Authors

Discussion

This paper will address the institutional evolution of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Moscow, as its grand princes emerged from their subordination to the Qipchaq Khanate (Golden Horde). By analysing language use and the development of fiscal categories in Muscovite charters, I will trace how specific forms of governance, especially forms of taxation, emerged as instruments of a newly empowered princely class. Against the background of debates around the khans’ influence on Moscow’s nascent state, I aim not to pinpoint these forms’ singular 'origins' in either Kyivan Rus’ or the Mongol Empire, but to instead highlight how Muscovite rulers employed overlapping strategies of appropriation – political, financial, judicial – in fashioning institutions to ultimately serve as the springboard of their imperial ambitions.