De Rodes, Johann

De Rodes, Johann 

Year of birth unknown; died Dec. 31, 1655. Swedish trade representative in Moscow. Author of a work on 17th-century Russia.

De Rodes was attached to the Swedish embassy in Moscow in 1647 for the purpose of studying Russian trade. He submitted to his government a large number of reports containing valuable information on Russia’s domestic and foreign trade; the reports included, for example, precise accounts of prices and the volume of exports and imports. The most thorough report was his “Detailed Report on Commerce in Russia” of October 1653. De Rodes’ reports are now in the state archives of Sweden. Many of them have been published and translated into Russian.