3 - A middle ground between autonomy and dependence: the raiding economy of the Don steppe frontier to 1700

Summary

While the Don steppe frontier was no peaceable kingdom it was also no scene of incessant holy war. The raiding economy was calibrated towards equilibrium. Neither the Cossacks nor their nomadic Tatar adversaries were capable of eliminating each other from the face of the earth. They lived in cycles of aggressive and amicable symbiosis, exchanging goods and people under conditions of both war and peace. Although imperial affiliations could be important for local communities, especially for continued access to metropolitan markets and resources, on the ground allegiances and loyalties were ambiguous. The Cossacks were actors in an imperial drama, but government objectives often took second stage to local patterns of raiding, trading, and peacemaking.

The Don region was a middle ground in which the Slavic world receded into the Turkic world. “The middle ground,” Richard White has argued, “is the place in between: in between cultures, peoples, and in between empires.” The Don Cossacks constantly capitalized on their position as operators on the middle ground and derived their subsistence from the shifting boundaries between the Islamic and Christian worlds. While religious differences and imperial objectives legitimated raiding, local peacemaking defied religious dichotomies and forged patterns of common interest. Ransoming activities blurred boundaries between north and south: cross-cultural cooperation could move captive people across political jurisdictions from Moscow to the Caucasus. The Cossacks forged diplomatic deals and relationships of trust with both their Russian imperial patrons and their nomadic adversaries.