News of war and peace traveled much slower 250 years ago, but some of the places, players, and points of contention mentioned in Annapolis newspaper articles of 1772 are part of the long backstory to today’s bloodshed in Ukraine. The May 21 Maryland Gazette published a March 14 story from London regarding the “moral certainty of an immediate peace between the Russians and the Porte.” The Sublime Porte was the government of the Ottoman Empire, which was centered in Turkey and controlled, either directly or indirectly, vast territories in southeastern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. The conflict which was reportedly coming to an end is now known as the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74, a designation which should tell us that the optimism for peace in 1772 was a little premature.
The article reported that negotiations had “opened at Jassy [today’s Iaşi, Romania], the capital of Moldavia [a region that encompassed parts of modern Romania, Moldava, and Ukraine]; and it is thought that all the demands of the Czarina [Russia’s Catherine the Great] will be complied with; the chief of which is, the absolute and entire cession of the Crimea [most recently occupied and annexed by Russia in 2014, although a United Nations resolution still recognizes it as part of Ukraine], and all the provinces to the East of the Danube [essentially all of eastern Europe].”
The May 28 Gazette printed slightly older articles from February 22 and March 4, both reporting that a peace agreement between Russia and the Ottoman Empire was in the works. The first story was out of Warsaw, which makes sense given the fact that the Ottoman Turks’ insistence that Russia stay out of Poland’s internal political affairs had triggered the war in the first place. The second article noted that the preliminary terms of peace “are entirely to the satisfaction of the Empress of Russia, and were signed through the mediation of the court of Vienna.” Then as now, concerns about a rival’s expanding sphere of influence and attempts to reestablish a peaceful balance of power between combative neighbors often motivated actors in international affairs.
According to a Britannica.com entry on the many Russo-Turkish Wars of the 17th through the 19th centuries, the 1774 treaty that finally ended this particular chapter of conflict recognized Russia’s military gains at the Ottoman Empire’s expense. Russia advanced its frontier from the Dnieper to the Southern Buh River in what is now Ukraine and claimed the right and the territorial means to maintain a naval fleet on the Black Sea. Crimea was made independent of Turkish rule, but Catherine the Great would go on to annex it in 1783, setting the stage for another Russo-Turkish war to begin in 1787.
Image caption: Stefano Torelli’s 1772 painting “Allegory of Catherine’s Victory over the Turks” downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.
Now, more than two centuries later, Russia’s latest attempts to seize and solidify control of the Crimean peninsula, port cities on the Black Sea, and central Ukrainian territory are once again capturing the attention of Annapolitans keeping up on the latest news from eastern Europe. The Bible and The Byrds wisely tell us that there is a time for war and a time for peace. Clearly those opposing realities have been experienced in that part of the world many times over through the past several centuries.
You can read the May 21 and 28, 1772 issues of the Maryland Gazette beginning here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/sc4872/001282/html/m1282-0114.html
Glenn E. Campbell
HA Senior Historian
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