Now Moscow was forced to look west were it once looked south to Constantinople. The seizure of the city by the Turks, made it necessary for traders all over to search for a northeast passage to china through Russia.

Historically, Russia had a very long trading history with Tatars, Persians and Mongols and had managed to develop a number of spurious far-flung vast trade networks throughout central Asia and the Caucuses.

As a result of cultural and economic contact with the East, the Russians borrowed many Asiatic customs, such as kowtowing, and the divinely sanctioned supreme authority of the monarch. So while Russia was a Christian country, to other Christian countries, she was viewed as the barbarism exotica of the Northern frontiers. However, Russia was undergoing a period of consolidation and centralization during this period.

During the 15th and 16th century as the Moscow princes managed to exert firmer control over the feudal appenages, the liberty afforded towards centralized consolidation of revenues, and land ownership made trade expansion possible. With Trade expansion, came many western foreign traders, many of who left in their writings accounts of their travels. The most famous of these accounts is the account by the German ambassador Sigisimund von Herberstein. This work constituted all of the known information westerners possessed on Russia as a whole. These merchant traveler accounts form the basis for primary sources on Russian government and society during those centuries of Russian-proto-state formation and trade expansion.

Giles Fletcher no doubt read the writings of Heberstein. However, the English Elizabethian crown wanted to have its own unique sources and intelligence on the newly expanding Russian proto-state. As mentioned earlier Russia was important to England because it was believed that she had a Northeast Passage to China. Many explorers such as Sebastian Cabot openly talked of finding a North East passage in Russia-how else could they avoid trade with the middleman Turks. Under the reign of Ivan Grozny, English explorers were trading all throughout Russia.

The Moscow trading company essentially became the blue print for all joint stock companies that followed from the English crown. (7) Ivan IV granted the English a trading monopoly and exempted the Moscow Company from customs and other excises on goods that were sold. During this time it was found that a Northeast Passage to china was not economically feasible. However a land route to the Middle East was found and trade opened up quickly in what was once the vacuum of the conquered Byzantine state. During this time Moscow annexed all of the tributaries of the Volga River and essentially made it the central artery of trade in Russia.

However, the Anglo-Russian treaty began to suffer a number of setbacks. The Russian court began to fear the monopoly of the English on the Northeastern trade routes. The queen of England first dispatches Thomas Randolph to renegotiate the trade treaty. The Russians later reaffirmed the treaty with England, and Tsar was able to supervise the company's actions with his newly formed Secret police, the Oprichnina. Secretly though, Ivan hoped for a military alliance with England. However, Ivan died in 1584, and now the puppet Fedor, and his enforcer, Boris Godiunov, ruled Russia.

Now the English court called on the services of Giles Fletcher. He was already a veteran of both the English parliament and treasury and had his own ideas on how commerce was supposed to operate between to nations-not necessarily equal ones.

Giles account of Russia

Fletcher Giles published his book, "Russe Commonwealth" in 1591. The Moscow Company vigorously tried to suppress the book. The book was targeted as being seditionary nature. The essential summary of Russian statecraft personality of the 16th century, according to the English and Fletcher could be summarized as autocrat and autocracy, rule by military decree.

 On the Orientalist note, somewhat common in colonial sources, was also the depiction of the “other”, and although Russia had good relations withEngland at this time, her knowledge about Russia was framed by the stereotype of the despot, and mind numbingly poor exploited peasant. This part was very true though Karimzin agrees that Fletcher’s account of Russian life was fairly accurate.

Fletcher’s book became more risqué when it was revealed that certain passages in the book about Godinov portrayed him as the autocrat and Fedor as the puppet. In further passages there is also the account of the alleged unlawful succession of Fedor to the throne and that overall the rulers of Russia were innately tyrannous autocrats, as opposed to the (English gentleman autocrat).

The Book was essentially divided into three sections, geography, state institutional structure, (this being the most lengthy part of his analysis), and finally an account of Russian customs and manners. The largest part of the book is devoted to the operations of the state itself, from the nobility and officials to the judiciary and military apparatuses of the Moscow state. Most of his other source information comes from his companion Hosey, who provided him with a rich descriptive account of the Siberian Tatars. Overall, the book was a watershed in Russian political history. It was the first systematic analysis of Russian politics and society ever undertaken.

For Fletcher, the importance of his work lay in addressing the relationships between autocracy and how the government functioned and retained its power. Thus, Autocracy for Giles was a political necessity in Russia given her violent past. He poignantly pointed out the differences between the English and Russian crowns defining the English government as a "community of interest."(28). This involved the balance of power, and authority being shared by the English king and his nobles, pursuant to the Magna Carta precedent that established the English parliament. In Ivan's time, there is no Veche or parliament.

Fletcher views the tax-exempt church as being totally disconnected from the peasantry. He says the Russian manner is crude, and the regime is responsible for the stunted evolution of the commoner. He is obviously sympathetic towards these people and blamed the government. Essentially he summed up the reason for the backwardness of the peasantry. 1. Rigidity of the social structure, and 2.) Lawlessness and anarchy in the countryside. (35) Fletcher knew that the thin veil of social order would not last long and accurately predicted that a civil war would soon follow. 15 years later, so began the "Time of troubles." To Fletcher, England was antithetical to Russia. Two countries with related royal houses, and totally different economic and political fortunes.

The individual nobles and lords functioned as tyrant landholding manorial serf systems as well. The Grozny state mutually reinforced, the quick succession of noble classes, through inherited Byzantine Court intrigue, as diplomacy @ home through purge of the Boyar, and diplomacy abroad as military expansion, and consolidation, of the Moscow state, through trade with England and military expansion of border, periphery states, that precipitated, polish-Lithuanian encroachment. Among the nobility and gentry, the specter of the divided houses, as often purge, by Ivan’s paranoia, and an inherited disintegration of sanity with the death of anaststasia romanaov busmanov, made the life of the Boyar, a good one if he never crossed Grozny’s path. For after the death of his wife, Anastasia is when the autocracy fully emerged.

In terms of historical relevancy, this period was regarded as how Moscow was to expand, and centralize control with the rate of expansion, i.e., Boyar Purge = Transfer of Votchina, to Pomestie. The crown becomes the major landholding entity along with the church. In Giles view it was in the Slavic tradition, the tragedy making the tyrant. Hence Fedor’s puppet role was a doomed- somewhat, a hapless tragedy, and a point in which Moscow is still controlled by Ivan’s generals.

Muscovy endured two False Dimitry’s claiming kinship to the royal throne of Ivan Grozny. Some where supported by the resurgent Poles and Lithuanians, however, both reigns were short towards exile for one and execution for state (church-Judicial) heresy, on the other. Eventually, the election of Michael Romanov, by the Boyar Duma, as Tsar, transformed the face of Russian History. Michael was the grandson of Anastasia, and Grand Father, to Peter the Great.

Conclusion

Centralization in Russia required an autocrat, and a strong ruler who could unite the military and bring boyar feudalism in line with state control. The institutional framework, i.e., state taxing structure was already in place as a result of former Mongol rule. With the resumption of the East west trade and the end of the pax mongolica, western trade, diplomatically sought ways around the ottoman black sea blockade. The English began to heavily invest in Russia. This investment already complemented the internal political politics of succession of Moscow, the vestiges of Mongol absolutism, i.e., taxation structure and borrowed military structure.

Key to the character of the proto Russian state was the inherited notion that Political crises in Russia tended to create a phenomenon in which the state had to be increasingly militarized. This was the states classic response to border instability, which tended to create rule by a single autocrat, and his generals. Border defense and land registration, were tasks that only the state and its emerging military bureaucracy could provide. For centralization to occur the ruler had to command obedience from his nobles. The history of the fractious nobles had made foreign invasion possible. So Russia As a country had faced numerous raids from nomadic tribes and the Baltic Alliance, throughout its history and this led to the necessity for strong central control, if it was to remain a nation. The military was the only institutional structure capable of unifying the Russian land.

Fletcher was never able to really profit from his book. He died in 1611. His book was banned for a while and finally re-released in 1643. The Russian historian Karamzin found Fletcher's work to be quite accurate for the time.

In all, the author of, “"Russe Commonwealth,"” Giles, attempted to describe in 150 pages, a testimonial of Russia during a period in which she was undergoing a period of massive land consolidation, under the authority of centralizing Muscovy state. Moscow centralization was essentially Russia's response to incessant Mongol and Tatar raids. After the fall of the Mongol Russian Suzerain state, the Russian princes had fallen into decay and princely infighting.

In conclusion, the autocracy that the English were viewing in Russia as part of their economic and political intelligence gathering in Russia, in terms of historical understanding of russian political custom, had to be viewed in the context of the necessity for political stability in Russia, as she began the process of modernization, and in the English eyes, the gradual evolution into westphalian statehood.