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How Did a Hired Cossack Band Open Siberia to Russian Expansion? - Sable Furs and Wooden Forts: The Mechanism of Russian Expansion | Sleepy Facts About History
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In the late sixteenth century, a family of salt merchants on the western slopes of the Ural Mountains hired a band of armed Cossacks to solve a commercial problem. The Stroganovs wanted access to richer fur grounds blocked by the Khanate of Sibir, a functioning Tatar-Turkic state ruled by Kuchum Khan. The resulting expedition, led by Yermak Timofeyevich, did not conquer Siberia in a single campaign. Instead, it established a replicable pattern of merchant capital, river mobility, wooden…
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