Slavery and Loyalty: The Russian and Ottoman Empires

Stanislav Mohylnyi

What is the relation of slavery and liberation in the contest between the Ottoman and Muscovite Empires for the loyalties of populations in the vicinity of the Black Sea? In the period from 1475 to 1700, slave raids and slave trade in the region between the Caucasus and Hungary corralled between two and three million people to markets mainly in the South. Muscovy fought this population drain by fortifying the steppe frontier, state sponsored ransom and expansionary ideologies of slave liberation; it employed Muslim subjects to achieve these ends. From early on, Muslim empires offered limited rights to the enslaved in order to develop loyal relations between masters, slaves and the state. In the Ottoman Empire, loyalty was often already practiced by slaves, who benefited from free movement or contractual manumission. Between these poles there were many transitions: mediators, merchants, diplomatic emissaries, clerics, translators and Cossacks with far-reaching connections, whose loyalties were decisive for ransoming the enslaved. Returning, manumitted or fleeing slaves themselves transited along these transottoman crossovers, the contexts of which were especially important since most former slaves remained with their Ottoman masters. The project looks at these crossovers from the Muscovite point of view and profits from Ottoman contexts accessible in the Transottomanica programme. How did Muscovy make sure that returning captives and kidnapped persons were loyal, despite their experience of extended periods of Muslim influence? How did Moscow try to inspire loyalty in Muslim Tatars who communicated extensively with their coreligionists on the other side of the steppe and in it? In terms of method, the project uses the toolbox made available by recent studies of loyalty which are based on Max Weber’s and Georg Simmel’s sociologies. In this way, archival sources such as slave narratives speaking about the transitions and reasons for leaving the Ottoman Empire will be analysed. Chronicles, saints vitae, murals as well as church rituals and plays formulated the ideology of Muscovy as New Israel and the tsar as the new Moses, who liberates Orthodox slaves as once the Israelites were liberated from Egyptian slavery.
 
The sub-project of Stanislav Mohylnyi will research the social history of the Hetmanate in the eithgeenth century through the prism of social status and attempts to change it by means of social subjugation. Attention is to be given to variagated factors that shaped social standing in the Hetmanate, such as  grassroots level relationships, the institutional framework and the policies of the Russian empire towards the Hetmanate.