Diaspora Merchants in the Black Sea

Book excerpt: Presented here for the first time in English, this richly detailed study--based on British, French, Greek, and Russian archival sources--tells the story of the powerful Greek trading houses that competed successfully with North America to feed the industrializing population of Western Europe. Vassilis Kardasis presents this commercial history by charting the rise of Greek merchant houses to a position of dominance over the export of trade in Russian grain. Though the Greeks would eventually cede their dominance to the competition of cheaper American grain in the second half of the nineteenth century, their influence was felt in the transformation of Southern Russia to productive agricultural land and the formation of large Black Sea port cities which would eventually encourage massive immigration. Diaspora Merchants in the Black Sea fills an important gap in our understanding of the role of the diasporic Greek community in southern Russian history, the history of Greek maritime activity, and ultimately the history of economic relations between Eastern and Western Europe.