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  • From Mare Clausum to Mare LiberumBlack Sea Diplomacy in the Era of Russo-Ottoman Duopoly
  • Kahraman Şakul (bio)

The central thesis of this article is that conventional historiography misrepresents the transformation of the Black Sea as an internationalization of a closed sea through great-power diplomacy (i.e., the "Eastern Question paradigm") and the incorporation of an isolated space through the conquest of European capitalism. The Black Sea has also not received due attention from global historians, who tend to reduce changes in the Black Sea region to the perennial question of the Straits as part of the Eastern Question and their inevitable incorporation into the world economy through Russian grain exports.1 Since the 1970s, historians have tended to avoid using the term "Eastern Question," considering it a Eurocentric reduction of the Ottoman Empire and its peoples to passive recipients of power politics conducted by the great powers. A glance at the list of potential catalysts of the Eastern Question—ranging from the Turks' penetration of the Balkan Peninsula to the French expedition to Egypt—reveals that the term has been stretched to its limits in an attempt to explain the entire history of the relations between Europe and the Turks. By the centenary of World War I, however, there is an increasing interest in the legacies of the Eastern Question paradigm.2 These legacies are [End Page 701] becoming ever more perceptible in recent Russian interventions in Georgia and Crimea, recurrent ethnic conflict, and occasional debates over the status of the Straits. Such legacies prompt historians to reevaluate the problem as one originating in the Russian-Ottoman borderlands.3

The emergence of Russia as a great power in the 1770s after it stripped the northern shores of the Black Sea from the Ottoman Empire and initiated the partitions of Poland-Lithuania accounted for much of the Eastern Question as understood over time. Writing in 1897, Max Choublier "found the root of the problem in the eighteenth-century 'decline' of the Ottoman Empire in the Black Sea," and explained other "questions" in the Ottoman Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt as spiraling outward from this core; he warned his readers to expect a potential Muslim reaction in the near future.4

This article attempts to understand Black Sea history in its own terms as a zone of human interaction and explains its place in the global rivalries of the age. The focus is on Russia's importance in the erosion of Ottoman domination of the Black Sea and Ottoman control of the so-called capitulations. The article thus challenges the view that the capitulatory regime of the Ottomans lasted without interruption until 1914 because of the introduction of the principle of irrevocability in the Franco-Ottoman 1740 capitulations. The Ottomans followed Byzantine precedence in the capitulation agreements regarding foreign navigation in the Black Sea, but the relevant clause remained effectively defunct for most of the early modern era. Gradual elimination of foreign navigation made the Black Sea an Ottoman preserve for centuries, although it is misleading to view it as a "Turkish lake." The idea of mare clausum (closed sea), however, denoted a policy (effective control of a space) rather than a physical reality (physical isolation of a space). Following Brătianu's Braudelian approach to the Black Sea, discussed below, one may claim that "the Russians play the role of the Mongols (a strong political entity established on the northern shore of the Black Sea and its hinterland); the Ottomans play the role of the Byzantines (a stable empire established on the straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles); and the British, French, and Austrians play the role of the Italian city-states (European states engaged, [End Page 702] politically and economically, in the Black Sea region)," as succinctly observed by Robarts.5

The relations between Russia and the Ottoman Empire on the northern tier after 1774 resulted in the creation of "a 60-year Ottoman-Russian duopoly" shaped by as much cooperation as competition across the Black Sea.6 The Black Sea trade was a top priority for the riparian powers. By contrast, the capitulatory powers' quest for rights of navigation in the Black Sea aimed at...

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