Black Sea - History
The Black Sea was called the Euxine and the Pontus Euxinus by the ancients, or Kara Deniz of the Turks, Chernoe More of the Russians, Schwarzes Meer of the Austrians, and Mar Nero of the Levantines. It is said to have received its name from the Turks, who, being accustomed only to the navigation of the Archipelago, where the numerous islands and their convenient ports offered many places of refuge in case of danger, found the traversing of such an open expanse of waters, subject to storms, very perilous, and accordingly they expressed their fears by the epithet “ black.” The Greeks, on the contrary, gave it the name of Euxine, or Hospitable.
Colchos, upon the Black Sea, was believed to be an ocean city, and here Greek fancy located the Palace of the Sun. It was here that the charioteer of the skies gave rest to his coursers during the night, and from whence in the morning he drove them forth again. Colchos, therefore, was Homer's eastern confine of the globe. The Cimmerians, located at the mouth of the Sea of Azof, were described by Homer as dwelling in perpetual darkness and never visited by the sun.
The Argonauts sailed from Thessaly to Colchis under command of Jason, to fetch a golden fleece which was suspended from an oak tree in a grove, guarded day and night by a ferocious dragon. There seems, indeed, no adequate motive but a desire to obtain the precious metals, which were believed to be furnished in abundance by the mines near the Black Sea. Why these mines were symbolized under the appellation of a golden fleece it is not easy to say, and no satisfactory reason has ever been suggested. The most probable is that the gold dust was supposed to be washed down the sides of the Caucasus Mountains by torrents, and caught by fleeces of wool placed among the rocks by the inhabitants.
Although the epoch and object of this expedition has been variously stated, and the accounts of it intermixed with many poetical fables, the reality of the voyage was generally admitted both by ancient and modern writers. Notwithstanding the discrepancy and the numerous fictions that disfigure the story of the Argonauts, their undertaking appears to have been attended with a considerable and a happy effect on the manners and character of the Greeks. From the era of this celebrated adventure, came not only a more daring and more enlarged spirit of enterprise, but a more decisive and rapid march towards civilization and humanity; and a taste for the arts and sciences, which has ever marked the progress of commerce, in all ages of the world.
The merchants of Alexandria, aided by the lights which had now been thrown upon the geography of Asia, did not long content themselves with receiving Indian goods by the channel of Arabia Felix. The only knowledge we possess on this subject is gathered from the Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, by Arrian. This writer appears to have been an Alexandrian merchant who lived about the time of Claudius, and not the historian of Alexander.
Flavius Arrian, a second Xenophon, wrote his Periplus of the Euaine in 131 AD. The emperor Hadrian commissioned his legate to sail round the coasts of the Black Sea in order to ascertain the condition of the Roman fortresses there, as well as all other particulars. Arrian's Periplus is of very great importance, on account of the light it throws on the ancient geography of the shores of the Black Sea. As an authority, Arrian is not uniformly to be trusted. His description of the localities included between Trapezus and Dioscurias, being the result of personal survey, may be implicitly accepted; but when he comes to the Palus-Maeotis, and to the northern coast as far as the Ister, he is generally less exact; and his account of the Chersonesus is altogether worthless, compared with the details supplied by Strabo. The north and north-eastern side of the Euxine were shrouded for Arrian, too, in the gloom of mystery and fable. from distant countries, must have been much more costly than the spirituous liquors of India, and consequently none but the wealthy could afford to drink them.
It appears from Arrian's Periplus of the Erythrian Sea that large quantities of foreign wine were regularly imported into India, and these met a ready sale in the country. The varieties mentioned are wine of Laodicea in Syria; Italian wine, and Arabian wine. These, from the circumstance of their having been brought The Arabs conquered Egypt in AD 632. The loss of this province was a disastrous event for Constantinople, which she nourished with her grains, and enriched with her Commerce. But the Arabs in the same year overturned the empire of the Sassanides. This was in some measure a compensation to Byzantium, for the obstacles which the kings of Persia placed in the way of the intercourse of the East with the Black Sea disappeared at once, and the merchandise of India and the Persian Gulf, ceasing to flow towards Alexandria, was forced into the route of the Caspian and the Pont Euxine. Commerce was like a great river, which may be turned from its course, but can never be arrested.
The destiny of Constantinople was indissolubly connected with her possession of the Black Sea, which opened to her such vast resources, for the countries on the east and south of the Euxine were inhabited by a Christian population, whose intimate intercourse with the Greek Empire increased in proportion as Islamism gained ground. In the middle ages the rich productions of Upper Asia came to Europe by the northern seas, by Venice and Genoa, whose ships went to seek them to the extremity of the Black Sea, to the shores of Syria, and even to Egypt, where the Arabs had attracted them. This flourishing Commerce restored the life to Constantinople, which at one time seemed to have left her forever. In 867 and 1050, the eastern emperors recovered numerous provinces which they had lost.
In the tenth century the Empire of the East declined rapidly. Venice, which for a long time had nominally formed a part of it, declared herself independent, and her powerful marine ruled in the Mediterranean. She transported the armies of the Crusaders, received their gold in exchange, and when the payment was too long delayed, she received as an indemnification some one of the commercial cities which the Christians had taken from the enemy. Venice enriched herself with their spoils. Her ambition soon demanded a wider horizon. She conceived the project of becoming mistress of the Commerce of the Black Sea.
All Asia, from the Black Sea and the Euphrates to India, obeyed the princes of the family of Gengis Khan. The Venetians soon appreciated the importance of establishing friendly relations with the Mogul princes, whose dominions extended to the extreme limits of Asia. By means of the Tartars the East could discharge her riches into the Black Sea. They soon taught the sovereigns of the Crimea to understand the advantages they would themselves gain by this Commerce, and soon the productions of the East arrived in great abundance. Samarkand, which had caused Balkh to be forgotten, and which was destined soon to give way to Bucharia, became the great depot of this Commerce. The merchandise transported by the Caspian, rcascended the Volga, passed into the Don, and after a short distance of land carriage, descended to Tanai, at the mouth of this river on the Sea of Azoff, where the Venetians had established their vast magazines.
The freedom of the Black Sea was at that time loudly claimed. The galleys of Pisa frequented it, and a short time after the re-establishment of the Greek Empire, the Sultan of Cairo asked permission of Michael Paleologue to send Egyptian vessels, or those under Egyptian colors, to buy slaves on the coasts of Circassia, for the recruitment of the Mamalokes; but the Genoese masters of Pera, which they fortified at their own expense, obliged all the vessels which presented themselves at this passage of the Bosphorus to pay a contribution, which produced annually some millions of francs. The Venetian galleys alone were exempt from this tax.
Sultan Mohammed II closed the Black Sea to every Christian power in the year 1475. From this time the western Christians were prohibited from passing out of the Bosphorus, and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries no Christian flag was allowed to navigate the Euxine. All knowledge of its shores was lost, its cities lay beyond the sphere of trade, The countries once frequented by Genoese and Venetian merchants became as much a region of mystery as they had been before Jason made his voyage in search of the golden fleece. But the seamen of Genoa still repeated vague tales of the wealth once gained by navigating its stormy waters, and the merchants cherished traditions of the riches of Caffa and the splendour of Trebizond.
Constantinope, that had been so brilliant while enriched by the Commerce of the Euxine, rather vegetated than lived since she had yielded the monopoly to strangers, and this capital, whose luxury excited so greatly the admiration of Benjamin of Tudele scarcely 250 years before, was fallen low, and the imperial treasury was poor, when John Cantacuzene was crowned. Siberia supplied her with iron, as she had done the Roman merchants twelve or thirteen centuries before, which shows the obstinacy with which a nation will maintain, in spite of wars, of invasions and revolutions, commercial relations from which they have derived so much prosperity.
The Venetians bought in the northern ports of the Black Sea, an enormous quantity of wool, hemp, and flax, which they needed to furnish their numerous manufactures, from which they carried cloths of all sorts to all the ports of the Mediterranean; also for the fabrication of their fine linens which were so much sought after; and their sail-cloths and cordage, of which they made themselves such a prodigious consumption, with their three or four thousand ships dispersed over all the seas of Europe. The southern ports of the Black Sea furnished to Commerce rich carpets and beautiful stuffs of Persia, with skins of the Angora goat, and the camel with hair from which they made formerly at Venice the camlets formerly so much esteemed; wax, medicinal plants, and dye-stuffs; raw silk, but in smaller quantities than from the opposite coast; honey, precious metals, pearls, diamonds, perfumes, and timber for building.
The Turks were determined to have Constantinople at any price; they began by taking, one after another, all the provinces which belonged to this capital, and when Byzantium was entirely isolated—without treasure, without armies—they attacked it openly. It was the combat of Hercules with Anteus, who perished because the ground was wanting to stand upon. To be the more sure of their victim, they took even the sea from Constantinople, by taking possession of the Bosphorus.
Mahomet II gave the final blow to the old Greek empire, which had so long been struggling with death. The year following, 1453, Constantinople became Turk. The Commerce of the Black Sea was about to be entirely ruined by the Turks, who had already so powerfully contributed to its decline. Soon all the Southern shores of the Euxine found themselves under the yoke of the Mussulman. The rich productions of India did not come any more by the way of the Black Sea; but they found entrance into Europe by the way of Egypt, and Venice had the monopoly of this Commerce which was worth sixty or seventy per cent. The fall of Genoa seemed to assure to her for a long time the empire of the Mediterranean, when two unexpected events changed the face of the world. Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, and Vasco de Gama found a new route to India.
After the Treaty of Kainardji (1774), the Black Sea was opened for the first time to any European nation, after having been shut up for 300 years, since the conquest of Constantinople. The Peace of Kainardji initiated the system of territorial and political aggression by which Russia aimed during the eighty following years, (1774-1854) simultaneously to contract the extent of the Turkish Empire, and to destroy the allegiance of its Christian subjects. The Treaty also opened the Black Sea to Russian ships of commerce, and conferred upon Russia the commercial privileges of the most favoured nation. The result of this compact was a very remarkable one. The Russian Government permitted hundreds of Greek shipowners to hoist its own flag, and so changed the footing of Greek merchantmen in every port of the Ottoman Empire.
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