by Charles King
15. Segur, Memoirs and Recollections, Vol. 3, p. 192.
16. Segur, Memoirs and Recollections, Vol. 3, pp. 45, 230—1.
17. My account of the early Kalmyk migrations is based on Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600—1771 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
18. Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met, p. 225.
19. Peter Simon Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire, in the Years 1793 and 1794, Vol. 1 (London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees et al., 1802—3), p. “7.
20. Henry A. S. Dearborn, A Memoir of the Commerce and Navigation of the Black Sea, and the Trade and Maritime Geography of Turkey and Egypt, Vol. 1 (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1819), pp. 337—9.
21. Henry Augustus Zwick, Calmuc Tartary; or a Journey from Sarepta to Several Calmuc Hordes of the Astracan Government; from May 16 to August 11, 1813 (London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1831), p. 87.
22. For a range of population estimates, see Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met, pp. 32—3, 232; “Kalmuk,” Encyclopaedia of Islam; and Benjamin von Bergmann, Voyage de Benjamin Bergmann chez les Kalmuks, trans. M. Moris (Châtillon-sur-Seine: C. Cornillac, 1825), pp. 21, 336—7, 400.
23. This description is based on a later account of Kalmyks on the move in Zwick, Calmuc Tartary, pp. 95—7.
24. Thomas De Quincey, Revolt of the Tartars (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), p. 3.
25. Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met, p. 233.
26. Le pere Amiot, “Monument de la transmigration des Tourgouths, a Pe-king, le 8 novembre 1772,” in Memoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les moeurs, les usages, etc., des Chinois, par les missionnaires de Pekin, Vol. 1 (Paris: Chez Nyon, 1776), pp. 405—18.
27. Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met, p. 234.
28. Le pere Amiot, “Extrait d’une lettre du P. Amiot, missionnaire en Chine, a M. Betin, Ministre et Secretaire d’etat, de Pe-king, le 15 octobre 1773,” in Memoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les moeurs, les usages, etc., des Chinois, par les missionnaires de Pekin, Vol. 1 (Paris: Chez Nyon, 1776), p. 422.
29. Pallas, Travels, Vol. 1, p. 115.
30. Segur, Memoirs and Recollections, Vol. 3, pp. 166—7.
31. “Intelligence Relative to the Russian Naval Force in the Black Sea,” (n.d.), Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO) FO 95/8/9, ff. 485—6.
32. William Coxe, Travels in Russia, from his Travels in the Northern Countries of Europe (London, 1802), bound in John Pinkerton (ed.) A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World, Vol. 6 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808—14), p. 890.
33. See Georges Dioque, Un Haut-Alpin a Marseille: Le Baron Anthoine, 1749–1816, dugrand nigoce a la mairie (Paris: Societe d’Etudes des Hautes-Alpes, 1991).
34. Antoine-Ignace Anthoine de Saint-Joseph, Essai historique sur le commerce et la navigation de la Mer-Noire, 2nd edn. (Paris: L’Imprimerie de Mme. Veuve Agasse, 1820), pp. 30, 228—9.
35. See, for example, Bellin’s “Carte reduite de la mer Noire” (1772) and Samuel Dunn’s “First Part of Turkey in Europe” (1774). The Bellin map would certainly have been known to Anthoine; it still described the area around Kherson as “plaines desertes” and gave soundings only along the southeast coast of Crimea. The Dunn map left off Kherson altogether. The first accurate Russian map of the waterways of the empire, including the Dnepr cataracts, was not published until 1801.
36. Jean Denis Barbie de Bocage, Recueil de cartesgiographiques, plans, vues et midailles de I’ancienne Grece, relatifs au voyage du jeune Anacharsis, précédé d’une analyse critique des cartes (Paris: Imprimerie de Isidore Jacob, 1817).
37. Anderson, Naval Wars, p. 319.
38. Anderson, Naval Wars, p. 327.
39. Sebag Montefiore, Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001), p. 414.
40. John Paul Jones, Life of Rear-Admiral John Paul Jones (Philadelphia: Grigg and Elliot, 1846), pp. 274—5.
41. Quoted in Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography, new edn. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989), p. 454.
42. Potemkin is alleged to have chosen Simferopol as the seat of the Crimean administration by asking his friends to vote between Akmechet and Bakhchisarai by casting rose petals as ballots. See Coxe, Travels in Russia, Vol. 6, p. 766.
43. Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 1794–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1986), pp. 37—44.
44. William Symonds, Extracts from Journal in the Black Sea in 1841 (London: George Pierce, 1841), p. 19.
45. Herlihy, Odessa, pp. 120—1.
46. See Pallas, Travels. The seaworm remained a problem for several decades and was eventually defeated only by the addition of copper plating to the ships’ hulls.
47. For a colorful description of traveling by “post” across the Black Sea steppe, see Laurence Oliphant, The Russian Shores of the Black Sea in the Autumn of 1831, 3rd edn. (London: Redfield, 1854; reprint Arno Press, 1970), pp. 104—9, 118—20.
48. George Matthew Jones, Travels in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Turkey; Also on the Coasts of the Sea of Azov and of the Black Sea, Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1827), p. 142. The extreme shallowness of the Sea of Azov prevented Taganrog from becoming a major port. Vessels that drew more than 12 ft of water could not navigate it without fear of running aground, and when the winds were from the northeast, the depth could shrink to less than 3 ft in places.
49. Jean, Baron de Reuilly, Travels in the Crimea, and Along the Shores of the Black Sea, Performed During the Year 1803 (London: Richard Phillips, 1807), bound in A Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 (London: Richard Phillips, 1807), p. 26.
50. Jones, Travels, Vol. 2, pp. 219, 223.
51. Jones, Travels, Vol. 2, pp. 295—300.
52. Dioque, Un Haut-Alpin, p. 185.
53. Coxe, Travels in Russia, Vol. 6, p. 889.
54. Jones, Travels, Vol. 2, p. 311
55. See Willard Sunderland, “Peasants on the Move: State Peasant Resettlement in Imperial Russia, 1805—1830s,” Russian Review, Vol. 52, No. 4 (October 1993):472—85.
56. Oliphant, The Russian Shores, p. 94. See also Anatole de Demidoff, Travels in Southern Russia, and the Crimea; Through Hungary, Wallachia, and Moldavia, During the Year 1837, Vol. 1 (London: John Mitchell, 1853), pp. 350—1; and Xavier Hommaire de Hell, Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, &c. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1847), pp. 76—81.
57. Herlihy, Odessa, p. 34.
58. Mose Lofley Harvey, “The Development of Russian Commerce on the Black Sea and Its Significance” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1938), pp. 100—1, 110, 124—6. Imports were very small compared with those arriving via the Baltic or overland routes. Figures are by value.
59. Reuilly, Travels, p. 72; Symonds, Extracts from Journal, pp. 13—14; Edmund Spencer, Travels in Circassia, Krim-Tartary, &c, Vol. 1, 3rd edn. (London: Henry Colburn, 1839), p. 222.
60. For an original analysis of the differences among plague outbreaks in world history, see Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., “The Black Death: End of a Paradigm,” American Historical Review, Vol. 107, No. 3 (June 2002) www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/107.3/ah0302000703.html (May 27, 2003).
61. See Daniel Panzac, Quarantaines et lazarets: L’Europe et lapeste d’Orient (XVIIe-XXesiecles) (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1986).
62. Howard was buried near Kherson, but there is a monument in his honor in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. The duc de Richelieu, during an outbreak of the plague in Odessa, is said to have ordered the Jews expelled from the city. Adolphus Slade, Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece, etc., and of a Cruise in the Black Sea, with the Capitan Pasha, in the Years 1829, 1830, and 1831, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1833), p. 252.
63. This description is based on Christ
ian Augustus Fischer, Travels to Hyeres, in the South of France, Performed in the Spring of 1806 (London: Richard Phillips, 1806), bound in A Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 (London: Richard Phillips, 1807), pp. 68—76.
64. Edmund Spencer, Travels in the Western Caucasus, Vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), p. 197. For a description of the system on the Russian—Persian border in the south Caucasus, see G. Poulett Cameron, Personal Adventures and Excursions in Georgia, Circassia, and Russia, Vol. 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1845), pp. 4—8.
65. Demidoff, Travels in Southern Russia, Vol. 1, pp. 279—80.
66. Slade, Records of Travels, Vol. 1, p. 252.
67. For an account of the Odessa lazaretto in 1841, see Symonds, Extracts from Journal, pp. 15—16.
68. Conte Terristori, A Geographical, Statistical, and Commercial Account of the Russian Ports of the Black Sea, the Sea of Asoph, and the Danube (London: A. Schloss and P. Richardson, 1837), pp. 22—3; and Reuilly, Travels in the Crimea, Vol. 5, p. 83.
69. Oliphant, Russian Shores, p. 230.
70. Spencer, Travels in the Western Caucasus, Vol. 2, p. 197.
71. Daniel Panzac, La peste dans l’Empire ottoman, 1700—1850 (Louvain: Editions Peeters, 1985), p. 507.
72. See Cameron, Personal Adventures, Vol. 2, p. 47, on Kharkov.
73. Slade, Records of Travels, Vol. 1, p. 251. The eleven lighthouses are beautifully illustrated on a map by T. Gonzalez, “Carta particular de la costa setentrional del Mar Negro, comprehendida entre la embocadura del Rio Dniester al O. y Kerson al E.” (Madrid, 1821).
74. James Henry Skene, The Frontier Lands of the Christian and the Turk; Comprising Travels in the Regions of the Lower Danube in 1850 and 1851, Vol. 1, 2nd edn. (London: Richard Bentley, 1853), p. 276.
75. Demidoff, Travels in Southern Russia, Vol. 2, p. 16.
76. “Chart of the Black Sea and Surrounding Countries, Shewing the Telegraphic Lines Now Actually in Existence and Working and Those Contemplated” (February 20, 1856), PRO FO 925/3556.
77. Slade, Records of Travels, Vol. 1, p. 247n.
78. The Caucasus route actually ran all the way from Leipzig to Tabriz, via Odessa and Tiflis, and was largely controlled by Armenian merchants in the 1820s and 1830s. Hommaire de Hell, Travels in the Steppes, p. 17.
79. “Trebizond and the Persian Transit Route,” PRO FO/195/2474, f. 2.
80. Sir Robert Gordon to Brant (August 5, 1830), James Brant Papers, British Library, Add. 42512, ff. 1—2 verso.
81. James Brant, “Report on the Trade at Trebizond” (February 15, 1832), PRO FO 195/101.
82. “Report on the Trade of Trebizond for the Year 1835” (December 31, 1835), PRO FO 195/101, n.p.
83. “Trebizond and the Persian Transit Route,” PRO FO/195/2474, f. 2.
84. “Report on the Trade of Trebizond for the Year 1835” (December 31, 1835), PRO FO 195/101, n.p.
85. John McNeill to James Brant (November 1, 1837), James Brant Papers, British Library, Add. 42512, ff. 47—8.
86. Anderson, Naval Wars, p. 580.
87. Edmund Spencer, Turkey, Russia, the Black Sea, and Circassia (London: George Routledge, 1854), p. 233.
88. “Sebastopol in August 1855,” in Leo Tolstoy, Sebastopol (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), p. 226.
I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little—not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.
Mark Twain, 1867
The passengers were a perfect babel, representing and speaking all the tongues of the East, with several Europeans mixed in, each wearing his own peculiar costume. There were Turks of all kinds and all classes and all ages wearing fezzes of red felt; there were Persians, wearing fezzes of black lamb’s-wool; Albanians with fezzes of white felt, and Jews with turbans and long robes such as they used to wear in the days of the scriptures…. There were English, German, and French tourists and rug buyers on their way to Persia and Turkestan; a very fat Austrian woman who was going to visit her son, consul at Batoum, and several Russians who had been visiting Paris and the Riviera and were on their way back to their homes in the Caucasus.
William Eleroy Curtis, reporter for the Chicago Record–Herald, on a ship off Trabzon, 1910
In their luxurious and comfortable villas along the Black Sea coast, connected by highways illuminated as if by fairy dust, the capitalist money grubbers once lived it up at the expense of the workers…. For the region that it traverses, the Canal will have a revolutionary role. It will bring a new life, a life fundamentally different from the sorrows of the past.
Gheorghe Hossu, director of construction on the Danube–Black Sea canal, People’s Republic of Romania, 1950
6
Black Sea, 1860–1990
Mark Twain saw Sevastopol in 1867, arriving by steamship from Istanbul during his jaunt through Europe and the Levant, the subject of his travelogue The Innocents Abroad. The Crimean war had ended just over a decade earlier, and the city had been the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting yet known in modern Europe. The population, around 43,000 at the beginning of the war, was now no more than 6,000. Few buildings had gone unscathed. Cannonballs lay lodged in walls. Visitors could stroll through the battlefields collecting broken ramrods and shell fragments as souvenirs. Any fortifications still left after the siege were destroyed by the Allies, and Russia was prevented by treaty from rebuilding them. “Ruined Pompeii is in good condition compared to Sebastopol,” Twain wrote. “Here, you may look in whatsoever direction you please, and your eye encounters scarcely any thing but ruin, ruin, ruin!—fragments of houses, crumbled walls, torn and ragged hills, devastation every where! It is as if a mighty earthquake had spent all its terrible forces upon this one little spot.”1
The conflict that had devastated Sevastopol also marked the endpoint of the sea’s journey into Europe. After Crimea, the sea could no longer be called “Asian,” as Diderot had labeled it in the 1750s. It was now a prize negotiated over and fought for by Europe’s great powers. Commerce had been opened to international vessels, first under Russian flags of convenience and then under the ensigns of Austria, Britain, France, and other countries. In strategic terms, the major concern was no longer the threat posed by a single empire; Ottoman hegemony had been waning since the seventeenth century, and Russia’s ability to dash across to the south, as had happened at Sinop, was now checked by the terms of the treaty of Paris, which prohibited warships larger than coastal cruisers. Russia would eventually repudiate the neutrality provision and, in the century’s final Russo-Turkish war, attempt to encircle the Ottomans on both the western and eastern coasts. But that was the high-water mark of Russian aspirations. Making sure that no empire or state would ever wholly command the sea became the unwavering policy of European powers, and treaties and international institutions were put in place to buttress it.
The sea’s new internationalization meant the reorganization of connections among the coasts. With the advent of direct Mediterranean shipping in the late eighteenth century, the local coasting trade and transshipping to the Aegean had begun to decline. The real outlet for goods produced on the northern shore was no longer Sinop and Trabzon but cities such as Vienna and Marseilles, soon serviced by regular steamer routes up the Danube or through the Straits. The opening of the Suez canal provided yet further markets for some products, but it also signaled the ebbing of the transit trade with Persia via ports such as Trabzon. Grain from southern Russia still dominated the export market, but new agricultural products, such as American sweet corn, began to displace older crops, bringing different patterns of commerce and even changing regional cuisine. New ports that had been little more than muddy villages before the Crimean war became centers for the export of the vanguard products of the industrial revolution: coal, iron, manganese, petroleum. Trains and steamships connected port cities with one another and with the rest of Europe. In the twentieth century, monumental changes in the physical e
nvironment—the damming of the Dnepr, the digging of a Volga–Don canal, the building of coastal highways—would complete the transformation of the region that began immediately after the Crimean war.
The sea’s connections with Europe also provided a channel for the introduction of two ideas that would prove supremely powerful in remaking individual identities and recasting the boundaries of cultural and political communities: the concepts of the homogeneous nation and the hegemonic state. Both came rather late. Religion, especially in the Ottoman lands, mattered far more as a cultural marker than language or ethnicity; even then, the mutual influence of many traditions meant that situational and overlapping identities were common. Visitors from western Europe often reported that locals seemed confused about who they were—“Are you a Greek?” might be met with the reply “No, thank God, I am a Catholic”2—but any confusion was usually a product of the inappropriate categories used by the observer. Until well into the nineteenth century, for example, “Greek” (Rum) was the Ottoman administrative designation, and also often the self-designation, for any Orthodox Christian, people whom we would now call Greeks in an ethnic sense, but also many Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians, Arabs, Turks, and others. “To them religion is a nationality,” wrote a British traveler disapprovingly in the 1870 s,3 and to many observers, this equation was evidence of precisely how backward the peoples around the sea remained.
Whether in the Ottoman empire or elsewhere, few people seemed to know who they really were. Outsiders often came to the Balkans, the Caucasus, and other remote areas expecting to find the residua of antique nations, pure Greeks, Scythians, Getae, Thracians, Colchians, and other peoples, now in the process of rediscovering their true heritage. In such “backwaters of life,” wrote the Balkan traveler Edith Durham in 1909, one is “filled with vague memories of the cradle of his race, saying, ‘This did I do some thousands of years ago; … so thought I and so acted I in the beginning of time’.”4 Geography, they hoped, might recapitulate phylogeny. But visitors were often disappointed. Until rather late—the twentieth century, in some instances—where they expected to find unsullied exemplars of one or another “race,” they instead found individuals and communities for whom plural identities and mixed cultures were the norm. That situation was not to obtain for long, however. As the twentieth century progressed, it was the idea of the timelessly pure nation that eventually won out, often with tragic results.
