Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century

On the whole, then, we arrive at the following conclusions: during the first sixty years of the eighteenth century the total Anglo-Russian trade formed but a very diminutive fraction of the general trade of England, say less than ‘/,,th; its sudden increase during the earliest years of Peter’s sway over the Baltic did not at all affect the general balance of British trade, as it was a -ample transfer from its Swedish account to its Russian account. In the later times of Peter I., as well as under his immediate successors, Catherine I and Anne, the Anglo-Russian trade was positively declining; during the whole epoch, dating from the final settlement of Russia in the Baltic provinces, the export of British manufactures to Russia was continually falling off, so that at its end it stood one-third lower than at its beginning, when that trade was still confined to the port of Archangel; neither the contemporaries of Peter 1, nor the next British generation reaped any benefit from the advancement of Russia to the Baltic. In general the Baltic trade of Great Britain was at that time trifling in regard of the capital involved, but important in regard of its character. It afforded England the raw produce for its maritime stores. That from the latter point of view the Baltic was in safer keeping in the hands of Sweden than in those of Russia, was not only proved by the pamphlets we are reprinting, but fully understood by the British Ministers themselves. Stanhope writing, for instance, to Townshend on October 16th, 1716:

“It is certain that if the Czar be let alone three years, he will be absolute master in those seas.”

[In the year 1657, when the Courts of Denmark and Brandenburg intended engaging the Muscovites to fall upon Sweden, they instructed their Minister so to manage the affair that the Czar might by no means get any footing in the Baltic, because “they did not know what to do with so troublesome a neighbour.” — See Puffendorf’s Histoiy of Brandenburg.^[74]]