Crimean Tatars knives in the 18th century

[mahratt]

Originally Posted by ariel

I am not talking about military history . Wars are cruel in general, and this is true for both sides, especially long ago. Slavery was the usual way of life in Russia and Crimean Khanate. Russia occupied Crimea not because it wanted to end slavery: it was a land grab to gain better access to the Black Sea. Read about Potemkin. Do not forget that having occupied Ukraine, Russians in the same 1783 extended slavery from their territory to millions of formerly free Ukrainian peasants. This was well more than 3 mln Ukrainians and Caucasians sold by the Crimean Tatars over centuries.
This Forum is not for political discussions. We are just talking about the veracity of numbers, no more. Who is right and who is wrong is not a topic of my attempt to help you to think clearly and use historiography instead of wishful thinking.


Be it as it may, Crimean Khanate was forcibly absorbed into Russian Empire in 1783 and Beauplan visited it 10 years later. More than enough time for the Russian occupiers to close the number of weapon-producing workshops.
It is possible that Peysonnel erred in his report of 400,000 knives per year or was hoodwinkled by the locals, or misunderstood, or... anything else. But one has to take into account the inevitable possibility that the production of edged weapons was dramatically cut down
No different from the British restrictions in India, Spanish in the Philippines, Americans in the post WW2 Japan etc.

Not taking it into account invites wrong conclusions.

If this forum is not for political discussions, I don’t understand why you start talking about the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783. If you write about Potemkin, then you should know that this was not the first war with the Crimean Khanate. And that the initial reasons were precisely because every year the Crimean Tatars took into slavery 20,000 Russians and Ukrainians. By the way, you probably forgot that Ukraine at that time (from the middle of the 17th century) was part of the Russian Empire. Speaking about slavery in Russia, you probably mean serfdom? It was a shameful phenomenon ... About the same as slavery in the USA, which was abolished in 1865. Slavery in the Crimea was different. Crimean Tatars specifically attacked neighboring states in order to capture slaves. I hope you understand the difference.

However, really enough about politics.

If we are talking about historiography, you are not very attentive ... Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan was in the Crimea in the 17th century (the years of his life 1595-1673). Simon Pallas was in Crimea 10 years after Crimea joining Russia in 1793. But as I wrote above, Pallas writes that 5 weapons workshops and 23 shops (or workshops) selling knives and various iron tools worked in Bakhchisarai. Probably the Russians, for some reason, have not seen 5 weapons workshops in Bakhchisarai for 10 years
Because, according to your logic, they should have closed exactly these 5 weapons workshops. By the way, we have actual data on a reduction in the production of weapons in India, but there is no data on a reduction in the production of weapons in Crimea. I suspect you'll talk about logic. But I would prefer the facts.

Now about the figure of 400,000 knives, allegedly produced in the Crimean Khanate in one year. In the mid-18th century, the entire population of Crimea totaled less than 400,000 people (this includes women and children). These are just figures for thought If at that time 400,000 knives were produced in the Crimean Khanate a year, then even over 5 years 2 million knives were produced. The question is, where are all these knives now? Given that Peyssonnel writes about “luxurious knives” that even got to Paris, these “Crimean” knives should have been preserved to this day in a significant amount ...

Perhaps you have some kind of information about weapons workshops in the cities of the Crimean Khanate (for example, in Bakhchisarai) in the mid-18th century. Then this information can be compared with the data provided by Simon Pallas at the end of the 18th century. This would be really valuable and interesting information.