From Gifts to Commodities: Diplomatic Practices and their Economic Entanglements across the Black Sea and beyond

The project focuses on entanglements between diplomacy and economy, gifting and the circulation of commodities in the northern contact zone of the Ottoman Empire vis-à-vis Poland-Lithuania, Muscovy and the Crimean Khanate. Muscovy especially left a rich corpus of sources such as envoys’ reports and diplomatic accounting books conveying information on type, quality and value of the gifts (called pominki in Russian, upominki in Polish, bölek/hazine in Crimean Tatar). The gifts largely consisted of furs. The practice of gifting in favor of the Khanate became a form of tribute in the Polish-Lithuanian case while in the Muscovite case it was the other way around with a preexisting system of tribute (vyxod) slowly transforming into mere gifting. Furthermore, the gifts can serve as an indicator for the state of these courts’ mutual relations. Due to the decentral concept of sovereignty in the Khanate, the institutionalised practice of pominki ecompassed a large part of the elites (the gifts for whom were rather called tiyişin Tatar or žalovan’e in Russian), a practice demanded by both sides, as peace could only be secured when all power holders of the Crimea received their share. Every shift in the internal fabric of power was thus documented and reflected in the pominki. But pominki offered not only symbolic, but also hard economic capital. Taking into consideration the extent of the gifting practices it is hardly believable that the furs were destined solely for the personal use of the Crimean Tatar elites. What then happened with the furs after they fulfilled their diplomatic purpose? Some sources indicate that Armenian and Greek merchants would pay themselves into the position of envoys of various Tatar petty nobles, so to receive their gifts and gain access to this highly valued commodity. Subsequently the furs must have diffused in Armenian and Greek networks of long-distance trade. Thus gifting in this area was molded by transregional economic demands. Understanding these processes may finally contribute to answering the question whether Muscovy was able to co-opt and prepare the incorporation of many small political entities thanks to a strategic gifting policy set into a favourable global/transregional economic context.