Mercanti armeni nella Moscovia del XVII secolo e il commercio della seta persiana (prima parte)

The most striking aspect of iranian silk trade via Russia in the 1660s is the growing share of private, or rather, semi-official Russo-Iranian ventures, Despite various initiatives,commercial exchange via the Volga route was still non subject to a formal "bilateral" agreement between the two countries. All efforts to regularize trade links ha failed, either because of Iranian suspiciusness of Russian motives or because of Muscow's unwillingness to grant concessions to foreign merchants. Neither Iran's political sensitivity nor Russian protectionist impulses would ever disappear, but a reordering of economic, and expecially, geopolitical landscape in the 1660s empassing Russia, Iran and the Ottoman state and the Armenians who plied their trade through all three states and whose role was crucial in the Iranian silk trade at least opened the prospects for substantial change in this region.