A History of Crimea: From Antiquity to the Present

With the Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014 - 160 years after the Crimean War - the peninsula has come to the geopolitical fore once more on the global stage. This book provides a comprehensive history of the region that until now has been missing, one that stretches from ancient times through to the present and which explores various aspects and inhabitants through the ages.

Kerstin S. Jobst examines the complex history of the multi-ethnic and pluri-religious Crimea, and not only from a political perspective. Jobst deals with the manifold cultural and historical interdependencies that are central to the territory. The book presents myths and legends about the Crimea, as well as the various peoples for whom the Crimea was a settlement and transit area and who shaped the fate of the peninsula. These included Greek colonists, Eurasian nomads, Crimean Tatars, and others. A History of Crimea shows the importance of Crimea as a place of early Christianity, but also as a contact zone between different religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It also emphasizes the role of the peninsula as a peripheral area of various great powers - the Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Golden Horde, and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.

With this overview of 2,000 years of Crimea’s history, Kerstin S. Jobst places the most recent explosive events on the peninsula in their historical context and shows how the Crimea has become for the majority of Russians a highly emotionalized space since the first Russian annexation in 1783.

Kerstin S. Jobst is Professor for the Societies and Memory Cultures of Eastern Europe at the Institute for East European History at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include the History of East Central and Eastern Europe, the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, the Russian Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy, as well as comparative empires and colonialism studies.