"The separation of the Crimea from the Russian empire . . . is equivalent to cutting one of her arteries."
Karl Koch, The Crimea and Odessa (1855)
The Russo-Ukrainian war is being fought over what was once called Little Tartary. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the north shore of the Black Sea, from the mouth of the Danube to the Caucasus, was a barren steppe inhabited by nomadic Tartars. These Tartars were organized into hoards that generally acknowledged the supremacy of the Tartars of Crimea, who themselves generally acknowledged the supremacy of the Ottomans in Constantinople. The primacy of the Crimean Tartars was largely owing to a range of low mountains that wring rain from the atmosphere, and to the streams that run down from these mountains to sustain a more settled population. Read more of this post
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