Russia Company and the North Russia Protectorate Scheme
Corrected conclusion
Two propositions must be kept separate.
- Contemporary letters establish that James I ordered Sir Henry Neville to
- Chester Dunning reconstructs a wider Russia Company plan for English
confer repeatedly with councillors about a northern route for Persian and inland East Indian trade, and that Neville later explained the route at length.
protection or control of northern Russia and assigns Neville an interventionist role. That reconstruction is important scholarship, but the contemporary passages checked for this packet do not themselves say that Neville advocated military intervention or designed the protectorate.
The packet therefore supports Neville's participation in high-level consultation and his exposition of the commercial route. It does not yet support the stronger claim that he personally argued for an English protectorate.
Contemporary evidence
John Chamberlain's letter of 29 April 1613 reports proposals to carry Persian and inland East Indian trade by the Hydaspes, Oxus, Caspian, Volga, and Dwina to St Nicholas or Archangel. The printed calendar states that Neville had, by the king's command, held much conference with the council about the proposals. The full printed letter adds that Neville had conferred several times and was reported to have shown great sufficiency.
In the follow-up of 6 May, Chamberlain says that Neville discussed at length the commercial advantages of the proposed corridor. The surrounding discussion also mentions protection of Russia, a governor or deputy, and a large troop requirement. The syntax does not allocate every military provision to Neville. Chamberlain himself calls the plans easier to speak of than to accomplish.
This is direct contemporary evidence for consultation and commercial-policy exposition. It is not a surviving speech by Neville endorsing the entire political and military scheme.
Later reconstructions
Dunning places the route discussion inside a serious 1612-13 Russia Company protectorate project involving James I, Thomas Chamberlayne, Robert Carr, Thomas Overbury, and Neville. His article is the principal scholarly account of that larger scheme. Part of the referral narrative also depends on a retrospective 1631 memorandum by Thomas Chamberlayne. That later document is evidence about the history of the proposal, but it is not a contemporary record of Neville's words in 1613.
Cawston and Keane call the route Neville's ambitious project, but their account routes the claim through Chamberlain and supplies no separate primary witness for Neville's authorship of the whole plan.
Evidence boundary
| Claim | Status |
|---|---|
| James ordered Neville into repeated council consultation | controlled by Chamberlain |
| Neville explained the northern commercial route at length | controlled by Chamberlain |
| A Russia Company protectorate project was under discussion | supported by Dunning and the contemporary context |
| Neville advocated military intervention | not established by the checked contemporary wording |
| Neville alone designed the scheme | unsupported |
Sources
- John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 29 April 1613, calendared in [*Calendar
- John Chamberlain, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert
- Chester Dunning, "James I, the Russia Company, and the Plan to Establish a
- A. C. Cawston and A. H. Keane, [The Early Chartered Companies
of State Papers Colonial, East Indies*, vol. 2, item 644](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/colonial/east-indies-china-japan/vol2/p252).
McClure, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), pp. 445-48; bibliographic record at WorldCat.
Protectorate Over North Russia," Albion 21 (1989): 206-26, doi:10.2307/4049926.
(1896)](https://archive.org/details/cu31924023289477), pp. 44-45.