Features of the Development of Export Trade in the Primorsky Region in 1902–1913: Analysis of Transport and Customs Statistics

The article is devoted to the development of export and transit trade in the Primorsky Region of the Russian Empire from 1902 to 1913. The study is based on quantitative sources from the relevant period: materials of Russian customs statistics, as well as statistical reports of the Ussuri Railway and the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) on cargo transportation. Since the second half of the 19th century, the transportation of goods between the coast of the Sea of Japan and the interior regions of Northeast China played a key role in the economic life of Primorye. The gradual opening of freight traffic along the Far Eastern section of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1891–1903 not only intensified such trade, but also changed its nature. Within a short time, the CER made it possible to establish the mass export of agricultural products from Manchuria to foreign markets, transit of Chinese tea to Siberia and European Russia, and contributed to the exceptionally rapid development of local fish sales in the same direction. Nevertheless, the export of goods from Primorye itself to Manchuria remained insignificant, and Vladivostok increasingly lost its role as a key supply point for Manchuria, gradually ceding this function to the port of Dalniy (Dalian) on the Liaodong Peninsula. The competition between the two ports became especially acute after the Russo-Japanese War, when Japan began actively taking measures to attract more cargo through Dairen (the former Dalniy), which was ceded to them in 1905.