Download PDF | Andrew Robarts - Migration and Disease in the Black Sea Region_ Ottoman-Russian Relations in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries-Bloomsbury Academic (2016).
281 Pages
Acknowledgments
This book is the culmination of many years of study and research, in both the United States and abroad. I have incurred many debts and made many new friends along the way. At Georgetown University, I would like to thank, first and foremost, Professor Catherine Evtuhov. For over two decades now, Professor Evtuhov has been a consistent source of support, encouragement, and intellectual guidance. Professor Gabor Agoston shepherded me through the pitfalls attendant with the study of the multifaceted Ottoman Empire. Professors John McNeill and Charles King made sure that I maintained a broad analytical frame and drove my intellectual inquiries into the fields of world and regional history.
In Bulgaria, I would like to thank Professor Alexei Kalionski of Sofia University who proved to be a great listener and a valuable source of advice on Ottoman, Russian, and Bulgarian history. The archival and research staffs at the Bulgarski Istoricheski Arkhiv of the Narodna Biblioteka—Kiril i Metodi and at the Tsentralen Durzhaven Arkhiv were consistently helpful and supportive of my research project. In Moscow, my appreciation goes to the staff of the Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii and Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voenno-Istoricheskii Arkhiv for their professionalism. Special thanks go to the very kind and helpful staff in the academic reading room of the Gosudarstvennaia Istoricheskaia Publichnaia Biblioteka.
In Turkey, Kahraman Sakul and Ginhan Borek¢i accompanied me during my initial forays into Istanbul's archives and libraries. ’'m quite convinced that their introductions to key staff members in these research institutions lent instant credibility to my research project. Thank you both. My thanks as well go to the staff of the Basbakanlik Osmanl Arsivi and Islam Arastirmalar1 Merkezi. The latter institution always provided a quiet, calm, and cool environment on chaotic and steamy summer days in Istanbul. Along these lines, it was my pleasure to stay at the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) in Arnavutkoy for several months in 2008. Although my stay in Odessa was far too brief, Lilia Belousova made sure that my time in the Odessa State Archives was as collegial and productive as possible. The lengths she went to during my short and intense research visit to Odessa will always be appreciated.
Many institutions and organizations supported me financially during the research and writing phases of this project. My thanks go to the Graduate School at Georgetown, the Department of History at Georgetown, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC), the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants, the Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS), and the Cosmos Club Foundation for their generous financial support.
During the journeyman phase of my academic career, I had the great pleasure of working and teaching at the University of California, Riverside, and Central Connecticut State University. At UCR, I am particularly thankful for the collegiality and consistent support provided by Professors Georg Michels and James Brennan. AT CCSU, Kathy Hermes served as a mentor and friend. Thank you Kathy. I would like to offer my deepest gratitude as well to my colleagues at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Finally, my family—although occasionally perplexed as to why I was investing so much time researching and writing on the Black Sea region —offered unconditional support and maintained an unwavering faith in my academic pursuits. My mother and father (Dee and Richard Robarts) instilled in me, from an early age, a passion for history and a desire to explore the world. My brother, Alex, and my little daughter, Claire, helped me “keep things real” And finally, and most importantly, to my wife, Amy, thank you for your patience, for wading through the early drafts of this book, and for your unfailing belief in me. I made it.
Introduction
In late July 1805, the Russian nobleman Ivan Ivanovich Veshniakov, aboard a Greek merchant ship and traveling under the protection of a ferman issued by the Ottoman Sultan Selim HI, sailed up the Dardanelles and across the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara toward Istanbul. Fighting countervailing headwinds, Veshniakov’s ship—filled with fellow Orthodox Christian pilgrims as well as Tatars returning from the Muslim pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca and Medina—docked in the Galata district of Istanbul. After settling in his quarters, Veshniakov immediately proceeded to the Russian embassy in Istanbul to meet with a Russian consular official, Councilor of State Froding. In this meeting, Veshniakov—joined by a Volga Tatar Hajji named Ismail—provided Froding with information on his travels in the Ottoman Empire. Striking up a conversation with Ismail, the Russian nobleman and the Volga Tatar swapped stories of their respective pilgrimages.
Following a two-week stay in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, on August 5 Veshniakov boarded a Greek merchant ship bound for Odessa. After being delayed five days in Istanbul due to an unfavorably strong northern wind, a shift of winds to the south resulted in what Veshniakov described as a regatta-like departure of merchant ships from Istanbul headed for various Russian Black Sea ports. Despite the wind shift, the southerly wind was not strong enough to counter currents in the Bosporus, and Veshniakov’s vessel was forced to dock first in Dolmabah¢e and then in Arnavutkéy. Finally, on August 15, the Greek merchant ship departed Istanbul and sailed into the Black Sea. Following a coastal route up the western (Balkan) Black Sea shore, the ship reached Odessa in two days.
Just outside Odessa, the Greek merchant ship was stopped and boarded by Russian maritime officials. Following a brief inspection of the ship’s passengers, the ship was turned away from Odessa’s docks and was ordered to proceed to the port’s quarantine station located some distance from the harbor. Here, after paying a quarantine tax, the passengers’ clothes and goods were examined by Russian quarantine officials and medical doctors wielding specially designed iron tongs. Veshniakov and his fellow travelers remained in quarantine for three weeks, surviving on food purchased (with Ottoman currency) from the quarantine’s canteen. On September 6, Veshniakov’s travel document was stamped by a Russian quarantine official and, after clearing customs in Odessa, he was allowed to proceed on his way north to his home in Kaluga province.’
The Black Sea region and regional history
The Black Sea region of 1768 to 1829 has traditionally been characterized as a theater of warfare and imperial competition. Indeed, during this period, the Ottoman and Russian empires engaged in four armed conflicts for supremacy in the Balkans, Caucasus, and on the Black Sea itself.? The experiences of individuals such as Ivan Ivanovich Veshniakov, however, provide an alternative perspective from which to analyze the history of the Black Sea region. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Black Sea region was a zone of exchange—of trade, populations, and diseases—between the Ottoman and Russian empires. While not discounting geostrategic and ideological confrontation between the Ottoman and Russian empires, this book emphasizes the “transimperial” character of Ottoman-Russian relations in the Black Sea region during this period.
Based upon research conducted in Ottoman/Turkish, Russian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian archives, I adopt a regional framework to balance the prevailing historiography of Ottoman-Russian antagonism and conflict. Defining a region as “a distinct geographical zone of interaction,’ Charles King has identified migrants and merchants as the main connective tissues linking the communities and polities in the Black Sea basin. As King writes, “even during those times when the sea has been a zone of confrontation, it has remained a region: a unique playing field on which the interests and aspirations of the peoples and polities within it have been played out. Interactions, exchanges, and connections—sometimes peaceful, sometimes conflictual—have been the defining elements around the sea’s shores.”* In the nineteenth century, environmental scientists began to conceptualize and promote an understanding of the Black Sea region as a discrete and integrated unit of exchange and interaction. Building on ideas in the discipline of ecology, these scholars conceived of the region as a web of connections and networks. Within this organic complex, they argued, changes occurring in one part of the organism necessarily impacted the health and vitality of other parts. According to Charles King, these individuals “were among the first to treat the Black Sea as a unit of study, a complex system that had to be understood as a whole through an analysis of its geography, geology, chemistry, and biology.”
The historiography of maritime spaces guides my analysis of OttomanRussian relations in the Black Sea region.* In the longue durée, the Black Sea region evinces a quantifiable and empirically verifiable pattern of exchange and interaction that has both challenged and weakened the territorial sovereignty of empires and nation-states. Through periods of openness and closure, and regardless of shifts in political power, trading and migrant communities in the Black Sea basin forged and sustained transimperial and regional connections. These transnational forces challenged state sovereignty and promoted regional integration. And, as I argue throughout this book, the perceived threat posed by uncontrolled migration stimulated and underpinned joint Ottoman-Russian initiatives to impose a duopoly over political and economic affairs in the Black Sea region in the early part of the nineteenth century.
Despite almost constant warfare and ideological confrontation, issues of mutual concern and shared interest for the Russian and Ottoman empires arose in the Black Sea region at the start of the modern period. Both were land-based, sprawling and multicultural empires whose emergent politicalterritorial borders bisected religio-cultural communities. This lack of conformity between political borders and regionally connected diaspora communities posed practical problems and provided opportunities for imperial officials and migrant populations alike. Through a comparison of Russian and Ottoman responses to population movements, this book asks the following question: What type of migration regimes (receptive, indifferent, or hostile) did the Ottoman and Russian empires construct in response to increased population movements during the period in question?® In this book, I will utilize a migration system analysis to address the “push” and “pull” factors that motivated migration to and from the Ottoman and Russian empires.’ Promoted by environmental and structural factors, the interplay between migratory populations and state-driven policies geared toward controlling or managing these populations has been an enduring component of Black Sea regionalism. Therefore, I argue for the durability of the state-migration nexus and the continuity of migration-generated regionalism in the Black Sea basin, both historically and today.
Ottoman-Russian relations and comparative imperial history
Under the broad rubric of a comparative imperial history of the Ottoman and Russian empires, this book explores the linkage between migration, provincial-level reform, and state transformation in the Ottoman and Russian contexts. The impact of human mobility and transimperial migration on the evolution of Ottoman and Russian state institutions forms a core analytical framework of this book. Applying migration theory to historical data, my research broadens our understanding of the role of immigration policies and migratory circulation in the trajectory of empires, both historically and today. Here I argue that, in comparison with the more open and pragmatic approach to migratory populations in the early part of the nineteenth century, the adoption of a more nationalist and security-oriented migration regime in the late imperial period contributed to the diminution and weakening of the demographic vitality of the Ottoman and Russian empires.
Building upon a case study of Bulgarian migration between the Ottoman and Russian empires, an overview of the spread of epidemic disease in the Black Sea region, and an analysis of Ottoman and Russian quarantine construction, this book details joint Ottoman-Russian initiatives to establish territorial sovereignty in the Black Sea region. The central argument of this book is that in response to significant increases in human mobility and the concomitant spread of epidemic diseases in the Black Sea region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Ottoman and Russian officials—at the imperial, provincial, and local levels—communicated about and coordinated their efforts to manage migratory movements and the spread of disease in this region. As part of a broader discussion on Ottoman-Russian Black Sea diplomacy, this book, therefore, reconceptualizes Ottoman-Russian relations in the Black Sea region during this period.
My book engages in a “bottom-up” comparative study of migration and settlement in the Ottoman and Russian empires in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I argue for the role of human mobility in defining administrative responsibilities and driving jurisdictional reforms at the provincial level. This book, therefore, falls squarely within the emergent genre of Ottoman and Russian provincial- and/or micro-level studies.® It then highlights and argues for the role of provincial-level actors and the bottom-up contribution of local-level events to the meta-narrative of Ottoman and Russian imperial history. Further, I argue that in the early part of the nineteenth century, debates concerning the rights and responsibilities of migrant-settler populations in southern Russia and the Ottoman Balkans fed into and informed reform initiatives undertaken at the highest levels of Ottoman and Russian officialdom.
As part of this analysis, I discuss comparatively how individual Ottoman and Russian subjects related to the imperial state and how subject populations on the move in the Black Sea region perceived of the contours of imperial space. Thematically my research on migration and empire builds upon Resat Kasaba’s analysis of human mobility in the Ottoman context. Kasaba has argued that mobility was an integral part of Ottoman imperial history and informed in large measure the experience of empire for subject populations. In my work, I look to contribute to this fundamental (and often overlooked) feature of Ottoman historiography and, through a comparative analysis, extend to the Russian context our awareness of how, as Kasaba puts it, “mobility thoroughly permeated Ottoman society and the nascent institutions of empire.”
As part of a comprehensive and comparative study of provincial-level Ottoman and Russian migration and settlement policies, my research challenges the traditional hub-and-spoke approach to analyzing center—periphery dynamics in the Ottoman and Russian imperial contexts. In so doing, this book incorporates the Black Sea region into the developing scholarly conceptualization of the Ottoman and Russian empires as multifaceted imperial entities consisting of multiple centers and multiple peripheries."°
Despite the implementation of measures designed to restrict migration in the Black Sea region, I argue that the Ottoman and Russian states struggled to effectively police their imperial peripheries. Commercial linkages and structural connections among migratory populations in this region, as well as the irregular delimitation of Ottoman-Russian borders, reduced the efficacy of Ottoman and Russian anti-plague and quarantine measures. This book, therefore, highlights the weakness of Ottoman and Russian state authority and the limits of Ottoman and Russian state power in the Black Sea region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As both the Ottoman and Russian states struggled to exercise authority in the Black Sea region during the period in question, my work argues for and implicitly foregrounds the utility of a comparative approach to analyzing the power and efficacy of the Ottoman and Russian imperial states.
This book engages in a detailed comparative study of the establishment of quarantine lines and the construction of quarantine complexes in the OttomanRussian Black Sea region.'' As part of this comparative analysis, I contribute several important correctives to our understanding of quarantines in the Ottoman and Russian contexts.” Quarantines are primarily constructed in an effort to combat the spread of disease and, from an historiographical standpoint, are generally discussed within this context. I argue, however, that in the Black Sea region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, quarantines rapidly evolved into all-purpose border posts where trade goods were inspected, customs collected, currency exchanged, criminals and fugitives surveilled, intelligence gathered, and migrants and refugees registered and provided with travel documents. The provision by quarantine officials of health-related travel documents to individuals crossing imperial borders highlights the general linkage of disease suppression, migration management, and border control in the Ottoman-Russian Black Sea region in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The Ottoman and Russian polities were both formed in a frontier environment; drew upon Byzantine and Mongol traditions in their early state formation and later imperial ideology; incorporated Christian and Muslim elements into their “aristocracy”; developed into multiethnic and multireligious empires; were forced to respond to the challenge of the European industrial revolution; implemented modernizing reforms; confronted nineteenth-century nationalism(s); and perished in the wake of World War I. In approaching Ottoman and Russian imperial history, Euro-Atlantic historians tend to focus on the trilateral relationship between Western Europe, Russia, and Turkey. Within this framework, historians typically emphasize Western Europe's influence on the Ottoman Empire's adoption of modernizing reforms in the nineteenth century and debate the weight and import of the European component in the Eurasianist orientation of the Russian Empire. Moving away from an historiography that places Ottoman and Russian imperial history within the context of comparative “European” colonial studies and drilling down to the provincial, local, and micro-level, my research project argues for and implicitly foregrounds the essentialness of engaging in a comparative analysis of the Ottoman and Russian empires on their own terms.
Chapter overview
This book is divided into seven chapters. Following this introductory chapter, Chapter 1 (“The Black Sea Region in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries”) provides an overview of the Black Sea region at the turn of the nineteenth century. In this chapter, I analyze the nature of territorial sovereignty around the Black Sea basin and highlight the importance of the Danubian Principalities (Wallachia and Moldavia) as the middle ground between the Ottoman and Russian empires. Additionally, I initiate my discussion of the environmental and climactic factors that promoted and sustained migratory movements and the spread of disease in the Black Sea region. Chapter 2 (“A Trans-Danubian Waltz: Bulgarian Migration in the Ottoman-Russian Black Sea Region”) develops a case study of Bulgarian migration between the Ottoman and Russian empires in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Here, I highlight the significant amount of Bulgarian return migration from the Russian Empire to the Ottoman Empire in the early part of the nineteenth century and emphasize linkages between migratory movements and the spread of disease. I use this case study as a vehicle to introduce larger themes in Ottoman and Russian imperial historiography addressed in the core chapters of the book.
In Chapter 3 (“At the Limits of Empire: Migration, Settlement, and Border Security in Russias Imperial South”), I survey the settlement of migratory populations in the Russian south during an expansionary period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This chapter explores the connection between migration, settlement projects, and economic development in the Russian Empire. It concludes with an analysis of the ineffectiveness and weakness of Russian border control and migration management regimes in the Black Sea region. Chapter 4 (“Reconstruction and Reconciliation: Migration and Settlement in the Early Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Balkans”) addresses the settlement of Crimean Tatars, Russian Old Believers, Cossacks, and Bulgarian return migrants in the Ottoman Empire. As part of a broader discussion of state-society relations in the Ottoman Balkans, I analyze the shift in Ottoman migration policies from interdiction and forced return to a more nuanced, flexible, and incentivized approach to the challenges posed by human mobility. It concludes with an investigation of the connection between migration, provincial-level reform, and state transformation in the Ottoman Empire.
In an integrative manner, Chapters 5 (“‘Instruments of Despotism’ (I): Quarantines, Travel Documentation, and Migration Management in the Ottoman Empire, 1774-1830s”) and 6 (“‘Instruments of Despotism’ (II): Epidemic Disease, Quarantines, and Border Control in the Russian Empire” survey the spread of epidemic diseases (plague and cholera) in the Black Sea region and analyze Ottoman and Russian anti-disease initiatives and quarantine construction projects in the early part of the nineteenth century. Further, the evolution and institutionalization of quarantines as all-purpose border posts and the connection between quarantine construction, anti-disease initiatives, and the rise of the modern state in the Black Sea region are addressed.
Chapter 7 (“Imperial Confrontation or Regional Cooperation? Reconceptualizing Ottoman-Russian Relations in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries”) details joint Ottoman-Russian initiatives to manage migration and check the spread of epidemic diseases in the Black Sea region. Here, as part of a broader discussion on Ottoman-Russian Black Sea diplomacy, I reconceptualize the nature of Ottoman-Russian relations in this region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Sources
This book is built upon a multiarchival and multilingual source base. Archival research was conducted in Moscow, Russia (at the Russian State Military History Archive and the State Archive of the Russian Federation), in Istanbul, Turkey (at the Prime Ministerial Ottoman Archives), in Sofia, Bulgaria (at the Bulgarian Historical Archive and the Central State Archive—Bulgaria), and in Odessa, Ukraine (at the Odessa State Archive). Additionally, at the Central State Archive—Bulgaria I was able to access microfilmed archival documents from the Central State Archive of Moldavia (in Kishinev) and the Romanian State Archive (in Bucharest).
In Russia, two particularly rich archival finds included early editions of the Russian Ministry of the Interior’s in-house journal published in the 1830s and 1840s and a series of reports submitted by agents of the Russian Third Section (a surveillance/internal policing unit in Russia) posted in the Black Sea region. I used these reports to track migratory populations and the spread of disease between the Ottoman and Russian empires in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Beyond these archival holdings, the research for my book draws upon a reading of published Romanian archival documents (translated into Bulgarian), published Russian Foreign Ministry Documents (which include reports written by Russian consular officials in the Ottoman Empire), and published reports written by Russian provincial officials stationed along the south and southwestern periphery of the Russian Empire. Color and eye-witness reportage in the book is provided by American, English, French, and German travelers in the Black Sea region. These travel accounts proved particularly useful for gauging environmental conditions in southern Russia and the Ottoman Balkans, the impact of epidemic diseases on communities located around the Black Sea littoral, and the individual experience of migrants on the move between the Ottoman and Russian empires in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.’ Finally, my book incorporates a close and comprehensive reading of Russian, Ottoman/Turkish, and Bulgarian secondary sources on the history of the Ottoman and Russian empires.
A note on periodization
The history of the Black Sea region has oscillated between periods dominated by closed command economies and periods marked by international openness and free trade.‘ From the Ottoman capture of the key Crimean port of Kaffa in 1475 to the signing of the Treaty of Kiiciik Kaynarca in 1774 (which ended the Russo-Ottoman War of 1768-1774), the political economy of the Black Sea and its riparian basin was organized around the monopolistic provisioning of the Ottoman capital of Istanbul.’ The Treaty of Ktigtik Kaynarca—which established an independent Crimean Khanate (albeit under heavy Russian influence)—ceded to the Russian Empire three ports along the northern Black Sea coast (Kinburun, Yenikale, and Kerch), accorded Russian merchant ships navigational rights through the straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and allowed Russian subjects to trade freely in the Ottoman Empire—punctured the hermetical seal around the “Ottoman lake.” Accordingly, trade, population movements, and the spread of epidemic disease along the north-south axis of the Black Sea increased considerably.
This book is fundamentally an investigation of the response by the Ottoman and Russian states to the accelerated pace of migration and the spread of disease in the Black Sea region from 1768 to the signing of the Treaty of Hiinkar Iskelesi in 1833. Signaling a stunning reversal in the traditionally antagonistic geopolitical relationship between the Ottoman and Russian empires, the Treaty of Hiinkar Iskelesi alerted France and Britain to the Russian Empire’s improved diplomatic and military position in Istanbul. The ensuing internationalization of the “Black Sea Question” effectively ended a sixty-year Ottoman-Russian duopoly over economic and political affairs in the Black Sea region.
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