Practical activities of the state property department in the Nizhny Novgorod province on the support of the handicraft industry in the second half of the 19th century

One of the important directions in the development of the economy of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century was the support of small handicraft industry. It was during this period that the handicraft industry reached a new stage of its development, on the one hand, exerting an ever greater influence on the economies of counties and provinces, and on the other, demanding more close attention. The period until 1864 is characterized by the absence of any systematic information about artisanal trades that are widespread in the territory of a province. In fact, only the department of state property periodically collected information about the artisan rural industry for solving narrow departmental tasks. In fact, from 1864 onwards, the functions of the state property agency in terms of supporting the fisheries remained. They consist of providing exhibitions, providing public forest on preferential terms, assisting in the development of peat extraction, collecting publications of local zemstvos for agricultural statistics, etc.