Agents of guild merchants in Bessarabia: legal framework and entrepreneurship sphere (1812-1853)

Historical science today increasingly emphasize the role of the individual in the sphere of economic relations, especially the work of large industrialists and traders, their role in establishing links with various agents of foreign capital and in importing technical innovations and modern practices on the markets in which they were active. Unfortunately, the emphasis on the elite excludes a clear vision by the researcher of the mechanism of functioning of entrepreneurship at the lower level, of practices and techniques that give an idea of the peculiarities of the system of capitalist relations at the local and regional levels. In the present study we aim to examine these issues from the perspective of the guild merchants’ agents, who were at the bottom of the entrepreneurship pyramid. Based on the analysis of unpublished and published sources, of historical literature on economic relations in the Russian Empire during the 19th century, we came to the conclusion that in Bessarabia not only agents of local merchants, but also from other provinces acted. By the mid-1840s, commercial agents became the main commercial actors responsible for the bulk of commercial transactions, such as direct purchase of goods from various Bessarabian producers, as well as from fairs and markets, and even for the signing of contracts and agreements on behalf of guilds merchants. Their activities are reflected in the records of city dumas and magistrates, of the customs bodies of Bessarabia, in legal proceedings on various commercial matters, etc