The English Project of 1612: Muscovy from the very beginning was a Venetian-British franchise

Already in 1914, historian Inna Lyubimenko came across papers that could be called a historical bombshell. They spoke of the “English Project of 1612” — a plan to subordinate Muscovy under the protectorate of King James I. And not just as a political alliance, but as de facto monopolistic control over the “Northern Silk Road” — the trade artery from Arkhangelsk to the Caspian Sea.

This episode was never part of Muscovy’s official history. Because it undermines the main myth: that Moscow was an independent empire. In reality, from the very beginning it was dependent on the Horde, and from the mid-16th century it became financially and politically dependent on English capital.

What happened in 1612 was not an attempt at heroic salvation from the Poles. It was a struggle between different Western centers for the right to control Muscovy, which was already then a cryptocolony.

The Muscovy Company as the real ruler of Moscow

In 1551, on the initiative of the famous Venetian navigator Sebastian Cabot, “Mystery and Company Merchant Adventurers for Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places unknown” was founded in London.

In 1555, the trading corporation was renamed the Muscovy Company. Formally, it was an association of English merchants, but in fact — a transnational project, where Venetian bankers played the key role. After the fall of Constantinople, they had lost control over the old “Silk Road” and were searching for new routes to the East.

From that moment, Muscovy ceased to be an isolated backward state. It became a franchise of British capital, its own Horde. Ivan the Terrible received weapons, specialists, technologies, and most importantly — financial support. In return, he gave the English a monopoly on trading furs, flax, and timber — resources of strategic importance for the English crown and its fleet.

Archival sources testify: the Company’s merchants not only traded, but also acted as envoys, advisers, and spies. They dictated with whom Moscow should wage war and with whom to make peace. Through them, English influence penetrated the very foundations of state governance.

Venetian and London financiers saw in the Volga a future land-and-river Silk Road, capable of replacing the Ottoman-controlled sea routes. That is why Muscovy became their strike force, meant to conquer the necessary territories.

In fact, Moscow replaced for Venice Sarai, which had declined after the Ottomans seized Constantinople.

Wars for the Volga: British credit and weapons

After signing agreements with the Muscovy Company, Moscow sharply changed the scale of its imperial ambitions. Already in the mid-16th century, Ivan IV launched a series of campaigns aimed at seizing all the trade arteries that would determine the state’s fate for centuries ahead.

In 1552, the Kazan Khanate was conquered. Four years later — Astrakhan. Thus Moscow gained control over the entire middle and lower Volga.

In essence, it was a geoeconomic revolution: the Volga became a strategic corridor connecting Arkhangelsk with the Caspian, and therefore — with Persia, Bukhara, and even China. It was a new Silk Road, created through Moscow’s military power, and thanks to foreign money and technology.

English merchants supplied cannons, gunpowder, lead, sulfur, and ship materials. Along with them came mercenaries and engineers. For Moscow, which had no industrial base of its own, this support was critical.

However, the Livonian War (1558–1583), which Ivan waged for access to the Baltic, ended in failure. The English wanted ice-free ports, but Moscow was defeated. So the bet was placed on the Volga and the Caspian, where resistance was weaker and profits greater.

Muscovy, like Sarai before it, essentially became a military subcontractor. Its tsar sat on English and Venetian merchants’ money and supplies, while the conquests looked less like the “eastern crusade of an Orthodox state” than like part of the West’s global trade project.

1612: Polish intervention and the English plan

The Time of Troubles (1605–1613) brought Muscovy to the brink of collapse. Polish troops stood in the Kremlin, Sweden controlled the north, the country was in famine and chaos. It seemed the Muscovite state was about to disappear.

It was then that the English project, reported by historian Inna Lyubimenko in 1914, emerged. In the British archives she found documents revealing a sensational plan: to transfer under King James I’s protectorate the territory from Arkhangelsk to the Volga, with access to the Caspian Sea.

The documents said that the local nobility “willingly agrees,” tired of “the horrors of war,” preferring to submit to the English monarch rather than anyone else. The chief agents of the plan were Sir John Merrick and Sir William Russell, tied to the Muscovy Company. They proposed, on behalf of James I, to accept the title of “emperor and protector” of Muscovy.

Even more interesting — the protectorate was to be financed by Muscovy itself. The Muscovites were to hand over enough money and goods to pay for a mercenary army. It was a model of soft occupation, where the colonizer gains power without spending his own resources.

Drafts even noted that “1000 English soldiers to fortify Arkhangelsk” would be enough. In other words, it was not about a mass intervention, but about targeted control over key trade arteries.

But in February 1613, the Zemsky Sobor gathered and elected a new tsar — Mikhail Romanov. His emergence supposedly crossed out the English plan. At least — in open form.

The Romanovs: a British project with a “Roman subtext”

The election of Mikhail Romanov in 1613 looked like a miracle: an exhausted country suddenly chose a tsar around whom the fragmented elites agreed to unite. But on closer inspection, a very different picture emerges.

Mikhail was young, politically powerless, without his own army or money. Exactly the kind of candidate external players needed: controllable, dependent, symbolically “pure.” His dynasty, by all signs, was a political construct.

The family name “Romanov” was not chosen by chance. It was a brand that hinted at the “Roman (Byzantine) heritage” — meaning Byzantium, which Venice had once handed to Moscow, and which Muscovite autocrats dreamed of “restoring.” In fact, the idea of “restoration” was not about spiritual revival, but about regaining control over the routes to the Black Sea and further to the Mediterranean. It was a geopolitical claim under convenient religious cover.

The very fact that the English project’s documents are dated April 1613 — literally right before Mikhail’s election — looks like too eloquent a coincidence to be accidental. Romanov was the perfect figure to continue the Venetian project: Moscow as a strike force against the Ottoman Porte. While the new Silk Road went to the British crown. Which supposedly kept it outside the future conflict.

Under Romanov, Muscovy could claim to be the Second Rome, but in essence remained a cryptocolony carrying out its real masters’ tasks.

A cryptocolony instead of an empire

Traditional history describes Muscovy as a “young empire” that rose thanks to strength and popular heroism. But the facts say otherwise.

From 1555, Muscovy was dependent on British money and trade. The Muscovy Company did not just buy furs — it set policy: where to go to war, which territories to conquer, which ports to open.

The wars for Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia were not a “national mission,” but part of a global project to restore the Silk Road bypassing the Ottoman Empire. During the Time of Troubles, English diplomats prepared a protectorate plan for the northern lands. And after 1613, the Romanov dynasty appeared on the throne — a symbolic brand covering real dependence on external forces.

Muscovy was not an empire. It was a franchise, a cryptocolony, carrying out foreign tasks. The idea of the “Third Rome” became merely a cover for the interests of London and Venice.

Today this story reminds us: Russia’s imperial myth is built on foreign loans and foreign strategies. Behind the façade of “autocracy” always stood those who invested money and received superprofits.