“A collective portrait” of the Crimean customs officials at the end of the 18th and during the 19th century. Experience in working with electronic databases

The article is devoted to the study of the history of the customs institutions of the Crimean Peninsula, which operated during the 19th century. Since the entry of Crimea into the Russian Empire in 1783, the central authorities have paid special attention to the organization of the Crimean customs, which played a key role in Russia’s domestic and foreign policy in the Azov-Black Sea region and in the development of international trade. The archival documents from the Russian State Historical Archives and the State Archives of the Republic of Crimea on the establishment and the activities of the customs institutions during the period under review are involved; many of those records have been introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The considered document package is a unique source of information on the tasks performed by the customs service on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula; it allows for a study of the history of those institutions and helps to identify the features of their functioning and the specifics of their activities. The authors’ method of working with the sources that make it possible to disclose the staffing of the Crimean customs is presented. With the help of the archival materials, the article traces the indicators of the financial support for the employees of the regional customs institutions, the nomenclature of their positions, as well as the duration of their service in the customs department. It is shown that the compilation of an independent electronic resource – a prosopographic database of the officials of the Crimean customs institutions of the 19^th century – can partially resolve the problems of interpretation and formalization of archival data information.

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