The Black Sea

by Charles King

  The preeminent descriptions of the southern Russian empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are Peter Simon Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire (London, 1802–3) and Anatole de Demidoff, Travels in Southern Russia, and the Crimea (London, 1853). The equivalents for the Anatolian and Caucasus coasts are William Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia (London, 1842) and August von Haxthausen, Transcaucasia: Sketches of the Nations and Races Between the Black Sea and the Caspian (London, 1854). Edmund Spencer was one of the most prolific and perceptive writers about the sea in the mid-nineteenth century, even if his accounts are strongly biased against anything Russian. See his Travels in the Western Caucasus (London, 1838) and Turkey, Russia, the Black Sea, and Circassia (London, 1854).

  There is a fine collection of travel writing by women, especially concerning Crimea. See Elizabeth, Lady Craven, A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople (Dublin, 1789); Marie Guthrie, A Tour, Performed in the Years 1795–6, Through the Taurida, or Crimea (London, 1802); and Mary Holderness, New Russia: Journey from Riga to the Crimea, by Way of Kiev (London, 1823).

  Henry Barkley recorded his experiences as a railway engineer on the western coast in Between the Danube and the Black Sea, or Five Years in Bulgaria (London, 1876). Barkley witnessed the flight of Tatars from Crimea to Bulgaria, and many years later saw resettled Tatars, Circassians, and other Muslim refugees eking out a living in Anatolia, which he recounted in his A Ride Through Asia Minor and Armenia (London, 1891).

  The demise of the grand tour meant that the market for wide-eyed accounts of the exoticisms of the East diminished (although, unfortunately, it was revived in the 1990s by the books of Robert Kaplan and others). But there are still several twentieth-century travel books worth reading. James Colquhoun was a British businessman whose copper mine in the Caucasus fell victim to the Bolsheviks. He tells his story in Adventures in Red Russia (London, 1926). William Eleroy Curtis, a Chicago reporter, recorded his own journey Around the Black Sea (New York, 1911). Stanley Washburn, another Chicago journalist, sailed back and forth across the sea in the middle of the 1905 Russian revolution; his account is The Cable Game (Boston, 1912). A touching memoir of the mutual cultural influences along the Pontic coast and the deportations of the 1920s is Thea Halo, Not Even My Name (New York, 2001).

  OTHER SECONDARY SOURCES

  Environment and Ecology

  As an introduction to the physical features of the sea, there is nothing to beat the Black Sea Pilot, in multiple editions, published by the British Admiralty. The flood thesis on the sea’s origins is presented in popular form in William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood (New York, 1998). The general idea of a dramatic drowning of the coastlands is debated in the scientific journal literature. In the “pro” camp is Robert D. Ballard et al., “Further Evidence of Abrupt Holocene Drowning of the Black Sea Shelf,” Marine Geology, Vol. 170 (2000):253–61. In the “con” camp is Naci Görür et al., “Is the Abrupt Drowning of the Black Sea Shelf at 7150 yr BP a Myth?” Marine Geology, Vol. 176 (2001):65–73. A report on the exciting possibilities of marine archaeology is Robert D. Ballard et al., “Deepwater Archaeology of the Black Sea: The 2000 Season at Sinop, Turkey,” American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 105 (2001):607–23. A good survey of the sea’s ecology is Yu. Zaitsev and V. Mamaev, Marine Biological Diversity in the Black Sea (New York, 1997).

  History

  700BC-AD500

  The Black Sea has been a poor cousin to the study of areas closer to the centers of the Greco-Roman world—at least for scholars writing in Western languages—but since the late 1990s an upsurge in research on Greek encounters with the sea has promised to change things. Two books edited by Gocha Tsetskhladze, The Greek Colonisation of the Black Sea Area (Stuttgart, 1998) and North Pontic Archaeology (Leiden, 2001), give overviews of the state of the field. The “Colloquia Pontica” book series, published by Brill in the Netherlands, presents the most important monographs on the new archaeology of the region. The Black Sea Trade Project, based at the University of Pennsylvania and headed by Fredrik Hiebert, has been a major forum for discussion about the sea as a distinct space of interaction. The project’s website is at www.museum.upenn.edu/Sinop/SinopIntro.htm. The British Academy has also launched a Black Sea research program. Its website, at www.biaa.ac.uk/babsi, is the best portal for locating scholars around the world, particularly archaeologists, classicists, and Byzantine specialists, with Black Sea interests.

  The best introduction to Greek colonization in general is John Boardman, The Greeks Overseas (London, 1980). Jonathan Hall explores the meaning of “Greekness” in the ancient world in his Hellenicity (Chicago, 2002). Renata Rolle’s The World of the Scythians (Berkeley, 1989) is an attempt to understand the ancient nomads of the northern steppe. Two older works—Ellis Minns, Scythians and Greeks (Cambridge, 1913) and Mikhail Rostovtzeff, Iranians and Greeks in South Russia (New York, 1969)—are mines of information on the material culture of the pastoral peoples. The equivalent for the western shore is Vasile Pârvan’s Getica (Bucharest, 1926). David Braund’s Georgia in Antiquity (Oxford, 1994) is a magnificent interpretation of the eastern Black Sea during the first millennium of vigorous exchange with the Mediterranean world. On the general subject of Romans and barbarians, I found particularly enlightening Peter Wells, The Barbarians Speak (Princeton, 1999). On the elusive Mithridates, the foremost study is B. C. McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus (Leiden, 1986).

  Most of what I know of the technical aspects of ancient seafaring comes from two studies: Lionel Casson’s Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, rev. edn. (Baltimore, 1995) and Jamie Morton’s The Role of the Physical Environment in Ancient Greek Seafaring (Leiden, 2001), whose modest title belies the brilliant and wideranging essays within. On the Goths and the Khazars, the place to start is still with the classics: A. A. Vasiliev, The Goths in the Crimea (Cambridge, MA, 1936) and D. M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (New York, 1967). There are several recent and beautifully illustrated works on Scythian and Sarmatian art which have accompanied museum exhibitions, for example, Joan Aruz et al. (eds.) The Golden Deer of Eurasia (New York and New Haven, 2000).

  500-1500

  The most readable general work on the Byzantines, although at times not the most dispassionate, is John Julius Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium (New York, 1997). Its more sober counterpart is Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society (Stanford, 1997). A major multivolume analysis of the Byzantine economy, including Black Sea commerce, is The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh Through the Fifteenth Century (Washington, 2002), edited by Angeliki Laiou.

  The classic political history of the empire of Trebizond is William Miller, Trebizond: The Last Greek Empire of the Byzantine Era, 1204–1461, new edn. (Chicago, 1969). The foremost living historian of Trebizond and the eastern sea is Anthony Bryer, whose many essays have been collected in several volumes of reprints. On the Genoese colonies, the essential text is Michel Balard, La Romanie génoise (XIIe–début du XVe siècle) (Rome, 1978), which has the rare quality of being frighteningly detailed and lucidly written. On the Byzantine navy, Hélène Ahrweiler, Byzance et la mer (Paris, 1966) has not been surpassed. The standard text on the transitional period between Byzantium and the Ottomans is Speros Vryonis, Jr., The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh Through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, 1971). There is as yet no comprehensive history of the Byzantine Black Sea.

  1500-1700

  The Ottoman Black Sea also awaits its historian, but surely the leading candidate is Victor Ostapchuk. His extended article on the sea in the seventeenth century (in the journal Oriente Moderno, Vol. 20, No. 1 [2001]) anticipates a major work to come. Two provocative books which challenge many of the older models of the origins of the Ottomans (and fine companions to the Vryonis above) are Rudi Paul Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatol
ia (Bloomington, 1983) and Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds (Berkeley, 1995).

  On Ottomans and the water, see Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Sea Power and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany, 1994). An analysis of the sea’s role in the Ottoman economy can be found in the first volume of Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert (eds.) An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 1994). Insightful analyses of Ottoman slaveholding include Ehud R. Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840–1890 (Princeton, 1982) and Y. Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise, 1800–1909 (New York, 1996).

  1700-1860

  Khodarkovsky and Sunderland (both above) were very influential on my thinking about the relationship between Russia and the steppe, as was McNeill (also above). On the naval history of the sea, the best source is R. C. Anderson’s old but still lively Naval Wars in the Levant, 1559–1853 (Liverpool, 1952). The major work on Peter the Great’s Azov fleet is Edward J. Phillips, The Founding of Russia’s Navy (Westport, CT, 1995). On diplomacy, M. S. Anderson’s The Eastern Question, 1774–1923 (London, 1966) is still a good guide. For a comparison of the Ottoman and Russian imperial systems, Dominic Lieven’s Empire (New Haven, 2001) is compelling reading. The best introductions to Catherine’s adventures in the south are Isabel de Madariaga’s much-read Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven, 1981) and Sebag Montefiore’s biography of Potemkin, Prince of Princes (New York, 2001). On the Kalmyks, the essential text is Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met (Ithaca, 1992).

  Patricia Herlihy’s Odessa: A History, 1794–1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1986) is a model of urban/port history; there is unfortunately nothing of equal quality for the other major ports, such as Trabzon or Constanţa. For the rise of the southern Russian cities, the basic source is a Ph.D. dissertation from long ago, Mose Lofley Harvey’s “The Development of Russian Commerce on the Black Sea and Its Significance” (University of California, Berkeley, 1938). For Russian-speakers, a useful narrative history of the Russian navy is the three-volume Tri veka rossiiskogo flota (St. Petersburg, 1996), edited by F. N. Gromov et al., although it suffers from the professional deformations of most military histories.

  1860-present

  A very helpful introduction to Ottoman naval history is Bernd Langensiepen and Ahmet Güleryüz, The Ottoman Steam Navy, 1828–1923 (Annapolis, 1995). On the removal of Muslims from the Caucasus and the Balkans, a much understudied subject, a good overview is Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile (Princeton, 1995). Norman Naimark’s Fires of Hatred (Cambridge, MA, 2001) surveys the history of ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. The work of the American Relief Administration is recounted in Bertrand Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand (Stanford, 2002).

  There is a great deal of poor-quality work on the Armenian genocide and the Greek–Turkish population exchanges, but two exceptional books are Stephen Ladas’s classic The Exchange of Minorities (New York, 1932) and Renée Hirschon’s collection of essays Crossing the Aegean (New York, 2003). My thinking on the intellectual appropriation of the sea and the coastline was influenced by Victor A. Shnirelman, Who Gets the Past? (Washington, 1996). The story of the sinking of the Struma is retold in vivid detail in Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, Death on the Black Sea (New York, 2003).

  Beginning in the 1990s, there was much talk of interstate cooperation around the sea, and a flood of reports and analyses followed. There is relatively little, however, that can be recommended. The best sources on the international politics of the zone are two collections of essays: Tunç Aybak (ed.) Politics of the Black Sea (London, 2001) and Renata Dwan and Oleksandr Pavliuk (eds.) Building Security in the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, NY, 2000).

  The literature on each of the countries in the wider Black Sea region is rather better, but that illustrates the degree to which the nation-state remains a powerful lens of analysis. On Ukraine, Andrew Wilson’s Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s (New Haven, 1997) is the best starting point. There are many things to read on Russia, but little about Russia’s specifically regional foreign policy around the sea. On the Caucasus, Svante Cornell’s Small Nations and Great Powers (London, 2001) is the best analytical survey. On Turkey there is a great deal, but one of the better popular treatments is Nicole and Hugh Pope, Turkey Unveiled (New York, 2000). On Turkish foreign policy, see Philip Robbins, Suits and Uniforms (London, 2003). There are unfortunately no up-to-date general books on the politics and society of either Bulgaria or Romania that can be recommended without qualification. However, Vladimir Tismaneanu’s Stalinism for All Seasons (Berkeley, 2003) is the definitive work on the communist period in Romania and its echoes in the present.

  One field that has produced truly exciting research is anthropology. There is a growing literature on social relations along the southeast coast, the work of a small but dedicated group of ethnographers and cultural anthropologists. See, for example, Ildiko Beller-Hann and Chris Hann, Turkish Region (Santa Fe, 2000) and Michael Meeker, A Nation of Empire (Berkeley, 2002).

  TRAVEL GUIDES AND LITERATURE

  There is no travel guide to the Black Sea as a whole, but there are several first-rate books that treat parts of it. John Freely’s The Black Sea Coast of Turkey (Istanbul, 1996) is an excellent companion from the Bosphorus to the Georgian border. The indispensable scholarly work, though too bulky to carry in a backpack, is the Bryer and Winfield (above). For the rest of the coast, the relevant sections of the Blue Guides, including Freely’s on Istanbul, are generally good, as is the Lonely Planet series.

  The Black Sea has not been a major literary subject. There are plenty of references here and there, but little that focuses on the sea itself. Here is my idiosyncratic list of things worth taking along on a trip:

  Rose Macauley’s The Towers of Trebizond is a picaresque story of an English matron’s search for that lost empire. Mark Twain met the Russian tsar in Crimea and recorded the event in The Innocents Abroad, along with his droll impressions of Istanbul and Odessa. Russian writers had plenty to say about the northern coast and the Caucasus but not much about the sea. Pushkin’s “The Bakhchisarai Fountain” should be read while touring Crimea. Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and Tolstoy’s novella Hadji Murat and his short story “A Prisoner of the Caucasus” will either entice one to visit the Caucasus or guarantee that one does not. As a portrait of a Black Sea port, nothing is better than Isaac Babel’s Odessa Stories. John Steinbeck fell in love with Georgia and told his readers so in A Russian Journal. Kurban Said’s novel Ali and Nino is on the list of most travelers to the Caucasus, which is unfortunate, for it wallows in all the standard stereotypes of the region.

  As for contemporary authors, one cannot go wrong with Ascherson (above), a model of literary nonfiction, and the novels of the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (especially The White Castle and The Black Book) and the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare (particularly The File on H, which is not about the Black Sea but is about mutual misunderstandings between East and West—and about the search for the elusive ancient Greeks). Victor Pelevin’s The Life of Insects is about an unusual group of visitors to Crimea.

  Index

  Abasci 54

  Abdulhamit II, sultan 196, 208–9, 234 12 n;

  see also Armenia and Armenians: massacres

  Abdulmecit I, sultan 196

  Abkhazia 11, 122, 219, 241–2

  Abonoteichus 55–6; see also Inebolu

  Abruzzi 44

  Acampsis river 54

  Achaei 27

  Achilles 26, 54

  Adrianople 100

  Adrianople, treaty of 140, 162, 167

  Adriatic Sea 71

  Aeetes 40

  Aegean Sea 13, 29, 30, 33, 44, 66, 82–3, 85, 100, 113, 146, 190, 193, 195, 209, 214, 216

  Aesop 38

  Africa 13, 43

  Agamemnon 27

  Agathangelos ix

  agriculture, rapid changes in 230–2

  Aivazovsky, Ivan 203

  Ak Deniz(Akdeniz) xii />
  Akhtiar 162

  Akkerman 121, 126, 160, 163, 165; see also Maurocastro

  Akkoyunlu Turkomans 79–80, 97; see also Turkomans

  Akmechet 162; see also Simferopol

  Albania (Balkans) 5, 78, 190, 217

  Albania (Caucasus) 45

  Aleppo 115

  Alexander II, tsar 180, 197

  Alexander III, tsar 208

  Alexander the False Prophet 55–6

  Alexander the Great 41, 45–7, 52