Circassian and central Asian slavery: The general and special (on the example of cases of the return of Russian prisoners) [Черкесское и центральноазиатское рабство: общее и особенное (на примере дел о возвращении русских пленников)]

The paper presents a comparative description of Circassian and Central Asian slavery in the first half of the XIX century. The materials for the preparation of the work were the documents of the State archive of the Orenburg region (Orenburg, Russian Federation), namely the fund 6 “Office of the Orenburg Governor-General. Border Department”, case No. 4994 “on 80 Russian prisoners taken from Khiva in 1839”, dated 1839. This document is being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The collection of documents “Circassian slave narratives”, which is the largest collection (1200 documents) on the history of slavery on the territory of Circassia in the late XVIII – first half of the XIX centuries, was also used as a source on slavery on the territory of Circassia. In this collection, we are interested in the list of prisoners from a Turkish slave ship (document 366). The document is dated 1810. The authors came to the following conclusions: it was possible to organize the voluntary return of prisoners to their homeland only in territories with strong vertical power, which the khan of Khiva was able to do, and in Circassia there were simply no such leaders. Also, the difference between Khiva and Circassia was that the latter bordered with the Ottoman Empire, which required a significant number of girls in harems, which is why buying children in Circassia was particularly profitable. In the Khanate of Khiva, almost all slaves were used in agriculture and “live goods” as a luxury were much less popular here. A common feature for both Khiva and Circassia was that about 40 % of the captives on the lists were so-called “fresh live goods”, that is, persons captured in the last few months, which, according to the authors, indirectly indicated the low life expectancy of the slaves. Copyright © 2021 by Cherkas Global University