The Black Sea

The lands surrounding the Black Sea share a colourful past. Though in recent decades they have experienced ethnic conflict, economic collapse, and interstate rivalry, their common heritage and common interests go deep. Now, as a region at the meeting point of the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East, the Black Sea is more important than ever. In this lively and entertaining book, which is based on extensive research in multiple languages, Charles King investigates the myriad connections that have made the Black Sea more of a bridge than a boundary, linking religious communities, linguistic groups, empires, and later, nations and states.

- 1: An Archaeology of Place - People and Water - Region, Frontier, Nation - Beginnings - Geography and Ecology - 2: Pontus Euxinus, 700BC - AD400 - The Edge of the World - "Frogs Around a Pond" - "A Community of Race" - How a Scythian Saved Civilization - The Voyage of Argo - "More Barbarous Than Ourselves" - Pontus and Rome - Dacia Traiana - The Expedition of Flavius Arrianus - The Prophet of Abonoteichus - 3: Mare Maggiore, 400 - 1460 - "The Scythian Nations Are One" - Sea-Fire - Khazars, Rhos, Bulgars, and Turks - Business in Gazaria - Pax Mongolica - The Ship from Caffa - Empire of the Comneni - Turchia - An Ambassador from the East - 4: Kara Deniz, 1500 - 1700 - "The Source of All the Seas" - "To Constantinople - to be sold!" - Domn, Khan, and Derebey - Sailors' Graffiti - A Navy of Seagulls - 5: Chernoe More, 1700 - 1860 - Sea and Steppe - A Flotilla on Azov - Cleopatra Processes South - The Flight of the Kalmoucks - A Season in Kherson - Rear Admiral Dzhons - New Russia - Fever, Ague, and Lazaretto - A Consul in Trabzon - Crimea - 6: Black Sea, 1860 - 1990 - Empires, States, and Treaties - Steam, Wheat, Rail, and Oil - "An Ignoble Army of Scribbling Visitors" - Trouble on the Kostence Line - The Unpeopling - "The Division of the Waters" - Knowing the Sea - The Prometheans - Development and Decline - 7: Facing the War - Bibliography