How apt modern historians generally are to receive their cue from the official tricksters themselves, is best shown by their reflections on the commercial interests of England with respect to Russia and Sweden. Nothing has been more exaggerated than the dimensions of the trade opened to Great Britain by the huge market of the Russia of Peter the Great, and his immediate successors. Statements bearing not the slightest touch of criticism have been allowed to creep from one book-shelf to another, till they became at last historical household furniture, to be inherited by every successive historian, without even the _beneficium inventarii_. Some incontrovertible statistical figures will suffice to blot out these hoary common-places.
£ Export to Russia 58,884 Import from Russia 112,252 --------- Total 171,136
Export to Sweden 57,555 Import from Sweden 212,094 --------- Total 269,649
£ Export of England amounted to 3,525,906 Import 3,482,586 --------- Total 7,008,492
In 1716, after all the Swedish provinces in the Baltic, and on the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia, had fallen into the hands of Peter I., the
£ Export to Russia was 113,154 Import from Russia 197,270 -------- Total 310,424
Export to Sweden 24,101 Import from Sweden 136,959 -------- Total 161,060
At the same time, the total of English exports and imports together reached about £10,000,000. It will be seen from these figures, when compared with those of 1697-1700, that the increase in the Russian trade is balanced by the decrease in the Swedish trade, and that what was added to the one was subtracted from the other.
£ Export to Russia was 46,275 Import from Russia 258,802 -------- Total 305,077
Fifteen years, then, after the consolidation in the meanwhile of the Muscovite settlement on the Baltic, the British trade with Russia had fallen off by £5,347. The general trade of England reaching in 1730 the sum of £16,329,001, the Russian trade amounted not yet to 1/53rd of its total value. Again, thirty years later, in 1760, the account between Great Britain and Russia stands thus:
£ Import from Russia (in 1760) 536,504 Export to Russia 39,761 -------- Total £576,265
while the general trade of England amounted to £26,361,760. Comparing these figures with those of 1706, we find that the total of the Russian commerce, after nearly half a century, has increased by the trifling sum of only £265,841. That England suffered positive loss by her new commercial relations with Russia under Peter I. and Catherine I. becomes evident on comparing, on the one side, the export and import figures, and on the other, the sums expended on the frequent naval expeditions to the Baltic which England undertook during the lifetime of Charles XII., in order to break down his resistance to Russia, and, after his death, on the professed necessity of checking the maritime encroachments of Russia.