SIMBOLOGÍA EN EL TAROT
SIMBOLOS FUNDAMENTALES DEL TAROT Diccionario
The perceived profitability of Russian enterprises closely followed the beginning of British involvement in the mining and oil industries of Siberia and Baku. Although there existed many successful British companies in Russia before 1900, it was the advent of the Baku oil fields, and the lure of the fortunes that could be made from them, that excited the British imagination the most. As chapter 3 showed, British involvement in these industries increased significantly towards the end of the 1890s, and after a lull as a result of the industrial depression in Russia increased
exponentially after 1906. The key aspect that made Baku so profitable for a number of foreign companies was then projected on to Russian investments as a whole from 1900. This was the wealth of natural resources in Russia, in the case of Baku, oil, and the lack of sufficient domestic capital to work them. Therefore, British perceptions of the profitability of Russia generally conforms to the model whereby British capital was pushed out of Britain due to low interest rates there as a result of an over
saturation of the market with capital, to countries with many unworked natural resources and a dearth of capital, such as Russia.27
Probably the clearest demonstration of the effect that Baku had on British opinion was the sections devoted to the oil trade in Norman’s All the Russias. As an illustration of the oil rush at Baku, Norman stated that in 1899, there were 160 oil companies in Baku, of which 62 had been formed in the past two years. This was due to the enormous profits which Norman described could be made at Baku by just hitting oil, let alone the profits, and dividends that could be paid, that could be had if one hit a ‘spouter’. While he did acknowledge that it was likely that the Baku oil field was becoming exhausted, he also pointed out that there certainly existed other good oil fields in the Caucasus.28
This perception was also prevalent in similar works in the period. For example, James Henry, the editor of Petroleum World, in 1905 showed a positive attitude towards the attractiveness of Russia as a place to invest in, specifically in the petroleum industry. He described Baku as a wealthy oil city, and where the production of oil had been increasing steadily since 1893.29 Gerrare also paints an attractive picture of Russia’s material wealth that could potentially be exploited by foreign firms, citing the fact that Baku oil production was increasing at a 15 per cent higher rate than American production, and that very high profits could be made in the textile industry and logging.30 This positive assessment is balanced out by his
assertion that the Baku oil fields would soon be exhausted, and that the Siberian gold mining industry offered comparatively small and decreasing yields.31 Even
Thompson stated that, although much British capital would be lost in Baku due to exhausted fields there, the transmission of modern methods to Russia via English companies would lead to the opening up of new profitable oil fields.32
27 Cotrell, British Overseas Investment, 27.
28 Norman, All the Russias, 223-25.
29 James Henry, Baku, an Eventful History (London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1905), viii,
132.
30 Gerrare, Greater Russia, 28-33.
31 Gerrare, Greater Russia, 28, 120.
One of the more significant aspects of Norman’s work is that the wealth that was available to British companies in Baku was also available for enterprising foreign investors willing to exploit the variety of natural resources present in Russia, such as gold, magnesium and timber, as a result of Russia’s lack of domestic capital.33 This model is also clearly demonstrable in a report by Wynnard Hooper for the Royal Statistical Society, published in The Times, which stated that Russian production of gold was under performing in the international context in 1900.34 This article suggests that there was an opening in Russian gold mining ventures that could be exploited by British companies utilising superior gold mining technology.
Other works, such as that of Decle, stressed the importance of foreign capital in developing the natural resources of Russia in order to promote the financial stability of Russia in the future.
Russia must, therefore, if she wishes to develop her mineral wealth, open her doors to foreign prospectors until her own people have gained sufficient experience from them. This, of course, leads me to point out that Russia is entirely dependent upon foreign enterprise for her future expansion. There is no capital in Russia, and for that reason, also, care will have to be taken not to overburden large landowners with excessive taxation.35
This view is also repeated in the Economist in August 1909, where it was observed that due to funds being siphoned off by the Ministry of War for the army and navy there was very little capital in Russia in order to successfully work Russia’s rich natural resources.36 Generally, the perception emerges that due to a lack of capital in Russia, British investment could result in higher returns.
Works published after the industrial downturn and revolutionary disturbances also highlighted the favourable investment conditions in Russia, particularly the richness of Russian material resources and the lack of domestic capital. A key development of this period, however, is that destinations for profitable investments were perceived to be wider than just the extractive industries. This interest in new sources of wealth
33 Norman, All the Russias, 374-76.
34 ‘Recent Gold Production’, The Times 20 June 1901, 13.
35 Lionel Decle, The New Russia, (London: E. Nash, 1906), 257.
was particularly strong in the emerging Siberian districts, which were beginning to be opened up to foreign enterprise with the lifting (and circumventing) of restrictions and the extension of the infrastructure. Hodgetts was particularly keen to press home the advantages of Siberian investments.
To the British public, Siberia will for many years to come be interesting
principally on account of its undoubted mineral wealth, its gold-fields and coal- fields, its petroleum and similar deposits, and in order that these may be
economically worked, and thus contribute to the development and wealth of the Russian Empire, abundant efficient labour is essential.37
A report in The Times also supported this view of Siberia, strictly in terms of the lack of native capital and the abundance of natural resources.38 This was further discussed in relation to the copper mining industry, which stated that the domestic supply of copper in Russia in 1912 did not adequately supply the home demand, leading to an opening for British investment.39
These perceptions are significantly different to the perceptions of the profitability of Russia before the increase of British investment in Baku, suggesting that British investment in oil and perception of the profitability of Russian enterprises was closely linked. Assessments of the wealth of Russia and the potential for investment to make large returns was much more mixed in the period 1892-1900, despite Witte raising the tariff barrier to encourage foreign investment. The earliest example of Russia’s profitability can be found in travel books about Russia, which are indicative of a trend towards factual accounts of Russia, as opposed to the demonization of Russia present in late nineteenth century fiction. For example, in 1892 Harry de Windt described a shift of attitudes in Russia towards Siberia, with Russians associating it less with hardship and exile, and more as a road to richness.40 On the other hand, other assessments could be quite different. A much more negative view of the Siberian gold mining industry is given by the travel writer, Jefferson, in 1897. His view of this particular industry is in contradiction to that established by later writers who focus on the money that could be made. He stated that the poor
37 Hodgetts, Glorious Russia, 121.
38 ‘Siberia as a Field for British Capital’, The Times, 4 September 1908, 15.
39 ‘The Copper Industry in Russia’, The Times, 5 September 1912, 16.
techniques used by the current gold mining industries were causing enormous damage to the whole area, mainly through the tendency for companies to dump their debris on unworked land.41
Reports in the financial press about the profitability of Russian investments were scarce, although Russia as a market for British goods was not overlooked. The
Economist carried articles throughout the 1890s on the demand for British
agricultural machinery in Russia, particularly in the Southern districts. English agricultural machinery was generally regarded as being better quality than its German and American counterparts, although British firms generally failed to cater to the specific needs of the Russian market and extend sufficient credit.42
However, after the Baku oil rush, the British financial press began to emphasize the profits that could be made in industries other than oil and mining. Importantly, they began to portray the high resources, or number of consumers, to domestic capital ratio. Stephen Graham’s Changing Russia, written in 1913, shows evidence of perceptions in Britain that portrayed Russia as a place where good returns could be made from a wide variety of investments. ‘We think that Russia is the new America which we propose to develop with our capital, becoming millionaires thereby. It is for some, even for many, the land where money is invested, the place where the treasure is.’43 He also cites a growth in writing about Russia for this reason, especially in the liberal press. For Graham, British investments had also taken a remarkable number of forms by 1913.
Money has been forthcoming from Britain for all manner of projects- for Caucasian oil, Ural gold, copper and platinum, new railways, old railways, for making harbours and reconstructing towns, for trams, etc. etc. One of the tangible results of the visit of the English delegates was the purchase of the whole stock of two Russian home railways. Various other schemes were promoted. Moscow, Nikolayev, and Baku have raised money in London.
41 Robert Jefferson, Roughing it in Siberia, with some account of the trans-Siberian railway, and the
gold-mining industry of Asiatic Russia (London: Sampson Low, Marsten and company, 1897), 197-
98.
42 For example, ‘Agricultural Machinery in Russia’, The Economist, 18 July 1893, 7; ‘British
Machinery in Russia’, The Economist, 13 October 1894, 9; ‘Agricultural Machinery in Russia’, The
Economist, 12 January 1895, 9.
Money has been found for the new railway along the Black Sea shore, and for the railway from Vladikavkaz to Tiflis.44
A similar attitude displayed in The Times in 1909, which stated, in an article about Russia’s resources in general, that British capital would in the future be entering Russia to develop a wide variety of resources.
An important item of importation into Russia in the non-too distant future will be British capital, for the country teems with undeveloped resources awaiting the investor. Vast deposits of mineral wealth promise handsome profits, while, for the more conservatively minded, there are practically unlimited possibilities of gilt-edged investments in railways and municipal and public works. British interests in Russian mining are already considerable, chiefly in gold (the Lena goldfields), petroleum (Baku), copper (Kyshtim), and manganese.45
The main development here is that new opportunities were not simply confined to extractive industries. The British literature of this period also stressed the importance of investment in manufacturing industries. In fact, this was recognized as early as 1902, when the commercial agent to Russia, Henry Cooke, visited the London
Chamber of Commerce in February 1902. This meeting was publicised in The Times, and the article detailed how there was an opening for British goods in Russia due to the Russo-German tariff war and the boycott of German goods in Poland, resulting in a large number of potential consumers with no competition from German products.46
This emphasis on the number of consumers and the size of the market commonly centred on the demand for agricultural products. Barrett’s 1908 book presents a very positive view of the Russian empire as a place to establish manufacturing industries, stating that due to Russia’s large population, it offered British manufacturers an unlimited market. He placed particular emphasis on agricultural reports for 1907 for Russia, furnished by the foreign office that pointed towards a period of relative prosperity for the Russian peasantry.47 Certain regions of Russia were also portrayed as being particular havens of British manufacturing success, for example John Hubback described the ship building at Nikolaev to have been in the hands of the
44 Graham, Changing Russia, 8-9.
45 ‘Russia’s Resources’, The Times, 19 November 1909, 17.
46 ‘Anglo-Russian Trade’, The Times, 13 February 1902, 11.
British to the extent that football was extremely popular, and districts of Odessa with many British families who had been established there for a generation or two.48 Although these reports bear some resemblance to the descriptions of the Russian market before 1900, a new emphasis was placed on the size of the Russian market and the relative lack of competition from domestic and international firms.
While the improvement of Anglo Russian relations occurred approximately at the same time as the changes in how Russia was viewed as being profitable, Diplomatic relations had very little effect on these considerations, and are rarely mentioned in financial and economic literature. The only mention in the Economist of the economic ramifications of the 1907 Anglo-Russian agreement was the affect that it would have on British trade interests in Persia, which according to the author’s analysis was limited as British trade interests in Persia were not extensive. According to the article the main significance of the treaty was political, not economic.49 In a retrospective article on the agreement in the same publication, the Anglo-Russian friendship was desirable from an economic perspective, but the article doesn’t elaborate on why this is the case, and such a statement could apply to any country.50 Williams similarly argued that by 1914 efforts to improve commercial relations between Russia and Britain had been improved by the formation of the Anglo- Russian chamber of Commerce, and that as a result English investments had been increasing in Russia very prominently.51 Other than these passing references, there is very little in the financial literature at the time to suggest that the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 had much effect on investor perceptions of Russia.
The profitability of Russian investments was instead closely related to the Baku oil boom at the end of the 1890s. It was focused on economic conditions in Russia, where British companies and the British financial press identified a lack of capital and a wealth of natural resources, which would make British enterprise very profitable. Identification of the profitable nature of the Baku oil industry translated into interest in the Siberian gold mining industry, and later, throughout the first
48 John Hubback, Russian Realities: Being Impressions gathered During Some Recent Journeys in
Russia (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1915), 29, 69.
49 ‘England and Russia in Persia’, The Economist, 28 September 1907, 1619
50 ‘England, Russia and the Tsar’, The Economist, 3 July 1909, 4.
decade of the twentieth century, into a greater interest in the Russian market for manufactured goods. Although the wider interest in the Russian market developed concurrently with the improvement of Anglo-Russian relations and the Anglo- Russian agreement, there is little to suggest that this had much of an effect on the perceived profitability of Russian investments.
It is important to note the effect of the 1905 revolution on British perceptions of the profitability of Russia. The two years of industrial unrest that followed the 1905 revolution, and the accompanying troubles in the Caucasus understandably dented British confidence in the Russian market. The British financial press at the time was filled with depressing news of falling Russian industrial stocks,52 and this depression
had an effect on wider literature surrounding the profitability of Russian investments. This can be demonstrated by Rudolf Martin’s study of Russia, published in 1907. He stated that the upward rise in shares in Russian enterprises and state bonds was due to the behaviour of buyers under the mistaken impression that the 1905 revolution had come to an end.53 For this particular writer, it is evident that the revolutionary unrest in Russia had created a poor business environment, and did not offer good security for investments. He makes reference to the ‘modern fallacy’ that Russia was
‘boundlessly rich’, and that contemporary English investors generally did not believe in this in 1907.54
The problems created by unrest in Russia are evident in later works. Barrett went to great pains in the first chapter of Russia’s New Era to emphasize the stability of the Russian regime. He initially points out that the third Duma represented a significant for the peaceful development of Russia, and that Stolypin was likely to be able to implement gradual reform, removing the threat of further revolutionary activity.55 This stabilizing effect, for Barrett, was also evident in Russian industry.
So far as industrial progress is concerned, the trade returns and reports from various manufacturing centers have passed away and that the worst effects of the
52 For example, ‘Continental Bourses’ The Times, 16 December 1905, 12; ‘Continental Bourses’, 17
May 1906, 12; ‘Continental Bourses’, 17 June 1907, 14.
53 R. Martin, The Future of Russia (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1906), xvii.
54 Martin, The Future of Russia, 126-27.
war and of subsequent disturbances in industrial centers have passed away and that a period of material recuperation has set in.56
Barrett’s audience are therefore likely to have harbored concerns about the political stability of Russia, and that the recent political instability and revolutionary
upheavals had had on Russian business. A similar opinion is evident in how Barrett characterizes the finances of the state. Barrett states that due to the flotation of the Russian loan, it was now no longer fashionable to talk in terms of Russian
insolvency.57 This could have been designed to allay British fears of the Russian government defaulting on its debts, and the resulting economic consequences this would have for Russia.
It would seem from comparisons to later works in this period, however, that the damage to British perceptions of the profitability of Russia was merely temporary. Overall, the picture that emerges of British opinions of the profitability of Russian investments is one of continuity with the period before the outbreak of revolutionary unrest. Investments were still rationalized in terms of the high wealth of natural resources to domestic capital ratio, but in a far wider range of different industries, indicating an opening up of the Russian investment market in this period for British investors. This strongly corresponds with the financial models of capital being pushed out of Britain towards countries with low levels of domestic capital before 1914. Significantly, this development corresponded with a tendency to include positive views of the Russian government’s attitude towards foreign business interests in examinations of the profitability of Russia, indicating the Russian government in the post-1907 period was viewed less in terms of its traditional tyrannical image in this period by business interests.