To Begin the World Over Again

by Matthew Lockwood

  Potemkin instinctively realized that Russia would never have as good an opportunity to take Crimea as they had in 1782. In December of that year he sent a long letter to Catherine laying out his reasoning, the favorable timing and the value of the peninsula to Russia’s imperial ambitions. “If you do not seize [the Crimea] right now,” he warned, “there will come a time when everything that we might now receive for free, we shall obtain for a high price.” Cutting across the Russian border, the Crimea was too strategically important to leave in the khan’s hands, let alone the Ottomans’, who supported the deposed khan’s brother. “So now imagine that the Crimea is yours and that wart on our nose is no more,” Potemkin continued. “The state of our borders suddenly becomes excellent . . . The allegiance of the inhabitants of the New Russia province [conquered in the previous war and still in the process of being settled by Russian immigrants] will then be beyond doubt. Navigation upon the Black Sea will be unrestricted. Pray take note that otherwise your ships will find it difficult to leave port, and even more difficult to return.” Rising to a crescendo of imperialist logic, Potemkin implored Catherine with “infinite zeal” to seize the Crimea as any other European power would do, indeed as other European powers had already done in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. “Believe me, with this acquisition you will achieve immortal glory such that no other Sovereign in Russia has ever had. This glory will pave the way to still another even greater glory: with the Crimea will also come supremacy of the Black Sea. Upon you depends whether the path of the Turks is to be blocked and whether they survive or perish.” The tsar’s long-held pretensions to the Roman imperial crown could become a reality if only the empress would grasp her chance. Catherine ordered Potemkin to proceed against the Tatar rebels with due haste.43

  Fighting broke out in the Crimea in 1782, and by early 1783, with Russian troops now massing against the rebels, the true value of the League of Armed Neutrality became apparent. Russian troops would remain on the Swedish border, but the numbers could be reduced, as could those on the border with Prussia. According to Potemkin, there was no need “to keep an eye on the Swedish King” nor was there any need “to arm ourselves against the King of Prussia.” As for other potential European interlopers, on April 8 Catherine received a letter from Joseph II of Austria—who was also greedily eyeing Ottoman territory—promising his support against the Ottomans. With her secret alliance now paying dividends, Catherine announced to the other courts of Europe that she intended to seize the Crimea for Russia. Fearing that such a move would tip the European balance of power east, Prussia and France vociferously objected to the Russian campaign. France had acted as protector of the Ottoman Empire in the past, and Frederick of Prussia attempted to convince them to intervene once more. Unfortunately for the Ottomans, the American War provided cover for Russian aggression. Peace negotiations with Britain were still ongoing, and France had been horribly drained by the American War and was in no condition to intercede. Catherine was thus unsurprisingly dismissive of France’s bluster, commenting that she had little fear or respect for “the French thunder, or better said, summer lightning.” Potemkin concurred, suggesting contemptuously that any action from the European powers would be tame, symbolic rather than serious. “Whatever happens,” he confidently predicted, “will be nothing more than an empty gesture.” The League of Armed Neutrality, the same entity set up to navigate the choppy waters of European diplomacy during the American Revolution, had been secretly transformed into a vehicle for Russian imperial ambition.44

  Writing from his post in St. Petersburg, Harris agreed with Catherine and Potemkin’s assessment of French impotence, wryly noting that Russia would hardly quiver in fear over “incurring the censure of a nation who writes memoirs and epigrams.” But Harris was a man of substance as well as wit, and he astutely observed that Catherine had timed her move for the Crimea perfectly, knowing that she would have a free hand with peace between France, America, and Britain still uncertain. Despite her proclaimed desire to act as mediator and peace-maker, “it is impossible that the Empress can sincerely wish to see peace restored between us and our enemies,” Harris reasoned, “since the success of her projects in the East necessarily depends on the House of Bourbon being fully employed with its own concerns.” Attempts were made to recruit Britain to the cause of intervention; Britain too was overstretched, still busy fighting in India and elsewhere as the details of the Treaty of Paris were being hammered out. What’s more, the failures of the North, Rockingham, and Shelburne ministries in the war with America had culminated in the meteoric rise to power of William Pitt, who began to inaugurate a more pro-Russian agenda in eastern Europe.45

  Dana had been treated with condescension and contempt by the more established European diplomats at Catherine’s court, but he was no less quick to see the Crimean business for what it was or to grasp its implications for the United States. He had followed developments in the Crimea since early 1782, when news of the secret treaty between Russia and Austria was leaked in the press. By October, when more than 100,000 Russian troops were sent to the Ottoman frontier, Dana was sure that they intended more than merely to restore the deposed khan as they outwardly declared. Dana had been informed that the uprising against the khan had been “effected by the intrigues of the court of St. Petersburg, to raise a pretext for this movement [invasion], and to cover the real object in view [annexation].” Dana understood that the Tatars of the Crimea had been “the constant enemies of Russia from the commencement of the thirteenth century until the last war with the Turks,” and thus invasion and conquest was almost an historical inevitability. But he also realized that fear of a new “general conflagration” breaking out while the American War and its effects were still being keenly felt would prevent the powers of Europe from interceding in the east. Likewise, Dana reasoned that a desire to avoid a new war would slow the American peace process, prolong the war, and delay recognition of American independence. “Can it be for the Interests of all the belligerent Powers to close this war,” he asked, “with an almost certain prospect before them of being speedily plunged into a new and general one in Europe? . . . my hopes of a Peace are enfeebled.” In the end, Dana agreed with his British counterpart, the nations of Europe would not save the Ottomans or the Tatars from the “Tempest which is gathering about them.”46

  Despite his years of loyalty to Russia, Sahin Giray must have seen the writing on the wall. It was evident to all that Catherine had no intention of allowing him to remain on the throne, but the beleaguered khan refused to flee the Crimea, waiting and hoping for a positive response from the Ottomans. The sultan, Abdul Hamid I, was understandably furious over Russian actions. Although Crimean independence had been a condition of peace in 1774, the sultan still considered the khan to be his vassal, and his majority Muslim territory to be under his protection. Worse still, in the years after 1774, Istanbul had seen a steady flow of Tatar refugees trickling into the country, fleeing the tightening grasp of Russian power in the Crimea.

  Abdul Hamid found himself in an unenviable position. For all its incessant wars, the first half of the eighteenth century had proved a period of economic growth and prosperity for the Ottomans. By the 1770s, however, the years of plenty had given way to an era of economic contraction. The economic depression was the result of a variety of factors: the mechanization of European cotton mills devastated the vital Turkish cotton industry; Caribbean coffee began to displace Ottoman production in Yemen; and the massive increase in military expenditure implemented by her enemies in Europe forced overspending in an Ottoman economy not yet fully monetized. And the economy was not the only concern. On its eastern border, the Ottomans still had to contend with their Asian rival, Persia, in the age-old contest over Iraq and the profits of the Persian Gulf trade with the British East India Company. By all accounts, the 1780s was not an auspicious time for the sultan. Nonetheless, preparations for war with Russia were begun.47

  The sultan, however, now found himself thrown to the wolve
s by his traditional European allies who were too busy with the American War to intervene on the Ottomans’ behalf. Instead, they urged the sultan stand down, to accept the Russian seizure of the Crimea as a fait accompli. As distasteful as it was, with no allies, the Ottomans were forced to abandon the khan to his fate. The khan’s refusal to quit the Crimea was a thorn in Potemkin’s side. To ensure the perceived legitimacy of the Russian takeover, Potemkin wished to promulgate signed manifestos in which the Tatars declared their desire to freely become Russian subjects. But the Tatars themselves claimed that they could not publicly express this desire until the khan had departed and abdicated, and Potemkin feared that if the manifestos were published with the khan still present, many Tatars would consider them to be a ruse. The khan needed to go.48

  Sahin Giray was a puppet, but not a fool. Abandoned first by his people, and then by both his Russian and Ottoman protectors, Giray at last saw the writing on the wall. He fled the Crimea for the lands of the Nogais, a Tatar people settled in Bessarabia and other areas around the Black Sea and on the border between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Upon arrival among the Nogais, Giray immediately began to push them into open rebellion against the Russians, which in turn threatened to destabilize the border with the Ottomans, an eventuality not to be taken lightly. As such, Potemkin sent his most trusted general, Alexander Suvorov, the hero of the last Turkish war, to chastise the restive Nogais. Suvorov’s methods were brutal—he had been previously sentenced to death for unauthorized actions against the Turks, only to be reprieved by Catherine who believed that “winners cannot be judged”—but the uprising was duly crushed with the slaughter of several thousand. Giray remained at large, but with no base of support, he was quickly brought to terms.49

  In April 1783, Sahin Giray formally abdicated his throne in favor of Catherine, providing the desired post facto justification for the Russian conquest. Potemkin wasted no time in setting forth his ambitious plans for Russia’s new imperial possession. “This is an unspeakably abundant and a most suitable land,” he informed the empress from his camp near Karasubazaar in July 1783. For Russia, habitually hamstrung by its icy climate, the weather of the Crimea would prove a considerable advantage. Operating against the natural disadvantages of its geographical position, Russia was falling behind in the international, seaborne trade that had so enriched its European rivals. The Crimea, Potemkin hoped, would provide vital warm-water ports from which to build and launch the navy necessary to join the first rank of European powers.50

  Potemkin found his ideal site for the new naval base in June 1783 when he inspected the harbor at the Tatar town of Akhtiar on the south-western tip of the Crimean peninsula. Nikola Korsakov, a celebrated Russian engineer, was charged with building new fortifications to protect the harbor of the newly renamed Sevastopol. By the end of the 1780s the new city was already the most important naval base in the entire Russian empire, a status it would retain for at least the next century. With it, Russia could become a major player in the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds and even threaten to topple the sultan in Istanbul.51

  The Ottomans remained the greatest threat to Potemkin’s design. He believed that with the majority of the territory’s residents steadfastly Muslim, the security of the Crimea could only be secured through a thorough Christianization of the Tatar lands. Potemkin believed that the loyalty of Muslim Tatars living so close to the territory of a Muslim power would always be suspect, a constant source of potential danger. For all its attendant advantages, the Crimea would be “better still in every way were we to rid ourselves of the Tatars and send them away . . . for truth, they are not worthy of this land.” The policy was not entirely new. Since the days of Peter the Great (1672–1725), Russia’s rulers had sought to forge a unified empire out of a hugely diverse swath of conquered territory. Conquest alone, however, would not produce a stable, loyal empire. The creation of a unified imperial culture based on a shared religion and common language was thus consistently pursued in newly won territories as a means of imperial consolidation. Tatars and other Muslims had been replaced by Slavic, Orthodox settlers as early as the sixteenth century, when Muscovy first began its long expansion into south-eastern Europe and Central Asia.52

  Potemkin’s own attempts at social engineering in the Crimea had begun long before the formal annexation of Crimea in 1784. As the Governor of New Russia, he had settled thousands of Orthodox Christians in the peninsula, with 1,200 Greeks settled in Yenikale alone. The influx of Christians quickly led to conflict in the Crimea. Pogroms against Christians resulted in over 30,000 Christian refugees—mostly Armenians—fleeing the violence for the protection of New Russia. The suffering of the exiles was real, with many perishing during the exodus, but the religious conflict in Crimea also worked to Russia’s advantage. The religious violence, though in part stoked by Potemkin’s Christianization policies, provided one of the key justifications for Russian intervention in Crimea in 1777 and again in 1781. Despite public reassurances, the Christianization of the Crimea would continue apace.53

  In the aftermath of the annexation, Potemkin abandoned his initial plan to expel the Tatars from the peninsula. He had already followed through on his plans to remove the Nogais from strategically important border areas, forcibly uprooting and resettling perhaps 100,000 or more in less sensitive areas. But for now he decided to leave the Crimea’s residents in place. Indeed, in April 1784 an imperial decree guaranteed the Crimean Tatars religious toleration. It had become readily apparent that, in order to secure the stability of the new province, the cooperation of the Muslim elite—the nobility and the religious leaders—would be required. Thus, in return for an oath of loyalty, the Tatar nobility were granted Russian patents of nobility, exemption from taxation (as for Russian nobles), and a confirmation of their property rights. The Muslim imams were granted a status similar to that possessed by Orthodox priests, including some exemptions from taxation, in return for pledges of fealty. This program of securing elite loyalty to the Russian regime was largely successful, especially among senior clerics and the increasingly Russified nobility.

  Under the surface, however, the cultural and religious character of the Crimea was undergoing profound and rapid change. Because their status as religious leaders and teachers was formalized, Muslim religious leaders came under greater and increasing government control. Imperial supervision of Islamic religious training tightened, translation and printing of the Qur’an was centralized through a state publishing house in St. Petersburg, and an administrative body created to monitor Crimea’s Muslims. At the same time, tens of thousands of Orthodox Christians, including many of the exiles from the religious violence of the 1770s, poured into Crimea, fundamentally changing its religious and ethnic make-up. Even the new name of the province—Taurida, the Greek name for the territory—emphasized its new, Christianized character.

  For many among the Tatar peasantry, carrying on in their homeland became untenable. While much had been done to secure the loyalty of Crimea’s elite, little attention had been paid to the needs of the common man. Serfdom had been formally abolished, but customary obligations due to landowners—often a ruinous half of their harvest—had been left in place. Under severe economic pressure and facing a changing cultural landscape, thousands of Muslims fled the Crimea for Ottoman territories. In the immediate aftermath of the annexation as many as 30,000 Tatars became refugees, with thousands more following in the decades to come. Potemkin may have abandoned his plan to forcibly remove the Muslims of the Crimea, but through other Russian policies he was able to achieve his vision of a Christianized Crimea nonetheless.54

  It was the fulfillment of a long Russian crusade, the apotheosis of an imperial ambition modeled on the conquerors and empires of Antiquity.

  What Sovereign has ever compiled such a brilliant epoch as you? And this is not merely splendor’s luster. There is also great benefit in all this. The lands upon which Alexander and Pompey merely glanced, so to speak, you have bound to the Russian scepter, a
nd Tauric Chersonese—the source of our Christianity, and thus our humanity as well—is now within its daughter’s embrace. There is something mystical in that. The Tatar nation was once Russia’s tyrant and in more recent times its hundredfold ravager, whose might Tsar Ivan Vasilievich did fell. But it was you who destroyed its root. The new border promises Russia peace, Europe envy and the Ottoman Porte fear. Take up this trophy unstained by blood and order your historians to prepare more paper and ink.55

  If the historians so commanded to prepare their paper and ink had been honest, they would have acknowledged that the Russian conquest of the Crimea had been a bloody affair, not just on the peninsula itself, but across the Atlantic as well. It was, after all, the bloodshed and turmoil of the American Revolution that had engulfed Europe and provided the cover needed for Catherine to seize her trophy. Nor would the end of the war spell an end to the violence in Crimea. In the years after the Peace of Paris, Russia, Austria, and the Ottomans would once more face off in the east.

  Austria had also seen imperial opportunity in its neutrality. Its previous attempts to use its possessions in the Low Countries to break into the world of overseas commerce and colonization had foundered in the face of concerted opposition from Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic. With all of the great commercial powers at each other’s throats over America, Empress Maria Theresa and her son and successor Joseph II saw a chance to expand their empire beyond Europe. To this end, in 1776 they dispatched William Bolts from Livorno, the territory of the empress’s younger son, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, with official authorization to open trade from Austria’s Adriatic port at Trieste to India and China, as well as to trade in slaves from East Africa to America.