Russia and the Dutch Republic, 1566–1725: A Forgotten Friendship

267 Pages·2021·9.816 MB·English

by  Kees Boterbloem

Russia and the Dutch
Republic, 1566–1725
Jordan E. Kurland (1928–2016).
Russia and the Dutch
Republic, 1566–1725
A Forgotten Friendship
Kees Boterbloem
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933225
ISBN 978-1-7936-4858-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-7936-4859-4 (electronic)
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Contents
Foreword: Jordan E. Kurland (1928–2016) vii
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Chronology 23
Maps 33
1 The Prehistory of Dutch-Russian Relations; the English Pioneers 35
2 Flemish Trailblazers 41
3 New States on Europe’s Fringe 51
4 De Vogelaer and Van Klenck 55
5 The Russian and Dutch Other 59
6 Diplomatic Ties 67
7 Isaac Massa 73
8 Business Opportunities 79
9 Guns and Grain 85
10 Medicine 91
11 Dutch Entrepreneurs 99
v
vi Contents
12 Pivot: Boreel’s Embassy 103
13 Dutch Mercenaries in the Tsar’s Service 113
14 The Western Sloboda 121
15 The New Commercial Statute of 1667 127
16 Envoys 133
17 The Oryol 143
18 Becoming Russian? 147
19 Koenraad van Klenck’s Embassy 151
20 The Interregnum, 1676–1689 159
21 Peter the Great 169
22 Patrick Gordon and François Lefort 175
23 Russians in the Republic 181
24 A Final Blaze of Business: Lups and Brants 187
25 Cornelis Cruys and the Russian Exchange Students 193
26 An Era Closes: The Eighteenth Century 197
Epilogue 201
Glossary 209
Bibliography 211
Index 229
About the Author 251
Foreword
Jordan E. Kurland (1928–2016)
Figure 0.1. Anita and Jordan Kurland aboard the Queen Mary, September 18, 1959.
In a photograph taken in mid-September 1959, aboard RMS Queen Mary
steaming toward Cherbourg, Jordan, and Anita Kurland are pictured relax-
ing in a lounge, he in a suit and tie, she in a dress and heels. Jordan, age
31, is about to begin a year’s sabbatical leave from his faculty position
at the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (now UNC-
Greensboro). Supported by a US–Soviet exchange program, he will be able
to conduct research in the Archive of Ancient Acts (TsGADA, nowadays
vii
viii Foreword
RGADA) in Moscow for his Ph.D. dissertation on the Dutch influence on
Russia in the late seventeenth century. While Jordan will stay in a dormitory
at Moscow State University, Anita will spend the year in Leyden with three
small children and a former student of Jordan’s, Jackie Long, alternating
childcare and travel. The Netherlands is familiar, since Jordan and Anita had
lived there a half dozen years earlier, when Jordan was researching the dis-
sertation, on a Fulbright fellowship, in the Dutch National Archives in The
Hague. At the time this photograph was taken, though neither of them can
know it, he is at approximately the midpoint of his career as a history profes-
sor—and the dissertation will never be finished.
This volume originates in the research and writing Jordan Kurland con-
ducted in the 1950s and early 1960s on his dissertation project, “The Dutch
in Russia: 1664–1689: A Study of the Influence of the Netherlands upon
Muscovite Political and Economic Life.”
Among the materials from the dissertation research, some of them now 65
years old, that Jordan left behind at his death in 2016 were three completed
chapters tracing Russian-Dutch relations through the Boreel Embassy to
Moscow of 1664–1665 and portions of a fourth, on the impact of Russia’s
new economic policy in the late 1660s. There were approximately 3,000 4 ×
6 note cards (primarily transcriptions of sources) and 500 3 × 5 bibliography
cards. A Table of Contents hints at the original design, through 1689, and a
single-page outline indicates in somewhat more detail the shape of the argu-
ment through 1665.
Many of the raw materials for this volume were assembled by Jordan
Kurland, who laid its original foundation. The final design and construc-
tion—not to mention a great many of the details and most of the writing—are
the work of Professor Kees Boterbloem. This study pushes well beyond the
dissertation’s original bounds and incorporates research produced by other
scholars active in the half-century this project lay dormant.
*
Jordan Kurland matriculated at Dartmouth College in 1945. During a vaca-
tion term at home in Boston, he met Anita Siegel. They would be married
for 69 years, producing four children and eight grandchildren. With housing
for married students at a premium in Hanover, NH, he transferred to Boston
University, graduating in 1949 and earning his MA in History a year later.
He then started work on his Ph.D. at Columbia’s Russian Institute (now
the Harriman Institute), completing the requirements for his Certificate
with a 200-page essay on “The History and Destiny of Russia According to
Konstantin Leontiev,” a portion of which was published in The American
Slavic and East European Review in 1957. 1
Foreword ix
Jordan’s original interest in Russian history was stimulated by medi-
eval Muscovy. In the early days of the Cold War, with the energies at the
Russian Institute primarily focused on modern history and politics, notably
revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union, he decided to move forward
in time, settling in the seventeenth century. Presumably, his interest in the
Dutch Republic followed from his study of seventeenth-century Russia. His
teaching career began, in the academic year 1954–1955, with a Visiting
Instructorship at the Woman’s College. At the end of that year, the family
moved back to New York, returning to Greensboro the following year when
a permanent position opened. He earned tenure, as A.B.D., with the rank of
Assistant Professor.
As a faculty member (in 1954 and 1955, and then from 1956 to 1965),
Jordan Kurland taught European history and offered introductory courses in
the Russian language. He also became involved in academic freedom and free
speech issues, serving as president of the UNC-G chapter of the American
Association of University Professors (AAUP) and as executive secretary of
the North Carolina AAUP conference. The AAUP was particularly active in
opposing a 1963 law banning outside speakers identified with Communism
from North Carolina’s state university campuses. These efforts put him in
contact with representatives of the national AAUP, and he was invited to join
the AAUP’s professional staff, which he did, in mid-1965, taking a leave of
absence and relocating the family to Washington, DC, with every expectation
of returning to his teaching position a couple of years later. He remained with
the AAUP for over 50 years, working primarily on matters related to academic
freedom and tenure. In 2000, he retired as director of staff for the Association’s
Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure but remained at the AAUP,
ostensibly on a part-time basis, for the rest of his life. The photograph at the
top of this Foreword was taken at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the AAUP,
when Jordan, age 86, was honored for over half a century of service to the
Association.
Even after he left the classroom, in 1965, Jordan remained interested
in Russian history. He maintained his memberships in scholarly associa-
tions, skimmed their journals, and contributed several book reviews to The
American Historical Review and Slavic Review. In the early 1970s, he
returned to his dissertation during a year-long sabbatical from AAUP, which
he spent at the Library of Congress. The dissertation had begun under the
direction of Philip E. Mosely, who died in 1972. Mosely’s successor as dis-
sertation director, Geroid Tanquary Robinson (1893–1971), urged a different
direction for bringing the project to a close. The details have been lost, but
it seems to have involved wrapping up with the Boreel Embassy in 1664
and 1665 and writing a new introduction and conclusion. Jordan may have
pursued that approach during this sabbatical but without completing it to his