British Travellers on the Crimean Tatars and the Crimean Khanate (Seventeenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries)
This paper discusses a specific complex of sources addressing the Crimean Tatars and the Crimean Khanate - English-language travelogues from the seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries. For a certain period, they shaped their English-speaking readers’ notion of the remote country in the east of Europe. This specific nature of the source forced the researchers to develop particular methods of study. Even the concept of travellers is specific, since there were those who spent but few days in the Crimea due to their private interests, though the others served to Russia for ages. The decisive factor was their outside (British) culture. Perceptions and descriptions of the Crimean realities depended on the author’s position and his/her cultural burden. Therefore travelogues have varied information capability and, sometimes, are more interesting for reconstructions of the author’s perceptions than objective realities. They created the image of the Crimea in the public mind that later would determine European politicians’ actions. Travelogues made their contribution to the establishment of the Crimea as a tourist centre, by interpreting its sites and monuments as attractions, describing the travel routes, and grounding the Crimea’s cultural value. Monuments and sites of the Crimean Tatar cultural heritage possessed an important place among the mentioned attractions. Finally, the position of outside observer allowed them to see the aspects hidden from the sight of the subject of the Crimean Khanate or Russian Empire. They certainly transmitted own phobias, misinterpretations, and problems to what was called the “Other.” Anyway, travelogues, apart from uncovering the aspects of life in the Crimea unknown to other kinds of sources, explain how the culture of West Europe found and developed the notion of faraway European East. Travel writing characterizes the initial stage of the researches in history, ethnography, and archaeology of the Crimea.