tried in other ways to elevate the merchant class. Peter did not succeed in his attempt to free Russian commerce from its dependence on western merchants, and his attempt to build up a merchant marine was a failure. In the East, Russian commerce fared better. Occasional caravans had gone before this from Siberia to China. The Czar now sent on his own account caravans which consumed three years on the long trip from Peking to Moscow; and individuals developed the trade which the crown had stimulated. =314. Character of Russian commerce in the eighteenth century.=—Russia could be regarded in the eighteenth century as a European state. It belonged, however, to the Europe of the Middle Ages rather than of the modern period. Most of the population, including even the few who were occupied with manufacturing, were serfs. The people as a whole were on a low standard of living, and were densely ignorant. Commercial law was undeveloped, and trading practices were those of a half civilized community. The government interfered with exchange by arbitrary and vexatious restrictions. The country could export, with rare exceptions, only raw products. From China it imported tea, silk, gold, jewels, etc., of which only a part was kept at home; while it was dependent on western Europe for most of its colonial wares (sugar, coffee, spices, and drugs), and for all the finer manufactures (textile, metal, pottery, paper, etc.). QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 1. Condition of Italy about 1500. [Seebohm, Prot. rev., 21-26, with sketch-map.] 2. Venice about 1500: commerce, government, policy on sea and land. [Horatio F. Brown, Venice, chaps. 16, 17; or Cambridge mod. hist., vol. 1, chap. 8, by the same author.] 3. Contest of Venice with the Turks. [Brown, Venice, chap. 19.] 4. Decline of Venetian commerce. [A. H. Lybyer, The Ottoman Turks and the routes of Oriental trade, English Hist. Rev., Oct., 1915, 30: 577-588.] 5. Attempt of Gustavus Adolphus to make of Sweden a great power. [Encyc. Brit., Gustavus II.]