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Megan Dean

Neither Empire nor Nation: Networks of Trade in the Russo-Ottoman Borderlands, 1750-1925

The CREEES Travel and Research Grant has been a great boost this summer as I have carried out dissertation research in Tbilisi, Georgia.

My dissertation maps the multi-ethnic, multi-confessional networks of trade in the Greater Black Sea and Caucasus region and explores their relationship to Russo-Ottoman rivalries in the nineteenth century. I argue that to understand the modern-day formation of the Caucasus, we must look beyond empires and nation-states to examine the changing nature of cross-border flows of people and goods across this heterogeneous terrain. My research examines how three different commodity communities adapted to the formal and informal presence of the Russian Empire in the region and how the need to negotiate with many different local and international actors in this porous inter-imperial zone reflects back on tsarist statecraft. The first commodity community centers on the exchange of local agricultural goods, the second on the trade of long distance luxuries, and the third on the development of a modern industrial economy. I follow three lines of investigation for these commodity communities to trace long term changes in the power dynamics among traders, buyers and imperial elite, in the types of commodities traded, and the geographic connections commerce forged. The emphasis here is on highlighting shifts in social and economic relationships in a region that today is split between western Georgia and Eastern Turkey. By following different commodity communities, I highlight social practices associated with trade in order to study how diverse communities including Russians, Armenians, Cossacks, Georgians, Greeks, Kurds, Turks and indigenous peoples established trust, used law, shaped cultural norms and understood cultural difference.

In the Central State Historical Archives in Tbilisi, I have been reading the annual reports of the Office of the Governor General of the Caucasus in order to understand its development plans of the region, as well as court cases from merchants and customs officers, and circulars from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning Russian, Persian and Ottoman subjects who conducted business that required them to cross the Russo-Ottoman frontier. While the imperial Russian administration wanted to encourage trade and harbored elaborate dreams of modernizing commerce in the Caucasus, it struggled to realize these ambitions. Imperial Russian officials feared that commercial exchange would intensify the spread of diseases such as cholera that decimated the Russian military and local populations, of weapons that mountain peoples would use in anti-Russian insurgency, and of ideas disseminated through the smuggling of Korans and other political tracts. Yet they also recognized their dependence on traders for basic supplies and food. As one official in Tbilisi explained to the Governor General Rtishchev in 1813, he would have gladly answered his superior’s questions about the administration in greater detail, were it not for the fact that the central office had run out of paper. His office had sent a merchant to Moscow, where he would purchase more supplies. The merchant had agreed to sell his imports at cost in exchange for an official letter of introduction informing customs officials that they should not detain him due to the urgent nature of his business. Even in the best case scenario, this trek would take several months. Meanwhile, they would need to find an alternative grain supply for the year since the township had meager local reserves. This was due in part to the exceptionally bad harvests but largely to the fact that the arable land lay unplanted by pastoralists who only briefly grazed their sheep there before abandoning the land for richer pastures to the west, in areas under Ottoman control.¹

These files bring to light both how difficult and how essential it was the imperial Russian military to facilitate trade in the Greater Black Sea and Caucasus. They paint a vivid picture of the day-to-day challenges officials and local inhabitants faced. I look forward to building upon this research over the next year to develop a clearer picture of how networks of traders negotiated bureaucratic obstacles to ensure the continual flow of people, goods and ideas. In tracing how these flows fluctuated over time, I will engage in broader questions of how a centuries old multi-ethnic society adapted to changing technologies and shifting balances of power in this inter-imperial zone.

Once again, I would like to thank CREEES for its ongoing support of my research and wish the Center an enjoyable and productive start to the new academic year.

¹“Raporty gruzinskogo grazhdanskogo gubernatora glavnoupravliaiushchemu v Gruzii o razreshenii raznym litsam ezdit v Persiiu po torgovym delam,” 1813, Central State Historical Archives of Georgia, f. 2, op. 1, d. 370.