Pages from the Past: The 1910 Moscow Trade Expedition to Mongolia

These are the field diaries kept by the team of Russian merchant-explorers who traveled widely through northwest Mongolia in the summer of 1910. The expedition had been organized and funded by a group of Moscow merchants investigating opportunities for exporting goods to Mongolia in competition with Chinese domination of the local and regional market systems. The Russians were also charged with locating new sources of raw materials for Russian manufactures and verifying the northwest frontier…