The Black Sea: A History by Charles s> King (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 529 expanding research on that poet. Ewa Thompson provides a thoughtprovoking study of the post-Soviet 'master narrative of history', where 'in Russia, memories are still grievances calling for action against the Other, ratherthan being signalsto commemorate the eventsof thepast'(p. I63), thus offeringa highly productive theoretical frameworkfor the study of literature and particularlyfilmafter I99I. A minor irritant remains on the level of copy-editing. There is a high incidence of typosand misprintsthathave been allowed to creep throughinto the publishedtexts, aswell as errorsof punctuation.That quibbleaside, a final word should be reserved for the piece by Professor McMillin himself, on musical renditions of Gogol' by Shostakovichand Shnittke,distinguishedby itscharacteristicwit and elegance, aswell asitssheererudition.The Festschrift is a most fittingtributeto a man of many talents. Department ofEuropean Studies andModem Languages DAVID GILLESPIE University ofBath King, Charles. TheBlackSea:A Histogy. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York,2004. xxi + 276 pp. Maps. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography and furtherreading.Index. C20.00. THIS is a fine book. The quotation from Orlando Figes on thejacket is both testimony to this and yet, it is more than merely a 'masterfulaccount of the ever-changingtradebetween thepeoples andpowersof thiscrucialwaterway'. 7heBlackSeagoes beyond trade and embraces the various realms of culture, politics, society, war, geography and the environment, as well as, of course, creating an integrated history of a region that is both a region and not a region, as such. Charles King perhaps indicates as much at the end of the book, when he looksat the experience of the BlackSea Economic Community, created in the I99os, following an initiative by the Turkish government. Although that body had developed by the startof the twenty-firstcentury to have a permanent organization and parliamentaryassociation, its only real achievement otherwise concerned shared study, concern and approaches to the environmentalissuesthat had emerged to killthe sea in the second half of the twentieth century. That achievement, in itself,was significant.But it was limited. And with other developments such as the building of oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea more likelythan not, in King'sjudgement, to have only a limited economic orpoliticalimpact,given thatmost of the BlackSea'sports will be bypassed, then the prospectsfor real development, he argues,are also limited. Outward migration from the littoral might be expected, though the sea and its multiculturaland multiethnictraditionswill live on, he suggests(as they do already)wherevermigrationleads the peoples of the eleven countries along its coastline. And, of course, there will always be some who remain to live and workon and by the sea. This conclusion is a little disappointing, even if its sombre character fits with much of the immediate evidence at the end of this consummate history. It is also maybe a little misplaced, if one considersnot so much the trajectory of the past as that of the future.The historian'ssound conclusion might have 530 SEER, 83, 3, 2005 benefited from the glance of the securitypolicy analyst.In that way, the very importance of undertakingthisfirstreal historicalsurveyof the BlackSea as a regionwouldhavebeen markedandthemeritinthebookreallydemonstrated. In a sense, King's book is potentially far more significantthan his conclusion allows it to be, for the factors that lead him to conclude that something like the end of a historicalphase might have arrivedare precisely those, it seems to me, that create the imperatives for further development and a regional future.These aretheprocessesofNATO andEU partnershipandenlargement that began in the I99os. These have an inherent logic towards continuing enlargement. But the scope of that enlargement is likely to engenderjust the kind of regional cooperation and identity within a Europe of regions, partnershipsand alliances that Charles King sees the BSEC as having failed to accomplishbecause of the greaterprizes and real issuesattachedtojoining NATO and the EU. That is why thisbook is not only so good, but important. It gives a past to something that has a future, where the shared elements of that past have not previously been perceived, in general. This is the case whether these elements are the bonds of trade and migration, navigationand preservation of eco-culture, or the north-south security stand-off across the sea between one version or another of Russia and Turkey that was present over hundredsof years. To have concentrated,thusfar,on the conclusionin...