Nature's Evil

Elizabeth I’s successor, James I of England, was a passionate empire builder. He united Scotland and England, settled Protestants in Ireland and colonised Virginia. Colonial adventures needed the navy and the navy needed hemp and timber. Realising the global deficit of these commodities, James planned to colonise the White Sea by creating a ‘protectorate’ made up of Arkhangelsk, the Dvina Gulf and the Solovetsky Islands. In the winter of 1612–13 James discussed this project with the Muscovy Company. In Russia, this was the peak of the civil war which became known as the Time of Troubles. Ivan’s failed reforms led to chaos, and the state ran out of money for its mercenaries. James was particularly worried by the involvement of the Swedes, who were determined to occupy Novgorod and block the White Sea trade. In the summer of 1612 a band of English mercenaries landed in Arkhangelsk under the command of a Prussian officer, Adrian von Flodorf. After presenting a document signed by the English king, he travelled to Moscow. There he offered help to Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, one of the Russian leaders at the time. Some English mercenaries were stationed in Moscow, some in Arkhangelsk; they saw the hostilities developing all over the land. In the winter of 1613 John Meyrick, the head of the Muscovy Company, who doubled as the British ambassador to Russia, promised James that he would finance a military campaign to annex the White Sea. In April James took the decision to create the Russian protectorate. Realising the scale of the task, he decided to send 10,000 soldiers to the White Sea. That was a considerable military force – double the number of former Oprichnik guards and twenty times greater than the number of white settlers in Virginia. The English troops were supposed to seize the Solovetsky monastery – a powerful island fortress. Using it as a base for invasion, they would capture Arkhangelsk, advance upstream along the Dvina, and occupy the territory as far as the Upper Volga. From this position, the English would control Moscow’s communications with the White Sea. Geographically, James’s proposed Russian Protectorate closely resembled Ivan’s State of Exception, and its economic intentions were similar. This Russian Protectorate was also modelled on the Irish plantations, where English settlers had changed the system of land tenure and created substantial estates for themselves; not long before, in 1609, James had officially established the biggest plantation in Ulster. But the status of the White Sea domain would be higher: James was planning to send his younger son, Charles, there as viceroy. 11 Charles went on to inherit the English throne and was sent to the scaffold after the English Civil War. Things might have worked out better for him in the Russian north.

In June 1613, John Meyrick again sailed to Arkhangelsk, where he learnt about the coronation of Mikhail Romanov. The new tsar had found out about English intentions and begun a secret investigation of the conspiracy. But Meyrick skilfully mediated in talks with the powerful Swedes and helped to end the Russo-Swedish war by the Treaty of Stolbovo (1617). This reassured both the English and the Dutch: Russian resources would not be landlocked and the Swedes would not be able to stop or tax the White Sea trade. As a result, James abandoned his idea of colonising the Russian north; instead he placed his confidence in the ability of the new tsar to establish order in his tsardom. The English were never again granted a monopoly on the White Sea trade.

According to various estimates, the Muscovy Company at the turn of the seventeenth century guaranteed between a third and a half of the English Navy’s requirements for rigging. 12 But Dutch ships visited the Dvina more frequently, taking a large share of the hemp market. Trading on behalf of their German or Spanish customers, the Dutch were more flexible and paid in silver (the English preferred barter). There were years when the Dutch became so successful at the White Sea trade that they bought up all the hemp from the Pomors and then sold it to the English. All this changed when Peter the Great realised the centuries-old dream of Russian autocrats and captured several Baltic ports, opening them up to Russian commodities. The founding of St Petersburg led to a rapid decrease in White Sea commerce, not because of fair competition, but because Peter imposed prohibitive tariffs on Arkhangelsk to help develop St Petersburg. From now on, hemp from central Russia would go to St Petersburg by the new canal which Peter had built for supplying his capital, and then sail west across the Baltic.

Hemp and Napoleon