MARRIAGES BETWEEN MERCHANT REPRESENTATIVES FROM TULA AND EFREMOV IN THE 1850S: CONVENIENCE, NEED OR SENTIMENTS?

The article analyzes the characteristics of provincial merchants’ marital behavior (aver-age age of marriage, class affiliation of marriage partners, possible motives for marriage) based on the analysis of two European Russian cities’ metric books. The author shows that marriages with a socially equal partner were arranged at an earlier age and presents the geography of marriage relations of the Tula and Efremov merchants. In the period under consideration a significant part of marriages were concluded by merchants outside their social group. The shares of marriages arranged by merchant men and merchant women with gunsmiths, nobles, burghers, peasants, etc. are presented. The study shows that merchant women in larger cities were less likely to enter into unequal marriages compared to merchant men. The author suggests that the main reason for forcing a significant proportion of merchant women from a district town to enter into unequal marriages was the relative narrowness of the “marriage market” in towns. The author gives a number of examples of other factors that influ-enced the conclusion of marriage with a partner from a less privileged social group. In the author's opinion, representatives of the merchant class did not always enter into marriages of convenience and the possibility of establishing kinship ties with each other through marriage could be no less important for merchant families than the financial well-being of the marriage partner.