The Crimean Khanate and the closure of the Black Sea frontier (1699-1730)

Abstract

At the turn of the eighteenth century, the European states that agreed to the Karlowitz (1699) and Istanbul (1700) Treaties forced the Ottoman Empire to accept the transformation of their northern and northwestern frontiers into borders and keep the border societies under tight control to prevent their incursions to the other side of the border. As a result, the Ottomans stipulated to punish raids and plunders against Russia and Poland-Lithuania and enslavement of their peasants. For the Crimean Khanate, that meant the loss of critical income. The frontier’s closure caused the marginalization of the Crimean people who lived in the peripheries, especially the Bucak and the Kuban. They were forced to give up their traditional way of life. The new modus vivendi ignited unrest, a series of revolts starting with the Gazi Giray Rebellion in 1699, which lasted at least until the end of the period focused on this study. Thereupon, the Crimean Khans faced various troubles to rule the Khanate. This thesis analyzes the reaction of the Crimean frontier people to these developments based on the Ottoman archives as well as Ottoman and Crimean chronicles. The archival sources, mainly mühimme registers and the record of imperial letters, contain a significant amount of information on how these people recalcitrated not to obey the Ottoman orders to fulfill the treaty’s liabilities. Therefore, to contextualize the dissent towards this new conjuncture, this thesis focused on the period from 1699 until the end of Mengli II Giray’s reign in 1730.