He gained
for his country a passage into the Black Sea, by reducing Asoph, at the
mouth of the Don, and he soon established a navy on this sea. His personal
exertions in Holland and England, to make himself acquainted with
ship-building, are well known. The event of his reign, however, which most
completely changed the relative situation of Russia, and established her as
a commercial nation, was the conquest from Sweden of Livonia, Ingria, and
Carelia. Scarcely were these provinces secured to him, when he built, first
Cronstadt, and then St. Petersburgh. The erection of this city, and the
canals he constructed in the interior for the purpose of facilitating the
transportation of merchandize from the more southerly and fertile districts
of his empire to the new capital, soon drew to it the greater portion of
Russian commerce. Archangel, to which there had previously resorted
annually upwards of one hundred ships from England, Holland, Hamburgh, &c.
declined; and early in the eighteenth century Petersburgh, then scarcely
ten years old, beheld itself a commercial city of great importance.
Having now brought the historical sketch of the progress of discovery and
of commercial enterprise down to the commencement of the eighteenth
century, it will be necessary, as well as proper, to contract the scale on
which the remainder of this volume is to be constructed.
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