UKRAINE’S LANDS as an IMPORTANT FACTOR of the DEVELOPMENT of TRADE and GEOPOLITICAL CONTACTS according to the DATA from ARABOGRAPHIC WRITTEN SOURCES

Abstract

The purpose of the study: to analise the historical conditions of rising and development of trade routes, as well as the geopolitical processes during 16th­­­‒18th centuries between the countries of the historicogeographic areal from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, which are referred to in Arabic and Turkish-Ottoman written sources. Implementation of the set up purpose has been achieved by observing the general theoretical and methodical principles of Historiography and Source Studies aimed at provision of defining the specific features of that development. The Methodology of the study is based on the principles of providing the historism, scientific objectivity, a specific historical systematicity, and also on the interdisciplinarity principle and the principle of identification of the authenticity and informational value of the data and facts having been found. While making this study there were applied general historical methods of making a historiographical, terminological, typological and textologic analyses, and also the comparativistics method. The academic novelty of the study is perception of the Historiosophy of Ukraine’s History in the context of intercivilisational relations demonstrated by setting up in the said historiogeographical area of a great trade route, and primarily the socio-economic and geopolitical processes having taken place in Ukraine during the above said time, as well as that of the military and political situation all along during that period in the Northern Black-Sea Area and the situation in the Crimean Ulus, though the author’s interpretation of the historic events while taking into consideration the data available in Arabic and Turkish-Ottoman written sources.

The Conclusions.  Studies of Arabic, and particularly Turkish-Osman written sources give us grounds to state that in the Medieval times the port cities of Yumne and Constantinople were important trade markets, particularly the traded goods were transported along the rivers of Dnieper and Danube. But the city managed to keep its importance in the system of the international trading. The importance of Ukraine’s geopolitical situation within the system of international trade relations was ac counted for by the fact, that through its territory trade route were set which  provided stable and long-lasting economic relations between the most influential ports and countries of Eastern Europe northwards of the Black Sea. The Baltic cultural and historic region that included the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was connected with the Black Sea through the territory of Ukraine.  

The economic crisis, which lasted in the Ottoman Empire till the beginning of the 17th century, in the Northern Black-Sea Area new political forces emerged which before that had been in the vassal dependence and used by the great states within their own contact zones for a close economic, cultural and military cooperation of the border countries. Those border forces were, from one side ­– the Crimean Khanate, and from the other side ₋ The Zaporozhian Host. Our study has shown that the Ukrainian problem has always been an actual item in the international policy of the High Porte.  

We have studied the original manuscript “A Letter-Order from Turkish Sultan Andulkhamid І to the Kadee of the city of Izmir”. The data we have obtained from this document proved the economic relations between the countries located within the above said historicogeographical areals to have been long-lasting, and there have also been identified conditions, in which the trade relations between these countries had been developing, and the routes having been set up through the territory of Ukraine.