A view from across the water

This being the result of a pick-me-up at the Raynes Park Platform Library, the November number of 'LE MONDE diplomatique'.

I don't claim to have read the article at reference 1 with any care, but the map snapped above did catch my eye. It seems that at the end of the 18th century, the Black Sea was a Turkish rather than a Russian lake, with the all the land around being part of the Ottoman Empire, albeit thought by us in Europe to be decadent and in decay, with, as it turned out, rather more than a hundred years to go, clocking up a total of around 600 years, depending on your start point. Making Turkey yet another country with a glorious past to live down.

With the northern border of the Empire at that time being given by the green line, taking in large chunks of what is now either the Ukraine or Russia. On which story, claims by either of these last for everlasting ownership going back into the mists of time, going back to founding saints, are twaddle.

I also learn that 'septentrional' is from the Latin, originally meaning seven plough oxen, their name for what we call the big and little bears, or the big and little ploughs, circling the Pole Star.

PS 1: the article is visible at reference 2, but you only get a taster. You have to pay if you want the whole story, with the map. Hence the DIY snap above.

PS 2: I am reminded of the impressive continuity of Russia through the ages: a country always keen to grab at lands all around, particularly to the south and east, and a country usually run as an autocratic police state. With intermissions of messy collective government around the time of the Revolution and around the time of Brezhnev, half a century later.

PS 3: Russia was also keen on getting a warm water port, not frozen up for a large chunk of the year. But the best they could manage was something on the Black Sea, on which the Turks had a chokehold at the Dardanelles, later to be famous for the disaster of the botched Gallipoli landings, one of the times when we were on the same side as the Russians. Not a proper port like London, Liverpool or Glasgow, with open access to the oceans of the world, at all.

References

Reference 1: Quand la Russie perdait la guerre de Crimée: Largement oubliée dans les pays qui, tels la France et le Royaume-Uni, l’ont gagnée, la guerre de Crimée (1853-1856) fait l’objet d’un souvenir vibrant en Russie, qui l’a pourtant perdue… - Marie-Pierre Rey, Le Monde diplomatique - 2022.

Reference 2: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/. A monthly, perhaps a cross between the week-end version of the Financial Times and the Economist. In newspaper rather than magazine format.