Locating Crimea in Russian History
Journal: Yale University Press eBooks
Year: 2017

This introductory chapter locates Crimea in Russian history. Early in the spring of 1783, Empress Catherine II announced that Russia had at long last annexed the Crimean Khanate. Russia had annexed coastal territory before as well, though it was possession of Crimea that gave it a substantive presence on the Black Sea. Crimea was neither the biggest nor the most lucrative of the empire's acquisitions. Its significance rests instead in the combination of cultural, chronological, and geographical