STUDIES IN RUSSIA AND EAST EUROPE formally Studies in Russian and East European History Chairman of the Editorial Board: M. A. Branch, Director, School of Slavonic and East European Studies. This series includes books on general, political, historical, economic, social and cultural themes relating to Russia and East Europe written or edited by members of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the University of London, or by authors working in association with the School. Titles already published are listed below. Further titles are in preparation. Phyllis Auty and Richard Clogg (editors) BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS WARTIME RESISTANCE IN YUGOSLAVIA AND GREECE Elisabeth Barker BRITISH POLICY IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR Roger Bartlett (editor) LAND COMMUNE AND PEASANT COMMUNITY IN RUSSIA: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society Roger Bartlett and Janet M. Hartley (editors) RUSSIA IN THE AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT: Essays for Isabel de Madariaga Richard Clogg (editor) THE MOVEMENT FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE, 1770-1821: A Collection of Documents Olga Crisp STUDIES IN THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY BEFORE 1914 John C. K. Daly RUSSIAN SEAPOWER AND 'THE EASTERN QUESTION', 1827-41 Norman Davies and Antony Polonsky (editors) JEWS IN EASTERN POLAND AND THE USSR, 1939-46 Dennis Deletant and Harry Hanak (editors) HISTORIANS AS NATION-BUILDERS: Central and South-East Europe Richard Freeborn and Jane Grayson (editors) IDEOLOGY IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE Julian Graffy and Geoffrey A. Hosking (editors) CULTURE AND THE MEDIA IN THE USSR TODAY Jane Grayson and Faith Wigzell (editors) NIKOLA Y GOGOL: Text and Context Hans Gunther (editor) THE CULTURE OF THE STALIN PERIOD Harry Hanak (editor) T.G. MASARYK (1850-1937) Volume 3: Statesman and Cultural Force Geoffrey A. Hosking (editor) CHURCH, NATION AND STATE IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE Geoffrey A. Hosking and George F. Cushing (editors) PERSPECTIVES ON LITERATURE AND SOCIETY IN EASTERN AND WESTERN EUROPE D. G. Kirby (editor) FINLAND AND RUSSIA, 1808-1920: Documents Michael Kirkwood (editor) LANGUAGE PLANNING IN THE SOVIET UNION Martin McCauley THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE SOVIET STATE, 1917-1921: Documents (editor) KHRUSHCHEV AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET AGRICULTURE COMMUNIST POWER IN EUROPE 1944-1949 (editor) MARXISM-LENINISM IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC: The Socialist Union Party (SED) THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC SINCE 1945 KHRUSHCHEV AND KHRUSHCHEVISM (editor) THE SOVIET UNION UNDER GORBACHEV (editor) GORBACHEV AND PERESTROIKA (editor) Martin McCauley and Stephen Carter (editors) LEADERSHIP AND SUCCESSION IN THE SOVIET UNION, EASTERN EUROPE AND CHINA Martin McCauley and Peter Waldron THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN RUSSIAN STATE, 1856-81 Arnold McMillin (editor) FROM PUSH KIN TO PALISANDRIlA: Essays on the Russian Novel in Honour of Richard Freeborn Evan Mawdsley THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BALTIC FLEET Laszlo Peter and Robert B. Pynsent (editors) INTELLECTUALS AND THE FUTURE IN THE HABSBURG MONARCHY, 1890-1914 Robert B. Pynsent (editor) T. G. MASARYK (1850-1937) Volume 2: Thinker and Critic MODERN SLOVAK PROSE: Fiction since 1954 (editor) Ian W. Roberts NICHOLAS I AND THE RUSSIAN INTERVENTION IN HUNGARY J. J. Tomiak (editor) WESTERN PERSPECTIVES ON SOVIET EDUCATION IN THE 1980s Stephen White and Alex Pravda (editors) IDEOLOGY AND SOVIET POLITICS Stanley B. Winters (editor) T. G. MASARYK (1850-1937) Volume I: Thinker and Politician Alan Wood and R. A. French (editors) THE DEVELOPMENT OF SIBERIA: People and Resources Series Standing Order If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (if you live outside the UK, we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Standing Order Service, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hants, RG21 2XS, England. RUSSIAN SEAPOWER AND THE EASTERN QUESTION' 1827-41 John C. K. Daly Assistant Professor of Russian and Naval History Kansas State University M in association with the Palgrave Macmillan MACMILLAN ©John C.K.Daly 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1991 Published by MACMILLAN ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Edited and Typeset by Povey/Edmondson Okehampton and Rochdale, England British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Daly, John C.K. Russian Seapower and 'The Eastern Question', 1827-41. — (Studies in Russia and East Europe) 1. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics I. Title II. University of London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies. II. Series 359.00947 ISBN 978-1-349-09602-2 ISBN 978-1-349-09600-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09600-8 To Mary Kennedy Daly, for everything. To Celia Pesce, who helped me to remember the things I forgot. To Maria Clara Florence Daly, who helped me to learn things that I never knew. Contents Preface viii Map of the Black Sea area xvi Map of the Bosphorus, Dardanelles and surrounding area xvii 1 The Greek Revolt and Tsar Nicholas's First Turkish War 1 2 The Adrianople Peace and the Growth of Russian Black Sea Trade 35 3 The Empire Strikes Back: the First Egyptian Revolt, and Muslim Revolt in the Caucasus 66 4 The Hunkar Iskelessi Peace, Russophobia, and a Middle Eastern Arms Race 100 5 The Second Egyptian Revolt and an Uneasy Peace 140 Conclusions 175 Appendix 1: Shipbuilding Programme of the Black Sea Fleet, 1827-41 196 Appendix 2: Warship Construction in the Black Sea, 1827-41 200 Appendix 3: Russian Warship Losses in the Black Sea, 1827-41 201 Appendix 4: Russian Merchant Ship Construction in Black Sea Ports, 1827-41 203 Appendix 5: Russian Expenditure on the Imperial Navy, 1827-41 206 Notes and References 207 Bibliography 261 Index 292 vii Preface 'Any ruler with an army has one hand, but he who also has a fleet has two hands ... '. Peter the Great, Ustav morskoi (Saint Petersburg, 1720, p. 1) 'It is then particularly in the field of naval strategy that the teachings of the past have a value which is no degree lessened.' Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Seapower upon History (p. 9) This work attempts to delineate the activities, abilities, materiel and personnel of the Russian Black Sea Fleet during the years 1827-41 in relation to the abilities and activities of the other Mediterranean naval powers within the larger context of the 'Eastern Question.' The subject is both worthwhile and largely unknown. During the one-hundred and-forty-year gradual decline of the Ottoman Empire from the Treaty of Passarowitz to the Crimean War, Russian seapower in the Black Sea emerged from obscurity to parity with the Ottoman naval forces. The maritime balance of power between Russia and the Ottoman Empire became the crucial pivot upon which Russian foreign policy towards Turkey revolved during the post-Napoleonic, pre-Crimean period. Due to the fact that this was unstated and implicit, the topic has received surprisingly little attention in studies of the 'Eastern Question' over the years. There are a number of reasons for this obscurity. First and foremost, perhaps, is the fact that 'naval science' emerged only late in the nineteenth century with the epochal studies of Mahan and Colomb. Both writers largely concentrated their focus on the glorious history of the Royal Navy; other countries and their nautical abilities were measured by this glittering yardstick, not only by British, but frequently by foreign historians evaluating their own countries' viii Preface IX histories. For many, the years following Trafalgar are largely a wasteland, until they are aroused from their torpor by Tsushima. While naval history has increasingly evolved as a historical discipline in its own right, many historians have to a certain extent used the Royal Navy's performance to evaluate their own countries' endea vours, downplaying the obvious fact that national needs dictate differing perceptions and policies. This blue-water myopia was not solely restricted to admirers of the Royal Navy. Admiral Sergei Georgievich Gorshkov was frequently referred to as a 'Russian Mahan'; in his Morskaia moshch' gosudarstva he dismisses the entire Russian naval effort in the period under consideration here in one pithy sentence, noting 'the ships almost never went to sea'. This problem of interpretation is exacerbated when one considers the 'Eastern Question'; linguistic complexities unite with problems of access to sources to make such a study dauntingly difficult. With the exception of Navarino, the period under consideration contains no major fleet actions. When Russian participation at Navarino is mentioned in the West, it is almost as an aside. Such a dismissal is unfair, however, as the period 1827-41 contains a number of events of interest, altering the traditional Mediterranean 'balance of power', beginning with the battle of Navarino, which assured the eventual freedom of Greece. In 1830, a French naval operation captured Algiers, putting an end to a nest of corsairs that had preyed on Mediterranean commerce for centuries. To find the antecedents of the period 1827-41, we must consider Russo-Turkish relations from the time of Peter the Great. Peter is regarded as the 'father' of the Russian navy, and his successful capture of Azov from the Turks presaged an eventual Russian breakthrough to the shores of the Black Sea itself. Peter's galley fleet, built at Voronezh on the lower Don, may be regarded as the direct forerunner of the Black Sea Fleet. Although Peter had to return his hard-won gains after the Prut Treaty in 1711, the pattern was set for future Russo-Turkish relations; sea power could provide the decisive edge in warring with the Turks. Peter's successors unfortunately lacked his dynamism, and his navy was allowed to decline. Russian maritime fortunes were to recover with the accession of Catherine the Great to the throne in 1768. Catherine immediately set about reviving the navy as a tool of Russian foreign policy, and her reign scored notable successes; the most brilliant was the burning of the Turkish fleet at <;esme in 1770, a x Preface battle which destroyed more line ships than Trafalgar. Catherine had only her Baltic squadron to use in her battles, as Russia was still barred from the Black Sea by the Turks. In order to fight the Turks, Catherine sent a squadron from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The appearance of Orlov's squadron in the Mediterranean opened a new phase for Russia's struggle to control the Black Sea; indeed, control of the Black Sea could only be decisively achieved in the Mediterranean. The strategic importance of 'command of the sea' in the Mediterranean has long been noted; as Mahan has observed, 'Circumstances have caused the Mediterranean Sea to playa greater part in the history of the world, both in a commercial and in a military point of view, than any other sheer of water of the same size.' <;esme provides a useful illustration of inherent weaknesses in Russia's navy that would persist until the Nicholaeven navy and beyond. First, Orlov's squadron contained a fair number of foreign officers; there were simply not enough Russian officers with sufficient skill to man all the ships. The supreme commander of the squadron, Admiral Elphinston, was British. By the time of Tsar Nicholas I, the need for foreign officers had been alleviated, but there were still significant shortages in the officer corps of highly-trained personnel. Many Russian officers served as volunteers in the Royal Navy, in order to participate in its 'blue-water' training, which the Russian navy could only provide in limited amounts. Orlov's squadron was in the Mediterranean entirely due to the good offices of the British. The squadron had stopped in Britain on its way to the Mediterranean, and after arriving in the Mediterranean, used Royal Navy facilities at Malta. Following the <;esme victory, Russian seapower dominated the Mediterranean, and was instrumental in forcing the Ottoman Empire to sign the Kii~iik Kaynarca Treaty in 1774. The treaty was interpreted as giving Russia a protectorate over Orthodox subjects of the Porte, the first time that Russia had achieved such a dominant position in Constantinople. Russia's hold on the northern Black Sea littoral was tightened with her annexation of the Crimea in 1783; with the founding of Sevastopol in the same year, the stage was set for Russia to be able to increase her maritime pressure on the Ottoman Empire from the north. Russian seapower in the Mediterranean had been entirely artificial, dependent on the good grace of a Mediterranean littoral power. Such support could be withdrawn if circumstances changed. The fragility of Russian seapower in this context is graphically illustrated by Admiral Seniavin's experiences in 1807.