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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Parvin DARABADI
D.Sc. (Hist.), professor at Baku State University
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
THE CAUCASUS AND THE CASPIAN IN THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE 18TH-EARLY 19TH CENTURIES
Abstract
The author offers an overview of the acute geopolitical rivalry that went on in the Caucasian-Caspian Region for over a hundred years starting with the early dec-
ades of the 18th century until, in the first quarter of the 19th century, the Russian Empire finally gained military-political hegemony over the Central Eurasian geostrategic core.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
In the early 18th century the Caspian became an arena of acute geopolitical rivalry that involved, besides Turkey and Iran, two Middle Eastern powers, Russia and Britain. Russia, along with Europe, displayed much more geopolitical interest in the Caspian Sea (hugged by caravan routes that connected southern, western, and northern Asia with Europe) after it lost the Azov, its outlet to the Black Sea, to Turkey as a result of Peter the Great’s failed Prut March of 1711.
Early in the 18th century, however, having established its protectorate over Kabarda and Ossetia, Russia gradually spread its influence from the central part of the Northern Caucasus to the region’s periphery—the Black Sea and the Caspian coast.
At that time Russia was especially interested in the western Caspian coast, the so-called Smaller Silk Road, one of the major trade routes of the time that connected the East and the West.1
Petrine Russia’s Caspian Breakthrough: Its Rush to the Warm Seas
The decline of Safavid Iran, which became obvious to everyone in the early 18th century, added tension to the military-political situation in the Caspian warmed up by Russia’s and Turkey’s desire to gain a foothold in the region. Being cut off from the Black Sea, Russia, under Peter the Great, was determined to establish its complete control over the Caspian and adjacent areas to exclude Turkey and the Mediterranean from European-Asian trade in favor of the Baltic-Volga-Caspian route. Rus-
1 See: L.G. Ivashov, Rossia ili Moskovia? Geopoliticheskie izmerenia natsional’noy bezopasnosty Rossii, EKSM Algoritm, Moscow, 2002, pp. 102-103.
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sia’s acquisitions on the Caspian were seen as a geopolitical extension of the Russian emperor’s Baltic victories. “First of all, we should gain a foothold in the Caspian,” said Peter the Great’s decree of 16 February, 1723, “otherwise we shall achieve nothing at all.”2 It is not surprising that the British were also convinced that the future of Russia’s Baltic designs depended on its success in the Caspian.3 Peter the Great (1689-1725) minced no words about Russia’s geopolitical aims in his instructions to Russian resident in Istanbul Nepliuev, dated 9 April, 1723, in which he ordered the diplomat to warn the Porte that Russia was determined to keep all powers, Turkey included, away from the Caspian shores.4 “Our interests do not allow any other power whatsoever to strengthen its position in the Caspian.”5
Being fully aware of the strategic value of the canals between the Black and Caspian seas, Peter the Great contemplated several alternatives.
After capturing the Azov back in 1696, the emperor planned to build a Volga-Don canal to link the Black Sea with the Caspian. He even launched a project in 1697 only to discontinue it in 1701 in order to concentrate on building his new capital St. Petersburg and was also further hindered by the onset of the Northern War. In the early 1720s he entertained the idea of connecting the seas by joining the Kura and Rioni rivers.6 When Russia reached the Baltic shores, Peter the Great launched another project designed to link the Baltic and the Caspian, which was also left suspended.7
The Persian March of the Russian emperor was carefully prepared. Between 1715 and 1718 Artemy Volynskiy (a Russian statesman and diplomat) studied the Eastern Caucasus from the military-political and economic points of view to report that “a small corps can join a large part to Russia without much trouble.”8 Volynskiy was entrusted with a more important mission: he had to gather intelligence about Iran’s military and economic potential and to reconnoiter the future theatre of war. Peter the Great’s personal secret instructions to Artemy Volynskiy said in part: “Identify all places, ports, towns, and other settlements and find out which of the large rivers run into the Caspian and where; which of them can be used to travel inland, whether there is a river that goes from India and runs into this sea, and whether the shah keeps men-of-war or merchant fleet on the sea, as well as what sort of fortresses he has there. This should be carefully investigated and reported.”9 The reconnaissance trip that took place in 1720 under two Russian officers K. Verden and F. Soymonov produced the first ever map of the Caspian, a worldwide sensation and upturned the old ideas about the Caspian.10
At this time the Christian factor began to play an important role in Russia’s geopolitical games in the Caucasus. Peter the Great tapped the potential of his ally, Georgian Czar Vakhtang VI, to the full, but the “Armenian card” was even more important. Peter the Great was convinced that the Armenians, whose leaders had been nurturing the idea of a Greater Armenia11 for some time, could play the main role in his designs to increase the region’s Christian population and oust the Muslims. The Russian emperor, however, never wanted complete disintegration of the Iranian state, his natural ally in the region against the Ottoman Empire.
2 V.P. Lystsov, Persidskiy pokhodPetra I. 1722-1723, Moscow, 1951, p. 213.
3 See: Morskoy sbornik, No. 12, 1918, p. 38.
4 See: S.M. Soloviev, “Petr I na Kaspiyskom more,” in: Chteniia i rasskazy po istorii Rossii, Moscow, 1989, pp. 730-731; N.N. Molchanov, Diplomatia Petra I, Moscow, 1990, p. 418.
5 S.M. Soloviev, op. cit., p. 730.
6 See: Morskoy sbornik, No. 11, 1859, pp. 171, 173.
7 See: S.M. Soloviev, op. cit., p. 696.
8 Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza s drevneyshikh vremen do kontsa XVIII veka, Part 2, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1988, pp. 409-410.
9 F.M. Aliev, Missia poslannika Russkogo gosudarstva A.P. Volynskogo v Azerbaidzhane, Elm, Baku, 1979, p. 19.
10 See: L.A. Goldenburg, F.I. Soymonov, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 34.
11 See: S.M. Soloviev, op. cit., p. 717; A.N. Abbasbeyli, Politika Rossii na Kavkaze na poroge XXI veka, Baku, 1999, pp. 4-6.
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Russia’s active involvement in the Caspian in the 1720s was mainly the product of the weakened central government in Iran and especially the Afghan invasion of this country. By 1722 the Afghans had captured all the central Iranian cities along with the Iranian capital, Isfahan.
Peter the Great skillfully used the favorable military-political situation to move ahead of the Ottoman Empire, his main rival in the region: during two short campaigns of 1722-1723 he relied on the fairly strong navy he had created in the Caspian to capture the western and southern Caspian coasts with Derbent, Baku, and Rasht, important military-strategic points. He attached special importance to Baku, which made him “the master of the Caspian,” as he said to foreign ambassa-
dors.12
Under the Russian-Ottoman agreement on the division of the Caucasus into spheres of influence of 12 July, 1724, Russia acquired the Caspian provinces of Daghestan and Shirvan, while Turkey received the rest of them and Georgia. Turkish protectorate over Shirvan was accepted on condition that Turkey would not station its troops on Shirvan’s territory.13 The Istanbul agreement under which Russia acquired the rights to the Caspian coast left practically the rest of the Caucasus under Turkish domination. The shah of Persia, in turn, refused to ratify the Petersburg Treaty of 12 September, 1723 under which Russia confirmed its annexation of the Caucasian Caspian shores.
On the whole, Peter the Great’s attempts to gain a foothold in the Caspian testified to the fact that the Russian emperor intended to march on India. This can be described as the “Indian syndrome” to which many powers, and the Russian emperor, fell victim. It was Peter the Great who changed Russia’s foreign policy forever. It moved away from dealing with domestic priorities to challenging geopolitical goals that could be described as imperial. This was obvious in the north (the Baltic) and in the south (in the Black, Azov, and Caspian seas, and in the Caucasus). It was under Peter the Great that Russia switched to its imperial policy of the 18th-19th centuries, when its geopolitical stereotypes in the new (southern) direction became obvious.14 It is not surprising that for three centuries now the interest in (and controversy over) the notorious “Testament of Peter I” remains as burning as ever. The document outlined one of Russia’s geopolitical tasks: “The borders of the Russian State should run in the north across the Baltic Sea and in the south across the warm seas.” The Testament instructed the future rulers of Russia to capture the Caucasus and reduce Iran to the status of Russia’s vassal, after which Russia “should move toward India.”15 To achieve this Russia was first to capture Constantinople, “the key to the riches of Europe and Asia,” and “move as far as possible across the deserts of Khiva and Bukhara to come closer to the final aim.”16 This demanded, first and foremost, control over the Caucasus and the Black Sea, Azov, and the Caspian basins.
Anglo-Russian Military-Political Rivalry in the Caspian: Act I
By the early 1730s the situation in the southern Caspian had radically changed: in 1730, the splendid military victories of Nadir Shah Afshar (Shah of Iran since 1736) drove the Afghans away from Iran; late in 1732 he defeated the Turks in several battles and laid siege to Baghdad. Under the
p. 72.
: See: T.T. Mustafazade, Azerbadzhan i russko-turetskie otnoshenia v pervoy treti XVIII v., Elm, Baku, 1993,
13 See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza..., p. 415.
14 See: E.V. Anisimov, “Petr I: rozhdenie imperii,” Voprosy istorii, No. 7, 1989, p. 20.
15
16 Ibid., pp. 63-64
Quoted from: Vozrozhdenie—XXI vek, No. 10/32, 2000, p. 64.
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Baghdad Treaty of February 1733 Turkey returned to Iran practically everything it had captured earlier, including the South Caucasian lands.
Meanwhile Russia, which was readying itself for another war with the Ottoman Empire over access to the Black Sea, was seeking an alliance with Iran in the hope of using it in the coming war. After the death of Peter the Great England, France, and Sweden joined forces in an anti-Russian coalition; to fortify its western frontiers Russia cut back its considerable (and fairly expensive) armed contingent on the Caspian and played down its involvement in the region. British Ambassador in Vienna St. Saphorin reported to State Secretary Stanhope back in September 1719 that Turkey was the “main base of anti-Russian operations” in the Middle East and the Caucasus.17
This meant that in the 1730s Russia could hardly have fought “on three fronts” -the Western, Black Sea, and Caspian—which made it much more pliable at the talks with Iran (which had gained much more military-political weight) about the Caspian region. Under the Rasht (21 January, 1732) and Ganja (10 March, 1735) treaties Russia had to evacuate the Caspian areas it gained under Peter the Great, including Baku and Derbent. Iran, in turn, pledged to never transfer them to any third power, remain Russia’s ally perpetually, and never enter into a separate agreement with Turkey. Under the same treaties Russian merchants acquired considerable privileges; they were exempt from dues when transporting their commodities to India and other countries across Iranian territory.18
The Ottoman Empire, in turn, very much concerned with Russia and Iran drawing closer, hastened to realize its long-cherished plan of elbowing the Iranians out of the Caucasus, to take the Main Caucasian Range into huge pincers from the west and the east and to close the encirclement in Kabarda. It was the invasion of the Crimean troops on Kabarda in 1735 that started another Russo-Turkish war that went on until 1739. Under the threat of a military alliance between Turkey and Sweden Russia had to sign the Belgrade Peace Treaty, under which it remained isolated from the Black Sea while Kabarda received the status of a neutral barrier between Turkey and Russia.19 The highly impressive military victories of Nadir Shah allowed him to march on Afghanistan and India in 1738-1739 and on Sind, Bukhara, and Kwarazm in 1739-1741 to turn them into Iranian vassals. His military exploits convinced him that his country needed a navy in the Persian Gulf and on the Caspian. According to historical sources, he wanted to spread his domination across the entire region and even capture Astrakhan.20 Indeed, Iranian control over the southern and large parts of the western and eastern Caspian coasts suggested that Nadir Shah could accomplish even more ambitious designs. All he needed was a navy at least as strong as Russia’s Caspian flotilla; in 1743, therefore, he invited a group of British naval officers under Captain John Elton, an agent of the British trading Russian Company.
“While offering the shah my services in building sea-going ships, organizing a navy in the Caspian, and training Persian sailors I promised to build ships suitable for moving cavalry by sea,” wrote Elton.21 Significantly, he invited the British government to set up a British navy on the Caspian.22 It should be said that in the absence of trained naval officers among the Persians the British in fact could have controlled the Iranian Navy.
In the 1730s and 1740s the British were demonstrating much more activity in the region than before. In an effort to use Central Asia to open trade routes to the East they became convinced, on the
17 O.P. Markova, Rossia, Zakavkazie i mezhdunarodnye otnoshenia v XVIII veke, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 18.
18 See: Istoria Azerbaidzhana (s drevneyshikh vremen do XX veka), Elm, Baku, 1995, pp. 254, 256; V.N. Leviatov, Ocherki po istorii Azerbaidzhana v XVIII veke, Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijanian S.S.R., Baku, 1948, pp. 99-100.
19 See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza..., p. 433.
20 See: M.S. Ivanov, Ocherk istorii Irana, State Publishing House of Political Literature, Moscow, 1952, p. 100.
21 A. Abdurakhmanov, Azerbaidzhan vo vzaimootnosheniiakh Rossii, Turtsii i Irana v pervoy polovine XVIII veka, Publishing House of the Azerbaijanian Academy of Sciences, Baku, 1964, p. 78.
22 See: Ibid., p. 77.
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strength of information supplied by the reconnaissance expeditions of Elton, Thompson, and Hogg, that the never-ending strife and inroads of nomads made safe trade with the Central Asian towns impossible.23 The western Caspian coast, meanwhile, could be used to move deeper into Asia, expand trade contacts, and contain Russia in the Caucasus. The British used the Russian Company to monopolize trade along the shortest and safest stretch of the Volga-Caspian route to reach the eastern markets. Having restored diplomatic relations with Russia, which were cut short by the Northern War, England, under the Anglo-Russian Trade Treaty of 2 December, 1734, gained permission for its merchants to use Russian territory to trade with the East. In the geopolitical context this was an attempt to set up a single security system for the British colonies that stretched from the Caucasus in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south, and from the Black Sea in the west and to the Indian borders in the east. In the Caspian England placed its stakes on the fairly sharp Russo-Iranian contradictions caused, in particular, by Nadir Shah’s inroads into Daghestan and his intention to move further north, something that could not but arouse Russia’s concern.
Russia’s Empress Elizaveta Petrovna (1741-1761) took these factors into account when, on 23 November, 1746, she annulled the article of the trade treaty of1734 that allowed British merchants to trade with Iran via Russian territory. This was done to prevent England’s stronger trade and economic position in the Caspian, decrease the scope of Iranian-British shipbuilding, and diminish the threat to Russia’s trade with the East. The turmoil of the power struggle in Iran that followed the murder of Nadir Shah on 19 June, 1747 allowed the Russian Caspian Navy to destroy, bit by bit, during several years, all warships built under John Elton’s supervision.24 Having removed England, its main rival in the Caspian region, Russia could move on to fortify its own position. The Ottoman Empire, another regional geopolitical actor, being drawn, throughout the 18th century, into wars with Russia in the Black Sea and the Balkans, proved unable to support its claims in the Caucasus.
In the 1750s-1780s, when Iran was relatively weaker than before and when the Georgian Kartli-Kakhetia Kingdom and Azeri khanates existed in the Caucasus, Russia tied down by its long war with Turkey for the Crimea never lost sight of the Caspian.
While before 1783 the Crimean question was the linchpin of the Black Sea problem, the Caucasus moved to the fore once Russia joined the Crimea. Russia attached special importance to the area on the right bank of the Kuban River to confirm its position in the Northern Caucasus and defend the Crimea. The Ottoman Empire, in turn, looked at the left bank of the Kuban as a springboard for recapturing the Crimea and penetrating the Northern Caucasus.
The Caucasus in the Russia-Turkey-Iran Geopolitical Triangle
In the latter half of the 18th century Russia’s strategy in the Caucasus boiled down to trimming the influence of all the local rulers to prevent any of them—either Russia’s Christian ally Czar Irakly II (1762-1798) of Kartli-Kakhetia or Fatali Khan, the Muslim ruler of Guba (1758-1798)—from gaining the upper hand in the region. In the spring of 1784, when Fatali Khan marched on Southern Azerbaijan and captured Ardabil and Meshkin, Empress Catherine the Great (1762-1796) used Prince Grigory Potemkin to express her displeasure with the ally which forced him to turn back.25
23 See: L.I. Iunusova, Anglo-russkoe sopernichestvo v basseyne Kaspiiskogo moria i Azerbaidzhan vo vtoroy chetverti XVIII veka, Synopsis of Candidate Thesis, Baku, 19S2, pp. І3-І4.
1 See: N.A. Aliev, Naval History of Azerbajan, Elm, Baku, 2002, pp. 62-63 (in Azeri).
See: Istoria Baku, 1958, p. 347.
24
25 See: Istoria Azerbaidzhana v trekh tomakh, Vol. І, Publishing House of the Azerbaijanian Academy of Sciences,
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It should be said that on the whole at that time the religious factor in Russia’s policy was unimportant: Russia mostly concentrated on the ethnopolitical factor, a much more complicated and painful one: it was planned to set up, some time in the future, an “Armenian state” on the territory of the Irevan, Nakhchyvan, and Karabakh khanates. For obvious reasons neither the Azeri khans nor Irakly II, who nurtured Great Georgia plans, were overjoyed with Russia’s designs.26
Between the Kuchuk-Kainarji Treaty of 1774 and the end of yet another Russo-Turkish war of 1787-1791 the Southern Caucasus remained the scene of a positional war among Russia, Turkey, and Iran, the “geopolitical triangle,” waged in the form of alliances and counter-alliances with the local potentates of Azerbaijan and Georgia, which played a secondary role on the geopolitical stage. On the eve and during the 1787-1791 war Russia limited its South Caucasian policy to the strategic task of preventing a second, along with the European, theatre of war there. At that time, it obviously opted for consecutive rather than parallel involvement in the Caucasus in an effort to tip the balance in its favor; it treaded cautiously and exploited the fairly involved internal regional contradictions. At the same time Russia was engaged in a fairly subtle diplomatic game designed to preserve the precarious regional balance in order to be free to address the Crimean problem.
In the latter half of the 18th century Russia finally tipped the balance in its favor mainly through diplomatic efforts: military involvement remained minimal yet its obvious military might demonstrated in the Russian-Turkish wars and its Caspian navy convinced its militarily and economically weaker rivals.
Throughout the 18th century, when the geopolitical rivalry of the Great Powers in the Near and Middle East reached its height, Russia’s position on the Black, Azov, and Caspian seas, free access to the open seas and the security of the empire’s southern frontiers depended on its position in the Crimea and the Caucasus.
The latter acquired special strategic and political weight after the Kuchuk-Kainarji Peace of 1774. Russia’s tighter control over the region not merely fortified its position in the three seas but also boosted its influence in Central Eurasia with far-reaching geopolitical results. In the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire, Russia’s main military-political rival of the past, could no longer sustain its regional claim. Nevertheless, unwilling to retreat, the Sublime Porte continued to expand over the vast Black Sea-Caucasian-Caspian expanse.
When at daggers drawn with Iran the Ottoman Empire tried to use the separatist sentiments of the Azeri khans and contradictions between Iran and Eastern Georgia against its rival. It continued its attacks on Russia from the south and tried to push into the Caucasus from the Northwestern Caucasus, its Azov-Black Sea coast to be more exact. The Crimean Khanate, Turkey’s vassal, had an important military-political role to play.
Russia, which remained occupied by the European, Danube and Black Sea developments, nurtured no plans to conquer the Caucasus at that period. It was mainly seeking alliances with the Caucasian rulers, the Georgian czars and Azeri khans in particular. During the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-1774 Russia needed Georgia only as an ally able to detract some of the Turkish troops from the European to the Asian theatre. The fact that Georgia was involved in the Kuchuk-Kainarji Peace Treaty meant that Russia positioned itself as the patron of Christian Georgia (with the far-reaching designs ofjoining it to the empire some time in the future). It was for the first time in the history of international relations that a special article (Art 23) related to Georgia was entered into the treaty concluded without the Georgian rulers’ involvement.27 Czar of Kartli-Kakhetia Irakly II never relied on force alone to strengthen his position: he betrayed Machiavellian skills in setting his Muslim neighbors against one another. Russia had another Georgian ruler, Czar Solomon I of Imeretia, on its side.
26 See: V.V. Degoev, Bol’shaia igra na Kavkaze: istoria i sovremennost’, Russkaia panorama, Moscow, 2001, pp. 24, 30.
27 See: O.P. Markova, op. cit., p. 144.
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At first, Russia’s Caucasian policies were part of its Crimean endeavors. In 1782-1783 Prince Potemkin, who was resolved to conquer the Crimea, planned to start fighting in the Caucasus in order to distract Turkey’s attention toward Iran. He planned to fight on the Kuban River, the western Caspian coast, to capture Derbent and move further into Iranian territory. The deposed Crimean khan and the local Russian-oriented Christian population (Georgians in particular) were expected to help contain Turkish pressure in the European theatre.
After capturing Derbent and supporting Irakly II, Russia, according to Catherine the Great’s decree of 8 April, 1783, set up a strong barrier in the region. Later, when Turkey accepted the Crimea as part of Russia under the convention of 8 January, 1784, the idea about diverting Iran and Turkey in the Caucasus was abandoned. Russian diplomacy concentrated instead on avoiding another war with Turkey. In the 1780s Russia’s Caucasian policy was spearheaded at securing the new border that should be removed as far as possible from the Turkish borders.28
With this aim in view Russia set about establishing protectorates of all kinds (the unrealized plan of a new state under the old name of Albania set up with the help of Armenians in Caucasian Azerbaijan was one of them). Russia’s protectorate over Eastern Georgia realized with the help of the Georgievsk Treaty of 24 July, 1783 proved to be more realistic because Irakly II hoped to rely on Russia in his attempts to restore Georgia within its historical borders.29 He also hoped to extend his domains by means of Azerbaijan: “I prefer Russia to capture Adirbejan and grant me part of it (the Ganja and Irevan khanates.—P.D.),” he wrote in one of his notes in the spring of 1784.30
Irakly II, who had good contacts in Iraq, Syria and Egypt through the beys of Georgian origin, invited the Russian government to use them for intelligence gathering in case of a war with Turkey.31 Russia could have profited from this. In fact, Russian diplomacy scored a great victory about which Prince Potemkin wrote to Catherine the Great: “You have tied the land which Alexander and Pompey saw from afar to the Russian scepter.”32
This event was of huge military-strategic importance: the East Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakhetia became Russia’s geopolitical foothold from which it could move further on into the Caucasus. Fatali Khan of Guba was also seeking Russia’s support for his plans to unify the Azeri lands.
Meanwhile the Military Georgian Road across the Main Caucasian Range completed in 17831784 and the Vladikavkaz fortress that appeared at the place where the new road entered the ravine could not but cause justified concern in Istanbul. Suleiman Pasha of Akhaltsikhe wrote to Ibrahim Halil Khan of Karabakh that “the cursed Russians have laid a road across the Caucasus... they will move their artillery and troops, move into Persia and Turkey and swallow everything.”33
The Irevan Fortress, the Caucasus’ mightiest fortification, which blocked the road inland, became the military-strategic key to the region, possession of which allowed one of the rivals (Russian and Turkey) to establish control over the military-strategic rectangle (Tiflis-Baku-Lenkoran-Irevan). This explains why the Ottoman Empire and Czar Irakly II, supported by the Russians, were determined to capture the fortress.
To stand up to Russia in the Caucasus Turkey badly needed a united front, which it promptly knocked together. In March 1785 Imam Ushurma (Sheikh Mansur), supported by the Ottoman sultan, hoisted the banner of holy war (jihad) in the Northern Caucasus but he failed to capture the road across the mountain and Kizliar to push the Russian beyond the Caucasian Line.34
28 See: O.P. Markova, op. cit., pp. 160-161.
29 See: Ibid., pp. 173-174.
30 See: Ibidem.
31 See: Ibid., p. 175.
32 Ibid., p. 171.
33 Ibid., p. 201.
34 See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza..., pp. 455-456.
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Meanwhile, aware of another inevitable war with Turkey, Russia had to determine the place and role of the Caucasus in the coming events: it had neither the military force nor the financial means to open another theatre of war in the Southern Caucasus. It was busy inviting the Caucasian potentates under its wing. While the Ottoman Empire supported by Sheikh Mansur, who operated in the Northern Caucasus, tried to raise the entire region against Russia and its ally Georgia, Fatali Khan of Guba intensified his efforts to share Russia’s policy and put an end to the nearly 30-year-long enmity with Irakly II. The Russian military command in the Caucasus represented by Lieutenant-General P. Potemkin believed that even with Russia’s help Fatali Khan would be able not only to defend Baku and Derbent against Aga Muhammad Khan Kajar but also “achieve domination in
Persia.”35
On the whole, in the 1780s Russia managed to rally its Caucasian allies (Georgia and the Guba Khanate) to oppose Turkey. The Turkish, Iranian, and Russian intrigues, however, left the Caucasian rulers unsure of their security. This did not prevent Catherine the Great’s.Russia, which had gained a firm foothold in the Northern Black Sea Area and the Caucasian piedmont region in the 1770s-1780s, from convincing many of the North Caucasian feudal lords, impressed with Russia’s mounting military-political might, to join the empire through oaths and agreements while preserving their domestic order.
At the same time, despite the victory over Turkey in the 1787-1791 war and the capture of Anapa in the Western Caucasus, “the key to the door to even mightier strikes” (as Grigory Potemkin described it in his letter to Catherine the Great of 9 July, 1791),36 Russia was still unable to plunge into the Caucasian developments. Under the Yassy Treaty Russia acquired Kabarda, Balka-ria, Ossetia, and Karachai, however it had to push its Caucasian projects to the back burner in the face of the stormy developments in Europe—the French revolution and the partitions of Poland and their echo. England, worried as always about Russia’s potentially mounting influence in the Near and Middle East, supported Turkey in many ways. It was at that time that Russia’s extended possessions in the Black Sea and the Caucasus stirred up fears in England for the safety of its Eastern colonies.
Turkey tried to capitalize on Iran’s weakness by claiming the entire Caucasus from the Black Sea to the Caspian in an effort to take its revenge for the Crimea. It could not, however, fight Russia on two fronts.
Meanwhile, the military-political storms in Iran that went on unabated throughout the 1780s brought Aga Muhammad Khan Kajar to power; by the early 1790s he established control over the entire territory of Iran. In 1795 his troops burst into the Caucasus and even captured Tbilisi, which aroused an equivalent response from Russia resolved to protect its threatened geopolitical interests. After the 1791 victory in the war with Turkey Russia could afford more active involvement in Cauca-sian-Caspian region. The Russian government demanded that Aga Muhammad Khan stopped claiming “the regions adjacent to the Caspian and their rulers who were vassals of the Russian scepter... the czar of Kartli, shamkhal, usmia, the khans of Derbent, Baku, Talysh, Shusha, and others with possessions in Azerbaijan.” Russia warned the Iranian ruler that all encroachments on them would be regarded as acts hostile to Russia.37
In the spring of 1796 a large expeditionary corps under Lieutenant-General V. Zubov captured Derbent; in the following summer he took Baku, Shemakha, Saliany, Jawad and Ganja. The Russians intended to drive Aga Muhammad Khan out of all their Caspian domains and build fortifications in the southeast of the Caspian, in Astrabad Bay.38
35 O.P. Markova, op. cit., p. 221.
36 See: Ibid., p. 270.
' See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza..., p. 460. See: Kh.M. Ibragimbeyl Publishers, Moscow, 1969, p. 55
37
3S See: Kh.M. Ibragimbeyli, Rossia i Azerbaidzhan v pervoy treti XIX veka (Iz voenno-politicheskoy istorii), Nauka
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Early in November 1796 Paul I (1796-1801), who had just ascended the Russian throne, hastily removed the Russian troops from Northern Azerbaijan in full conformity with his foreign policy ideas, which were very different from those of his mother, Catherine the Great.
The restraint Russia demonstrated in the Caucasus was rooted in the Russia-Turkey allied agreement of 3 January, 1799 that allowed the Russian Navy to pass through the Black Sea Straits to be able to fight republican France.
The shattering European developments caused by the French Revolution of the 18th century kept the Great Powers riveted to Europe, but they never lost sight of what was going in the East. The West European powers, England and France in particular, with far-reaching geopolitical interests of their own in the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian, were closely following everything that Russia was doing there with the firm intention to check its southward progress. The instructions issued in 1793 to the French agents in the Middle East recommended hassling Russia in the Caspian as well.39
On the whole, the 18th century can be described as a time of complicated geostrategic games within the great geopolitical Russia-England-France triangle waged for control over the Near and Middle East. Their ever changing foreign policy vectors, England and Russia, which drew closer only to be separated into the French-Russian and Anglo-French alliances and other diplomatic configurations, added all sorts of hues to the rivalry, the meaning and aims of which never changed—control over the entire Black Sea, Caucasian, and Caspian geopolitical expanse.
Russia’s military and diplomatic expansion, the English balance of power policy designed to undermine the military might of the rivals, and the French diplomatic intrigues served one and the same purpose: to prevent the rivals’ domination in this part of the world. Turkey and Iran, still lingering in the Middle Ages and absolutely inadequate in the military and economic respects, served as the instruments the great powers used to neutralize their rivals. Turkey and Iran, in turn, also intended and even tried to establish their control in the Caucasus.
In the early 19th century, Russia, the geographically closest Caucasian neighbor and the obviously strongest power in the military and economic respects with a real naval force in the Black and Caspian seas moved forward to finally resolve the Caucasian problem. The British-French rivalry in Eastern Mediterranean, exacerbated by the early 19th century, the unflagging Turkish-Iranian competition in the Caucasus, the region’s political, ethnic and confessional patchwork, and the never-ending wars among the local states made Russia’s task easier.
Russia’s Hegemony in the Caucasus and the Caspian Established
Early in the 19th century Russia demonstrated a lot of military-political activity in the Cauca-sian-Caspian region.
Emperor Alexander I (1801-1825) followed in the footsteps of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great to achieve Russia’s complete hegemony in the region. His task was made easier by the never-ending strife among the local khans. The fact that Eastern Georgia became part of the Russian Empire in September 1801 and construction of the Military Georgian Road that began at that same time ensured Russia a key strategic position in the Caucasus and affected its Caucasian policy to the greatest extent. The Georgievsk Treaty of 26 December, 1802 between Russia and the khans of Talysh and
1 See: O.P. Markova, op. cit., p. 282.
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Guba and with some of the rulers of the Northeastern Caucasus was of immense military-political importance.
On the international scene Iran and Turkey became even more eager to move into the region while Russia, Britain, and France became engaged in even more bitter rivalry in the Middle East and especially in the Caspian. In the early 19th century the race for military-strategic control over the Southern Caucasus and the Caspian basin, in which Russia and Britain were primarily involved, became even tougher. By that time Britain had already gained access to the southern Caspian coast from India and the Persian Gulf.
Back in January 1801 Captain McColm, dispatched to Tehran by the East India Company, concluded a political and trade agreement with Iran under which the shah pledged not to allow the troops of European powers (meaning Russia and France in particular) to cross his territory to India. This was one of the key provisions. Iran also allowed Britain to build merchant ships and men-of-war in Lenkoran in the Caspian. The British reciprocated with money and weapons.40
By capturing the western and southwestern Caspian coasts Russia could gain considerable military-strategic advantages in the form of a foothold for southward expansion. By the same token the Russian Empire could keep Britain away from the Caucasus and Central Asia by preventing its move across the sea. No wonder Alexander I paid special attention to the western Caspian coast and Baku, the best of the Caspian ports, while readying for the war with Iran. On 12 September, 1801 the Russian czar instructed Lieutenant-General Knorring, who commanded the troops in the Caucasus, that it would be much easier to supply the Russian troops in the Southern Caucasus “from Astrakhan by sea rather than across the Caucasian mountains, a much harder route,”41 if Baku and the western Caspian coast were occupied. On the whole, Azerbaijan was the centerpiece of Russia’s expansionist plans in the Caucasus: during the first Russo-Iranian war of 1804-1813 Tiflis-Ganja-Sheki-Shirvan-Baku and Tiflis-Nakhchyvan-Tabriz remained the main military-operational sectors; during the second war of 1826-1828 this role belonged to the Tiflis-Ganja-Karabakh-Tabriz sector. In his letter to the commander-in-chief of the Russian troops in the Caucasus General P. Tsitsianov F. Rastopchin described Ganja as an Asian Gibraltar (Jabaluttarik).42 Complete control over the Southern Caucasus depended first and foremost on control over the Astrakhan-Derbent-Baku-Tiflis communication line, occupied since 1802 by the Russians. The Russian Caspian Navy, the only real naval force in the Caspian, played an important role, together with the land forces, in establishing Russia’s control over the western and southern Caspian coasts.43
During the first Russo-Iranian war France and Britain stepped up their diplomatic efforts to cut short Russia’s military victories. In 1804 Napoleon invited Iran to join an anti-Russian alliance; in
1805 he used the services of his envoy plenipotentiary Colonel Romier to inform Iran that he was prepared to fight Russia to return Iran its lost territories if Fatali Shah (1797-1834) withdrew from his alliance with Britain and if united French and Iranian armies invaded India.44 The events in Europe, however, where Napoleon was waging a heavy yet quite successful war against the coalition of Britain, Austria, and Russia made India’s invasion nigh impossible. The Trafalgar catastrophe of 21 October, 1805 cost the French their presence in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
At that time Napoleon and his diplomats demonstrated no mean skills when adjusting to the changing military-political situation. On the one hand, France was prepared to incite Turkey and Iran against Russia by encouraging their joint actions. On the other, in 1807, after the Tilzit Treaty, Napoleon promised Alexander I Moldavia and Walachia; he suggested that Turkey should be partitioned (with the exception of Constantinople). Typically enough, in the post-Tilzit period Napoleon did not
40 See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza..., p. 19.
41 P.G. Butkov, Materialy dlia novoy istorii Kavkaza s 1722 po 1803 gg., Part II, St. Petersburg, 1869, p. 504.
42 See: P.G. Darabadi, Geoistoria Kaspiiskogo regiona i geopolitika sovremennosti, Elm, Baku, 2002, p. 81.
43 See: N.A. Aliev, op. cit., pp. 71-75.
44 See: Kh.M. Ibragimbeyli, op. cit., p. 22.
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abandon his policy of drawing closer to Iran and Turkey. Having set up a continental blockade to isolate Britain from Europe, Napoleon tried to hit Albion in its colonies, India in particular, with the help of Iran. To lure Fatali Shah to his side to achieve domination in Iran, Napoleon wrote to him in 1806: “People in the Orient are brave and talented yet their ignorance of some of the arts (the art of warfare.—P.D.) and their neglect of discipline which makes armies stronger are their two major shortcomings with respect to the war against the North and the West.”45 In 1806 Napoleon dispatched two generals (Romier and Jobair) to try to reach an agreement on the French landing on the Iranian shores to push the Russians out of the Caucasus and cut off their direct access to Turkey. While readying for a war with Russia Napoleon felt it important to organize Iranian and Turkish invasions in the south, in the Black Sea-Caucasian-Caspian region. General Sebastiani whom Napoleon sent to Turkey in
1806 did a lot to stir up another Russo-Turkish war, this time in the Balkans.
In his letter of 17 January, 1807 Napoleon advised the Iranian shah: “Launch active attacks against the enemy which I have already weakened. First, detach from it Georgia and the provinces (the North Azeri khanates.—P.D.) that belonged to your empire by strengthening the Caspian gates (Derbent.—P.D.) which protected you against it for a long time.” And further: “The three of us (Turkey included.—P.D.) will unite into a perpetual alliance.”46
On 4 May, 1807 the talks were crowned in Finkelstein with a defensive and offensive alliance between France and Iran spearheaded against Russia and Britain under which Napoleon pledged to force Russia to evacuate Georgia while the shah promised to let the French troops approach the Indian borders and attack, via Afghanistan, the possessions of the East India Company.47
The shah was expected to conclude an agreement with Afghanistan to stir up a revolt in India. Napoleon, in turn, promised to recognize the shah’s rights to the Southern Caucasus.48 A special military mission of 70 officers under Napoleon’s aide-de-camp Brigadier General Gardan was sent to Iran as a follow-up to the agreement.
The general’s son Alfred Gardan wrote: “This was no longer Persia of the past; these were no longer its powerful monarchs... Its finances were ruined, its domestic trade was non-existent; its external trade was negligible. Persia no longer conquered others; it itself was conquered.”49 No wonder, according to the same source, that “several thousand Russians were enough to occupy its territory within very short time and threaten the heart of the Kajar Empire.”50 Military statistics of the first Russo-Iranian war fully confirm this: the Iranian army of over 70 thousand sarbazes was defeated by a Russian army of no more that 12 thousand officers and soldiers. The attempts of the French and later British military to reorganize the Iranian army according to European standards and supply it with weapons and ammunition failed. The development level of all the Oriental countries, Iran included, which remained feudal states, was far below the demands of the contemporary art of warfare. They were trailing far behind the West (and even semi-feudal Russia), which had accomplished an impressive economic and scientific-technical breakthrough. Iran was doomed to lose these wars.
The Tilzit Peace Treaty signed in the summer of 1807 radically changed the international situation in Europe and the Middle East. All of a sudden, Napoleon became an ally of Russia while Turkey and Iran moved to the side of Britain, which found itself isolated by the continental blockade.
The next Russo-Turkish war of 1806-1812 brought Russia more victories in the Caucasus: in 1809 it captured the port of Poti on the Black Sea coast; and in 1811 the Akhalkalaki fortress in the Southwestern Caucasus. Later, under the Bucharest Peace Treaty of 28 May, 1812 Russia returned
45 Kh.M. Ibragimbeyli, op. cit., p. S5.
46 Ibid., p. S6.
4l See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza..., p. 25.
4S See: Kh.M. Ibragimbeyli, op. cit., p. S6.
49 I
50 Ibid., p.
1 Ibid., p. Sl.
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Poti, Akhalkalaki, and Anapa to Turkey and acquired the right to a strategically important stretch of the Black Sea eastern coast and the Rioni River. It also preserved Georgia, Imeretia, Mingrelia, Guria, and Abkhazia. In the same year Daghestan finally became part of Russia.51
The British were as active as the French in this part of the world. Back in 1800 British envoy J. Malcolm signed an anti-Russian agreement with the shah of Iran. The next year he promised Fatali Shah to invite British naval experts to help Iran build its navy in the Caspian. In 1808 Britain drove Napoleon’s representatives out of Iran; in 1809 it signed an agreement under which it pledged to supply Iran with weapons and ammunition, invite military experts, and pay an annual subsidy of up to 200 thousand tumans to Iran while the latter was fighting Russia.52 In 1810 G. Malcolm reappeared in Tehran with a group of military instructors and cannons for the Iranian army.53
British aid did not help: Iran was defeated and had to sign the Gulistan Treaty of 12 October, 1813, under which Iran abandoned its claims to the Ganja, Karabakh, Sheki, Shirvan, Guba, Baku, and Talysh khanates, as well as Eastern Georgia and Daghestan, in favor of Russia. Art 5 of the Treaty was of special importance: it established Russia’s exclusive right to have a navy in the Caspian. It was stressed that “since before the war and during peacetime and at all times Russia’s military banner alone was flying over the Caspian now, with all respect to it, Russia is given the old right to keep its navy in the Caspian. No other Power has to the right to hoist its military flag in the
region.”54
Between the two Russo-Iranian wars Iran became a scene of bitter diplomatic clashes between Russia and Britain. The latter displayed no mean skill in tapping the anti-Russian sentiments in Iran, which lost the 1804-1813 war and was readying itself for a revanche. The Tehran Alliance Britain and Iran signed on 25 November, 1814 was the best evidence of Britain’s stronger influence in Iran.
Under Art 1 Iran pledged, as best as it could, to prevent “any of the European powers” from marching on India “via Kwarazm, Tatarystan, Bukhara, Samarkand, or along any other route” and send troops paid for by His Majesty’s government to support Britain in the event it went to war with Afghanistan. Britain, in turn, confirmed its previous obligation to extend financial and military aid to Iran. Britain’s pledge to achieve a revision of the Gulistan Treaty (which meant that Georgia and Northern Azerbaijan Iran had lost in the war of 1804-1813 should be returned to the Kajars) was even more important.55 Iran, however, suffered a defeat in the second war with Russia in 1826-1828. Under the Turkmanchay Treaty of 10 February, 1828 Russia acquired the Nakhchyvan and Irevan khanates; Iran paid a contribution of 20 million silver rubles. The treaty confirmed Russia’s exclusive right to have navy in the Caspian established by the Gulistan Treaty. This buried Britain’s hopes of having a navy in the Caspian in the more or less near future. Russia, on the other hand, achieved one of its geopolitical priorities: unrivalled domination over the Caucasus and all the western coast of the world’s largest closed water body. Alexander I put Russia’s geopolitical task in the region in a nutshell: “Stand firmly in the Caucasus.”56
After its victory in the war with Turkey of 1828-1829 Russia recovered Anapa, Poti, and Akhal-tsikhe under the Adrianopol Peace Treaty of 22 August, 1829. Having established its control over the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the Akhaltsikhe area, Russia acquired a key geostrategic foothold from which it could threaten Anatolia and Western Iran, thus moving closer to the Persian Gulf.
The military disasters Iran and the Ottoman Empire suffered in the wars with Russia left them no choice but to accept the fact that their enemy had joined the largest part of the Caucasus to its already vast empire.
51 See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza..., pp. 2S-29.
52 See: Istoria Azerbaidzhana, Vol. 2, p. Іб.
53 See: Ibid., p. І7.
54 Quoted from the text published by Khazar, No. І, І990, p. І37.
55 See: Kh.M. Ibragimbeyli, op. cit., p. І55.
56 Quoted from : L.G. Ivashov, op. cit., p. ІІ7.
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C o n c l u s i o n
After establishing, by the early 1830s, its complete domination over the Caucasus and the Caspian, two areas found at the East-West and North-South geopolitical crossroads, Russian control over the vast adjacent territories stretching from the Caucasian mountains in the west to Central Asian deserts in the east became very real. From that time on Russia threatened the main communication lines that linked Britain to its Indian colonies. On top of this, given favorable geopolitical conditions, Russia could not merely block them but also move its troops toward India across Iran and Afghanistan or Central Asia.
From the military-strategic viewpoint these victories of the first third of the 19th century allowed Russia,
■ first, to use the natural riches of the Caucasus for a long time to come (the oil of Baku, Grozny and Maikop in particular);
■ second, to push the boundaries of the Christian Orthodox world far to the south with far-reaching geopolitical consequences;
■ third, to establish its control over the main communication routes (including one of the Silk Road branches) that crossed the region;
■ fourth, to completely conquer, in the mid-19th century, the Caucasus, and,
■ fifth, to establish a foothold that allowed it to move into Central Asia in the 1860s-1880s, thus making Russia’s threat to Britain’s colonial interests in the Middle East and Central Asia very real indeed.
Kerim SHUKIUROV
D.Sc. (Hist.), associate professor, Chair of the History of Azerbaijan (for the humanities departments), Baku State University
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
THE CAUCASUS IN THE SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: THE TURKMANCHAY TREATY WAS SIGNED 180 YEARS AGO
Abstract
T
his article sheds new light on the history and certain aspects of the treaties signed among the Ottoman, Ira-
nian, and Russian empires from the early 18th century to the 1813 Gulistan Treaty. The author has probed deeply into the
