Mammoth tusk mining industry in the context of interaction of trade capital and indigenous population (the 19th - 20th centuries)

The paper studies the problem of interaction between merchantry and indigenous peoples of the North through the example of the mammoth tusk mining industry. This interaction is interpreted from the point of view of the ideas of K. Polanyi who considers that economy of traditional society is rooted in social matter and that market has the transformative influence. The paper shows that at the turn of the 19th century, the exchange relations in which the merchants and the indigenous population of the North of Yakutia were based on debt morality that builds onto the moral foundations of traditional society. Trade capital formed different forms of interaction with the two emerged types of organization of mammoth tusk mining industry, namely with artels (formed mainly out of Yakut people of sedentary lifestyle) and individual and collective collection of tusks as a by-product (mainly by alien nomadic people). The different types of interaction took into account reciprocal and redistributive forms of integration of these economies and characteristics of their moral standards. It is particularly noted, that the industry disappears not after the gradual reduction of demand for mammoth tusk and its substitution on the global ivory markets, but only with the cessation of trade relations built on the basis of debt morality.