Slavery as abhorrent as it was and still is, has been practiced with varying degrees since the ancient times. From the time of ancient Egyptians to the Indians, the Greeks and the Romans and to the Ottomans, from republics to empires, almost every civilization has had slavery as a recognized and even legal concept with varying laws to define and regulate its scope. For example, while the economy of ancient Roman empire had slaves as its backbone, such was not the case in ancient India where it was comparatively quite restricted. The pervasiveness of slavery was usually determined by the culture of the land which also affected the economics of its society. And sometimes it was the economics which was the determining factor influencing the culture. Slavery thus was the outcome of the socio-economic ethos of a region.
Introduction
Throughout history, the source for supply of slaves generally have been three. First was usually the inability to pay debt or taxes and this resulted in what we can say internal slavery. Second was the number of people captured during military operations i.e. the prisoners of war which until recent times was a frequent phenomenon. And third, was simply, the trade of slaves. This happened usually when some societies took slavery as an accepted practice of business and raids were conducted precisely for this reason in neighbouring territories. The victims were usually of sedentary agricultural societies.
This trade eventually developed into an elaborate network with various markets and ports. People who took this practise to another level were the Central Asian Steppe nomads. With varying degrees, they had conducted raids for slaves for centuries. Many Indians had been the victims of this either due to being captured during war or as part of loot during various invasions by the Islamic hordes. But few countries have had the problem of external slavery (prisoners of war ; captured in slave raids) being an important corner stone of their politics and even the focus of their military as Russia in pre-modern times. This post is about a peculiar Russian problem and how the trade in slaves by the Central Asian Steppe principalities, kingdoms and even empires affected Russia.
Geography of Russia
The peculiar geography of Russia forms the basis of this problem. Its southern frontier is a huge open terrain. With scanty vegetation and rare occurrence of trees, entire expanse of the frontier has always been an easy prey to the nomadic hordes to its south. Its vast grassland has affected the history and politics of this huge country. The open southern frontier of Russia with no natural boundaries had usually bore the brunt of these slave raids. This part of the land is different for it is as used to sedentary agriculture as to the nomadic way of life with quite a busy economic environment — from cereals, fish and salt to fur, honey and slaves, everything. As a result, it had also acted as a busy trade route for all kinds of inter-continental commercial relations in the pre-19th century era.
“If the steppe was akin to the sea, and Russian towns to ports, the nomads were the seamen. Many of the seamen were pirates living off the ‘ports’ or looting the passing ship convoys.”
“At the Southern Border” by Sergei Vasilievich Ivanov (1907). Muscovites securing the frontier against the marauders.
An Age Old Practice
Whenever a nomad horde from the Iron Age onward dominated the steppes, it influenced southern Russia and there was a common method to levy huge tolls in this gigantic expanse of land on every product worth trading. Since that time Russia, amongst other products have had slave as its infamous exports. Whether they were Scythians, Athenians, Rhodeans, Romans and Byzantines, or Venetians and Genoese, every power, every entity that dominated the seas – particularly Mediterranean and the Black Sea, therefore had slaves as very valuable product.
Khazars and the Cumans
When the territory between the Volga & Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and northern Caucasus was dominated by the Turkic hordes of Khazars (7th – 10th century), the centre for trade of slaves was its capital Itil. The Abbasid Caliphate was a major trading partner so to speak and the slaves brought from Russia and the Slav region by the Bulgars and later by the Vikings were sold in huge numbers. And its successor, the Cumans-Kipchak Confederation called Polovtsy by Russians, terrorised not just Russia but the Kieven Rus (a loose federation that dominated the Eastern Slavs, Finland area between the 9th and the 13th century before the onslaught of Mongols) as well. Their terror was such that the lands were completely devastated and captives were taken in huge amounts and were quite expectedly sold as slaves forcing large scale migrations in the region.
The Golden Horde
And then came the Mongols in mid-13th century that resulted in the establishing of the Tatar Empire – the Golden Horde (originally the north-western part of the Mongol Empire). The Golden Horde dominated the steppes and reached till the Siberia at its peak and affected not just Russia but Eastern Europe as well. It met its end around late 15th century. With such vast expanse of land and such established networks of trade under them, the Tatars quickly resorted to strengthening the trade. They knew that after the military success, the only way they can sustain the empire was through the profit in trade and commerce. They followed the age old practice of exacting huge levies and of course, the trade in slaves. The towns of Old Sarai and New Sarai played an important part in this.
The Golden Horde
Genoese & Venetians
Foreign trade in this period was dominated and affected by the rivalry of Venice and Genoa. The prime role was played by the trading post of Caffa (Feodosia) on the south-east coast of Crimea. The post had been established by the Genoese after they received the license to build it from the Khan. The Byzantine politics had resulted in the removal of Black Sea from the sphere of influence of the Venetians, the rivals of Genoese. They were finally allowed a base at the town of Tana (Azov). Quite like the later trading posts of various Europeans in India, which after being given permission to establish themselves indulged not only in trade but also warfare with the Indians, the Caffa under Genoese also had such chequered history with the Tatars. They were still holding the post and controlling trade in the Black Sea region till the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 CE. After that it was only a matter of time when Caffa would be under Ottomans and this is exactly what happened. Ottomans captured Caffa in 1475 CE.
Slave Market of Caffa, Crimean Khanate.
A large part of the history of Russia has been a long story of continuous warfare with the Tatars. Russia thus was a constant source of slaves which the Tatars sold at high profit and this aspect was more stark especially after the hegemony of the Ottomans was established. Sultan’s agents were always there to get the best quality slaves for the Empire and Russians or Caucasians formed the majority of those slaves.
Societal and Cultural Norms
The social milieu of a nomadic society also contributed to the frequency of raids. The valour of successfully conducting a raid and winning a ‘booty’ was way more than serving in a mere regular military. This also was the reason that despite assurances and other monetary securities promised by the Russian rulers to various tribal chiefs asking them to serve in the military, secure the frontier and not participate in raids, the frequency and intensity of the raids didn’t particularly reduce.
Profits of the trade
The profit of the entire trade was so high that the so called religious affinities and brotherhood though certainly an irritant, didn’t stop the raiders and therefore the merchants from participating in it. Profit in the slave trade used to reach a staggering 1000% ! In later 14th century, Florence had more than 300 slave sales in 33 years. Russian girls were most prized possessions and fetched highest prices. The decline of the Golden Horde and its disintegration into various Khanates in the 15th century didn’t really change the situation. Though the Russian rulers were allying with various Khanates and sometimes playing one for the other, the raids still continued.
The number of captives in these raids didn’t have to be large because the sheer profit or other economic value of those captured Russians or Caucasians made up for their lesser numbers. Slaves were sold in the slave markets or put up for ransom to be paid by the Russians if they wanted their people back. And if not sold in the slave market or ransomed, they were to be the domestic servants, labourers and serfs in the steppes and its Khanates. The selling of these captives fetched high prices in the markets of Central Asia like that of Bukhara, Samarkand, Khiva, Caffa or Tana (Azov) from where the slaves went to all the directions including the Islamic Kingdoms like the Mamluk Dynasty of Egypt, the Caliphates and later the Ottomans.
Khanates after disintegration of the Golden Horde
The Crimean Khanate
The main role in this was played by the Crimean Khanate (1441 – 1783 CE). In one such slave raid in 1501, the Crimeans are said to have taken 5000 Lithuanians! At the southern frontier, military campaigns were less of a danger than the frequent raids as usually the motive of these raids was not so much the plunder of material wealth though that certainly was a part of the goal but more of Russians themselves. Only loot that the marauders prized almost to the level of Russian slaves were the horses.
“Consider one typical raid in 1500 in which a war party of 1000 Crimeans returned with 5000 Lithuanian captives. High price that slaves fetched in Ottoman and Central Asian markets as well as the high price of ransom made it hard for the Russian government to provide incentives sufficiently attractive to discourage this sort of raiding.”
– Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier.
The strength of the invading Khanate army reached 80,000 but obviously more frequent and therefore source of bigger and constant danger was the smaller raiding party with an average strength of 2000. This resulted in huge loss of population in the region. One has to understand that we are not talking about once in a decade raids. These raids conducted with the sole goal of “harvesting of slaves” happened every year for centuries. After West Africa, Russia was made the largest source of slaves in the entire world!
Early 20th Century painting by Jozef Brandt depicting Zoporozhian Cossacks fighting the Crimeans. (WikiMedia Commons)
Though politics sometimes helped in discouraging such raids. Crimean Khan Muhammad Giray in 1516 for example, paid his own son Alp to not raid the Russians for slaves as he was keen to maintain peace with them and Alp therefore raided the Polish-Lithuanian lands instead. But this strategy worked only until the other party didn’t pay him higher. The poverty amongst the tribes and complete acceptance of such raids in the steppe culture still kept the danger high for even when alliance with the Russians made the Khans to discourage such raids, they nevertheless continued.
Dangers for the Population
As a Russian particularly in the southern frontier, you could be doing your everyday job either in the farm or salt mines or may be just going to the market, but your fate was uncertain for the very next moment you could be captured to be ransomed or sold in the slave market or working as slave labour in Central Asia. And this fate wasn’t just reserved for a mere peasant or a worker. Many a times even noblemen of big estates could also be captured and their ransom amount was therefore quite high as per their status. There are even instances when even the Russian princes were abducted for the sole motive of ransoming and negotiation was done with the Russian king as was the case with Tsar Ivan IV in 1538 and the Russian prince Semen Bel’skii.
The Ottomans
The Ottomans were a major consumer of slaves ever since they established themselves. Slaves were inducted in every part of the state machinery – as pages, as soldiers and of course for the harems. Some scholars even suggest that the rise of Istanbul in the 16th century to the level of becoming the largest city of Europe wouldn’t have been possible if not for the constant incoming slaves, majority of whom were Slavs and Russians. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the Ottoman Empire was actually a slave state. The Roman Empire in ancient time also had a major part of the economy based on slaves but the extent, the pervasiveness and integration of these slaves in the Middle East and Near Asia under the Ottomans reached unprecedented levels. The acceptance of slavery in every shape and form in the Islamic world was a major contributing factor of this phenomenon.
Under this system, slaves were brought from every part of the world and then they were trained. The ablest of them were provided with administrative, military and even sometimes sovereign powers, but with an obvious prerequisite – their conversion to Islam. This whole system made the Islamic society quite peculiar. The Mamluk Dynasty of Egypt had majority of its elite class and even the majority of rulers who were slaves; many of them had been captured by the Tatars after their slave raids in southern Russia. And these converted slave Russians who were now at plum posts continued their dominance in the society even after the fall of the Mamluk Dynasty and capture of Egypt by the Ottomans in early 16th century. The peculiarity of Islam & consequently Ottomans in this regard resulted in formation of a bizarre system which made slaves an overwhelming part of entire state machinery.
They formed the bulk of the administrative posts and the military. The mixture of both civil and military aspect in medieval society made the presence of slaves even more ubiquitous. Majority of the ‘quality’ slaves were of Slav and Russian or Caucasian descent and almost all of them were Christians when captured. The Ottoman Army was divided between Janissaries (infantry) and Spahi of Porte (cavalry), majority of whom were and remained till the end of their lives – slaves. The reason it is important to mention the Islamic- Ottoman system is that they were the sponge that absorbed the majority of the slave trade while the Ottoman Empire existed. We all know about the notoriety of the Ottoman harems. The most chosen slave girls were taken to the harems where they were there for the pleasure of the Sultan. If not him then for the Ottoman officers and dignitaries. The concubines though were never the wives. Only few reached that level and even that was not an accepted practice.
“…in the 120 years between Bayazid I and Sulaeiman, no Sultan married any of the mother of their children.”
Slave markets had Russians fetching some of the highest prices. If the prisoners of war and slave markets weren’t enough for the giant appetite of the Ottomans for slaves, then a levy was there for this specific purpose. Sultan’s agents arrived every three or four years in its eastern parts of the empire for slaves, most of whom were Christians. The Ottomans had a special slave tax for this purpose. In the Ottoman Crimea, slaves that were considered coming from their own conquered territory like the Azov were taxed at half the rates as compared to those which were outsiders and the port of Caffa played an important role in this. It is estimated that in the sixteenth century almost 150,000 to 200,000 slaves were captured from Russia. The number of Russian slaves like those from Ukraine (Rus) or Moscow (Moskoflu) was almost half the population of Ottoman Crimea!
“Russians seized by Tatars between sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century estimated to about 200,000.”
The Russian Government
Moscow obviously didn’t sit quiet. In 16th century, the increasing strength of the Russian army and the technological advancement in the military infrastructure like the improved fortification lines and artillery helped to some extent. As weapons, Russia now had latest canons and arquebuses which even the Khanates wanted for themselves. It certainly helped in reducing the danger of raids and increasing the negotiation power of the Russians for the return of those who had been captured. The extensive fortification line was constructed on the southern frontier with the sole purpose of stopping the “enslavement of the Christians”. In fact, a special tax called polonianichnyi sbor or the ransom tax was introduced by Moscow in 1551 so as to make it a duty of every Christian to play their part in freeing the Christian Russian slaves by paying for their ransom. The tax lasted till 1679 CE.
“Moscow’s growing concern for captives in the sixteenth century came from its newly crystallized self-consciousness as a Russian Orthodox State with a divine duty to save Orthodox Christians.”
An entire section of the Russian law books like in 1649 was dedicated to “ransoming Russian captives”. Everyone in the state whether an official or a merchant or an envoy was encouraged by the government to pay for the captives and free them of this tyranny. Usually a Russian envoy was sent, for example to the Khan of Crimea with a prepared list of the slaves/captives and negotiated for the amount to be paid for their freedom.
Great Abbatis Border by Max Presnyakov (2010). The Border was created by Russia to protect it from Crimean-Nogaye Raiders. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Other Side
There is another aspect of the story — Russians were not always victims in this entire saga. They had been the part of northern slave trade which peaked in the 10th and 11th centuries and had Scandinavian countries as its focal point. During this time, Scandinavian countries like Norway and others were in return accepting slaves from places like Ireland and British Isles and conducting raids in neighbouring countries. Vikings had taken parts in such raids and formed it an established trade practice. This huge cycle of slave trade was an established network which had practically every country playing its role whose inhabitants were sometimes slaves, sometimes slave traders and sometimes both!
Russian merchants had conducted slave trade particularly of the Eastern Slavs and had taken prisoners of wars from the kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. They had used them as slaves in Russia itself or traded them for profit. As the slaves captured thus were either non-orthodox Christians or sometimes even pagans, the Russians had no qualms in trading them. Muscovite raids into Finland particularly in the region of Karelia starting from 15th century onward are an apt example of this when Russians used to plunder the area and kidnap its women and children and then they were offered for ransom. Scandinavian captives were definitely a source of profit for the Russians.
Ultimately there even emerged a pattern where Russians started raiding the nearby territories to the south like the Nogai Horde in the steppes. The Don Cossacks raided and captured some Nogays as slaves and as has been mentioned above Russians also had no objections when the non-Orthodox Christians like Germans and Poles were taken. After the formation of fortification lines, Russians started conducting smaller raids themselves for capturing Muslim and pagan slaves. There were even cases when some people themselves were ready to become slaves in order to have better life in the Russian towns. Of course, all they had to do was convert to Orthodox Christianity in order to reap the rewards.
The Eighteenth Century
By the eighteenth century the military advancement of the Russians and consequently the technological gap between them and the Khanates was so huge that nomadic Khanates found it increasingly difficult to conduct successful raids for slaves. Though the geography of Russia’s southern frontier still proved to be an impediment for the Russians and helped in continuance of invading war armies of the Khans and also their smaller raids. As late as 1742, the Karakalpaks captured almost thousand Russian children and women in Siberia. Even proposals by the Russians of exchanging the Russian captives with the Turkic captives was offered to the Hordes, it was customarily refused. According to them slaves were only to be sold or ransomed and not exchanged. This menace still lingered even after the conquest of these areas by the Russian Tsar.
Russians were freeing captives in Turkistan as late as mid nineteenth century. Peter Hopkirk in his masterpiece, The Great Game gives an account about those unfortunate slaves. In the summer of 1819, the Russian Governor of the Caucasus, General Yermolov stationed in Tiflis, Georgia ordered a young officer, Captain Nikolai Muraviev for a mission in Khiva. He was to try and reach Khiva and himself deliver to the Khan the message from Yermolov for a hand in friendship, some commercial offers and an eventual alliance with the Khanate. These were the overt motives. The covert intentions included deep observations about Khiva’s defences, its geography and essential strategic military information.
A similar attempt had been made a century back in the time of Peter the Great in 1717 but the Russian entourage had been treacherously massacred by the Khan and only few survived. However, there was one other important aim to this expedition – the Russian slaves in Khiva. Muraviev was to gather as much information as possible about these slaves. There was virtually no knowledge about there situation as the escape of these slaves was next to impossible.
Muraviev had reached Khiva through a very hazardous journey. But he had been noticed taking secret notes and was imprisoned. He would have been immediately killed but for the Khivan fears about a possible Russian retribution if a Russian envoy was killed. When finally he had been allowed to have a meeting with the Khan, Muraviev who was being escorted by armed Khivan guards saw that many town people had gathered to get a glimpse of a Russian in an officer’s uniform.
The crowd was huge enough for guards to use force to disperse them. But for the first time, Muraviev noticed that there were Russians in the crowd! They were the unfortunate slaves. They took off their hats to acknowledge and give respect to Muraviev and he later wrote that they “begged me in whispers to try to obtain their release.” Hopkirk writes that “the memory of those lost souls was to haunt Muraviev for the rest of his life.” At another occasion when he was going to meet the Khan, Muraviev could hear their “imploring voices.” But nothing could have been done, at least at that time.
The Economic Loss
Some scholars suggest that this huge question of vulnerable southern frontier of Russia also contributed to underdevelopment and under-urbanization of Russia especially when compared to the Western Europe. The sheer wealth of the nation, human and otherwise lost in these raids was stark and the remaining Russian manpower had to contribute a lot of time in securing the frontier. Men of the Russian gentry had to spend at least half of their summer every year by serving in military to protect the vast expanse of the southern Russian frontier against these raids. If this lost wealth was instead free to be used to set up new towns, the financial gain from that could have been huge for Russia.
For a long time until late seventeenth century when the military advantage of Russia increased, the difficulty in Russian operations against the Tatars was also huge. The supply train needed in these operations were humongous and the fact that even more fodder was required for the draught animals pulling those supplies, further increased the inefficacy of such campaigns. There had been many examples when the initial success could not be utilised and Russians had to retreat because the supplies had already been used. When ultimately Crimea was taken by the Russians in late eighteenth century, a lot of manpower was saved from keeping constant vigil on the southern frontier and helped Russia to now put that freed human and even material wealth against the Ottoman Empire.
Conclusion
The problem of the slave raids thus still persisted on even as late as nineteenth century and only stopped completely as and when the Russian Empire grew in size. One can say that the slave raids and the huge cost it levied, both material and human on Russians were a big contributing factor for the rise of Russian imperialism and ultimately paved the way for Russian conquests and hegemony in the region, for there was only one way that the southern frontier would cease to be vulnerable and that was only when the extent of the frontier was taken to the Black Sea and the entirety of the steppes.
References
- Frank Friedeberg Seeley, Russia and the Slave Trade The Slavonic and East European Review, 23(62), 1945, 126-136.
- Alessandro Stanziani, Bondage – Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries
- Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire: 1552–1917
- Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier – The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800
- Jukka Jari Korpela, Slaves from the North-Finns and Karelians in the East European Slave Trade, 900–1600
- Slavery on the Steppes: Finnish children in the slave markets of medieval Crimea, Mike Dash
- Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia.
C'est la vie Priyā 
Such an interesting read. Thanks for educating me!
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Thanks a lot. Pleasure is mine!
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