TRADE AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY IN KAZAKHSTAN IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES: HISTORICAL EVOLUTION AND REGIONAL FEATURES

Abstract

The article examines the historical evolution and regional features of trade and economic activity in Kazakhstan in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The aim is to identify the main directions of its transformation and to show how empire-wide regulations and administrative mechanisms operated in regional commercial practice. The study draws on the Commercial Statute, estate and tax legislation, sector-specific regulations, materials of the First General Census of the Russian Empire of 1897, regional surveys, and ten archival files from repositories in Kazakhstan and the Omsk Region. The principal sources concern the Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk oblasts, while materials from Semirechye, Turkestan, and Western Kazakhstan are used for comparison. Historical-genetic, comparative-historical, institutional, and source-critical approaches made it possible to distinguish between legal norms and their practical implementation, census categories and actual occupations, and trade certificates and operating enterprises. The analysis shows that membership in the merchant estate, the social category of the bai, and actual participation in trade did not coincide. Late nineteenth-century reforms did not eliminate earlier distinctions but changed the principles of administrative registration: increasing importance was attached to the type, category, location, and duration of activity, as well as to the possession of the required documentation. Urban, fair-based, cross-border, and itinerant trade were incorporated into state registration and supervision to varying degrees. Official statistics therefore reflected primarily the registered part of commercial activity. The study shows that trade in Kazakhstan developed through the interaction of estate traditions, trade registration, regional economic specificities, and local administrative institutions. The growth in the number of trade certificates reflected not only expanding commercial activity but also more intensive documentary record-keeping.