Euxeinos, Vol. 11, No. 32 / 2021 56 Prosperity and Conflict in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Rostov-on-Don: Russian, Cossack, and Armenian Economic Cultures on the Northern Black Sea Coast by Michel Abeßer During the nineteenth century, the Russian settlement of Rostov and the Armenian colony of Nakhichevan on Don slowly merged into a single urban and economic space. This contribution analyses how these increasingly entangled communities negotiated conflicts and to what extent disputes about trading opportunities and state privileges shaped their urban identities. On the empire’s periphery, Armenians, Russians and Cossacks framed their positions with narratives of soslovie, class or religious belonging, until the beginning of the Great Reforms, when the state increasingly levelled differences in administration and economy and growing national sentiments increasingly altered multiethnic communal life. Key words: Rostov-on-Don, economy, Armenians, urban identity, trade Introduction “Be on guard at the market! To cheat on you, it takes ten Jews, five Greeks, but only one Armenian!” This warning circulated among Russian merchants (kuptsy) at the Black Sea markets of the nineteenth century and ranks the tsar’s non-Russian subjects by their degree of deceitfulness and dishonest calculus when conducting the business of trade. Armenians seem to be those around whom a Russian trader should be most cautious. Count Peter Pallas, travelling around the new south Russian provinces by order of Empress Catherine II, drew an entirely different picture. In the late summer of 1794, Pallas’s retinue arrived in Nakhichevan, an Armenian colony founded 32 kilometers away from where the Don entered the Sea of Azov. The count was amazed by the short period of 16 years the Armenian settlers needed to erect a flourishing settlement on the edge of the steppe. “The vitality of the Armenians’ industries, their factories, their craftsmen and trading enterprises compared with those of the Russians and the Greeks, yes, even the German ones, is so striking, that a decent patriot is instantly driven by the desire to move the whole Armenian people from the Aras plateau into Russia. If properly encouraged they would easily accept such an offer.” 1 From Pallas’s state-bound perspective, the Armenians exhibited certain attributes well suited to the Catherinian Zeitgeist of revitalizing the empire and its economy. In his account, Pallas further contrasted “diligent, sober and good Armenian peasants” with “hostile and malevolent Don- Cossacks,” who, according to him, rejected Catherine’s call for revitalization. The