“After being so long Prisoners, they will not return to Slavery in Russia”: An Aegean Network of Violence between Empires and Identities

Abstract

This article tells the story of one group of Greek-speaking privateers caught between the Ottoman and Russian empires during a protracted war between those two states in the late eighteenth century (1787-1792). The work uses the incident to explore the complex question of “who was an Ottoman,” and the vital effects the answer could have on the lives and livelihoods of those who negotiated their way between these two Black Sea imperial rivals. Drawing on a convenient overlap in Ot- toman, Russian, and British archival sources, the article approaches this story from multiple viewpoints, first explaining the context of Aegean maritime violence from which this particular group of corsairs emerged. It then discusses their enlistment in Russian service, their capture by Ottoman forces, and the subsequent attempts of rank-and-file sailors to maneuver between the demands of their Russian employers and their Ottoman captors and rulers, all the while trying to assert their own interests. As captives and governments alike wrestled with the complex question of defining legal identity and imperial loyalty, the story became most interesting when it came time to release the captives at the close of the war in 1792.