The article attempts to find out the degree of research on the development of trade in the cities of Dnieper Ukraine in 1785-1917 in modern domestic historiography. It was found that the range of issues of economic development of cities, which are currently being studied by Ukrainian scientists, has significantly expanded in historical science. It is noted that in addition to the traditional aspects of studying the problem, some attention is paid to such important areas of scientific research as forms and methods of domestic and foreign trade in Ukrainian cities, private enterprise in all spheres of the city economy and more. It is established that usually the development of trade in cities is considered in the context of the analysis of economic phenomena in the Ukrainian provinces in general or among other problems of research of the history of certain regions or individual urban settlements. A characteristic feature of many works is the exaggerated attention to the accumulation of factual data instead of generalizations and theoretical understanding of the studied processes. In addition, an important feature of modern scientific studies is that the study of trade in cities is carried out unevenly in both regional and chronological dimensions. After all, most studies relate to the post-reform period and the development of trade in the cities of southern Ukraine and especially Odessa. The conclusions identify the main trends and outline the achievements and insufficiently researched issues, identify the main directions for further study of the problem. Note that modern domestic science has developed sufficient research material, on the basis of which it is important to create a comprehensive, synthetic work on the history of trade in the cities of Dnieper Ukraine in 1785–1917 with the widespread use of comparative tools

cities, trade, Dnieper Ukraine, modern domestic historiography, imperial era, Russian Empire