Cossack Ukraine In and Out of Ottoman Orbit, 1648–1681

Abstract

For more than a generation the Ukrainian revolt against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth sparked in 1648 by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and the ensuing wars and social upheavals, to greater or lesser extents drew in most near and distant neighbors - in particular the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, Moldavia, Transylvania, Muscovy, and Sweden. Between the Ukrainian revolt of 1648 and the Treaty of Bahcesaray of 1681, when the Porte effectively abandoned its active northern Black Sea policy, though it still held on to Podolia, a major subplot emerged: the search by Cossack hetmans and Ottoman sultans and viziers and their respective envoys for mutually agreeable terms by which Cossack Ukraine, once a fierce foe of the Turks and Tatars, could become a subject of the Porte. This chapter seeks to provide an interpretation and better understanding of the Ukrainian-Ottoman encounter during this turbulent and pivotal period. Keywords:Bohdan Khmelnytsky; Cossack Ukraine; Muscovy; Ottoman orbit; Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; tatars