When Peter I Was Forced to Settle for Less: Coerced Labor and Resistance in a Failed Russian Colony (1695–1711)

Azov was the site of the first military victory of the reign of tsar Peter I (aka Peter the Great) and the object of his earliest endeavors as an empire-builder. This fortified seaside stronghold, equidistant from Moscow and Istanbul, was also the site of his greatest failures as a ruler. Here, Boeck examines why Peter I failed to conquer Azov. Peter's attempt to plant a permanent colony at Azov was a grand failure. His settlement policies were crude, coercive, and decidedly unenlightened. With the exception of a few hundred Cossacks and Kalmyks recruited to serve as scouts in mobile cavalry units, very few of the settlers who ended up in Azov did so voluntarily. The ill-planned logistics of sending settlers to a territory in which little grain could be grown, the construction of a port on what was essentially an Ottoman lake, the high human cost in deaths due to disease and attrition, and the astounding rates of evasion and desertion all portended a troubled existence for the Azov colony.