Gift, Tribute, and Trade: An Anthropology of Interaction between the Natives of Siberia and the Russians in the 17th-19th Centuries

Abstract

The article employs the concept of gift exchange to explore the interaction between the natives of Siberia and the Russians in the 17th-19th centuries. Focusing on the North of Western Siberia, the author attempts to examine the part that the reciprocal and hierarchical relations, based on the exchange of gifts, played in the process of integrating inorodtsy (“others”, “allogeneous people”) into the social structure of the Russian state. He points out to the important place that the custom of diplomatic gift-giving held in that process; and to the fairs that were established in the settlements of the natives and that could be viewed as a space where all forms of exchange converged. The author argues that, by the beginning of the 20th century, there was observed a peculiar synthesis of the gift-exchange practices and the market institution of trade in the economic life of the Siberian North.