Commercial and industrial centers of the Samara region in the second half of the XIX – early XX century

The article considers the formation process of the commercial and industrial centers of the Samara region in the post-reform era. Despite there are scientific works that cover the topic of the formation and development of commercial and industrial entrepreneurship in the Samara province, the issue presented in the article can be considered as one of the unstudied. The scientific literature is not yet clearly defined the main factors that influenced this process. These factors include natural and climatic conditions, pace of establishment and development of agricultural production and other branches of farming industry, modernization of transport and financial infrastructure. The source base of the article is presented by administrative documentation, guidance and statistical materials, sources of personal nature, and fiction. The most significant sources include the documentary publications that contain a large amount of historical information, for example, «Lists of populated areas» for 1859, 1889, 1900, 1910. They contain valuable information about the geographical location of trade and industry facilities. On the basis of these and other materials, comparative-historical, analytical, methods of periodization and systematization, conclusions were formulated about the stages of the formation and development of shopping and industrial centers, their geographical placement, as well as that the modernization of transport and financial infrastructure gave a powerful impetus to the development of trading -Industrial activities of both the provincial capital and county centers, as well as a number of settlements, which at the end of the XIX-early XX centuries were shopping and industrial centers.