The organization of foreign trade in the eighteenth-century Crimean Khanate, an Ottoman vassal state at the East European steppe frontier, presents something of a conundrum. Among the extant primary sources of Crimean provenance the types of materials used for studying international trade in the Ottoman Empire, apart from the international instruments, are mostly lacking. Materials originating from the Khanate’s Ottoman suzerain and its trade partners (Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and France) feature reports about the goods and prices and several important first-person accounts (by L. Ch. Peyssonnel, Baron de Tott, and N. E. Kleeman). The fragmentary nature and poor availability of some of these materials must account for the lack of systematic studies into the Crimean economy. This paper will utilize the available sources to assess the viability of the Crimean economy in the eighteenth century with particular reference to the Khanate’s response to possibilities to expand its foreign trade. Brian G. Williams has aptly defined the geopolitical confrontation leading to the Khanate’s demise in 1783 as one between the centralized, modernizing Russian Empire and the essentially pre-modern Crimean Khanate. By 1700 the Crimea was divested of two of its key traditional sources of revenue: the slave trade in East European Slavs and the tributary payments due to the Khanate as the heir to the Golden Horde. In 1700–1783 the Khanate found itself losing large parts of its territory to Russia. Yet the same period also saw the Crimea moving away from the economy of predation towards greater reliance on the productive economy of traditional crafts, agriculture, salt works, and trade. These changes in the Crimean economy, however, did not lead to any meaningful attempts at modernization prior to the Khanate’s short-lived independence (1774–1783); whereas during the latter period such attempts were half-hearted and unpopular. The organization of its foreign trade continued to be defined, and hindered, by the Khanate’s traditional Turko-Mongolian ethos. As demonstrated by the experiences of the Austrian businessman, Kleeman, in his failed attempt to open direct trade between Austria and the Crimea, that organization was much less efficient, secure, or profitable than the one enjoyed by West European merchants in the Ottoman Empire. At this point Russia was poised to take over the Crimea, and the removal of the Khanate’s Christian population, traditionally the backbone of its commerce, in 1778, sounded a death knoll not only for its economy but also for the Khanate itself.