Project Details
Projekt
Slavery and Loyalty: the Russian and Ottoman Empires
Applicant
Professor Dr. Christoph Witzenrath
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
from 2017 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 355907952
What is the relation of slavery and liberation in the contest between the Ottoman and Muscovite Empires for the loyalties auf populations in the vicinity of the Black Sea? Slave raids and trade in the region between the Caucasus and Hungary from 1475 to 1700 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 slaves in order to develop loyal relations between masters, slaves and the state. In the Ottoman Empire, loyalty was often trained already 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 redemption. 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 Project Transottomanica. How did Muscovy make sure that returning captives and kidnapped persons were loyal, despite extended Muslim influences on them? 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 tool box made available by recent studies of loyalty which are based on Max Webers and Georg Simmels sociologies. In this way, archival troves of investigations about redeemed slaves hitherto deemed unworthy of attention will be analysed. Moreover, earlier archival trips of the applicant unearthed extensive slave narratives speaking about the transitions and reasons for leaving the Ottoman Empire. Implicitly, they transport normally unspoken expectations to slave holders, whose slaves had no autonomous voice. 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 Israel from Egyptian slavery. Genetically common motifs in Hesychasm and Sufi mysticism such as Wisdom or common saints and prophets helped to smooth transitions between empires. At the same time, central doctrines such as redemption marked the limits of acceptability, since salvation in the beyond was conditioned to redeeming slaves. To this end cooperation with S. Conermann has been agreed to study discursively the relations between the language of Ottoman mirrors of princes, manumissions and their critique in Muscovite sources. Eventually, Muscovite autocracy appears as an appendix of liberation ideology.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
Cooperation Partner
Professor Dr. Stephan Conermann
