A sea with one narrow door
The Black Sea is connected to the Mediterranean only through the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles, which are collectively known as the Straits. Whoever controlled them controlled access to the sea, and this geographical fact is the thread running through much of its history. The sea also has a distinctive environment. Deep water is largely without oxygen, a feature that has helped preserve ancient wrecks, and several large rivers, among them the Danube, Dnieper and Don, flow into it, linking it to the interior of Europe.
Greek colonies
Greek settlement on the Black Sea began in earnest around the seventh century BC. Cities from the Greek world, especially Miletus on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, founded colonies such as Sinope and Trapezus (modern Trabzon) on the southern shore, Istros and Tomis on the west, and Olbia and Panticapaeum on the north. Greek colonial voyages here followed the pattern seen elsewhere, with sailors travelling in oared and sailing ships along familiar coasts. The Greeks called the sea by a name often translated as “inhospitable” or “hospitable”, and the form of the name and its explanation are debated.
The colonies traded with local peoples, including the Scythians, exchanging wine and olive oil, and later manufactured goods, for grain, fish, hides and other raw products. Grain from the northern coast became important to Athens and other Greek cities by the classical period. Such cargoes were carried across the Aegean by the Greek merchant fleets of the period.
Rome and Byzantium
Under Roman rule, the Black Sea coast was gradually brought into the empire, and cities such as Trapezus and Tomis flourished. After the founding of Constantinople in 330 AD, the sea lay on the doorstep of the capital and was vital for its food supply. The Byzantine navy defended the Straits, and the incendiary weapon known as Greek fire is traditionally associated with the empire’s naval defence of its capital. Raiding fleets, including Rus warbands in the ninth and tenth centuries, crossed the sea to attack Byzantine territory, and Byzantine diplomacy tried to turn the northern peoples into trading partners.
Genoese and Venetian stations
After the Byzantines recovered Constantinople from the Latin rulers in 1261, they granted Genoa trading privileges. Genoese merchants established fortified stations on the Black Sea, the most important being Caffa (modern Feodosia) in Crimea. Venice had its own settlement at Tana, near the mouth of the Don. These stations connected the Black Sea to long-distance overland routes across Asia, and they exported grain, salted fish, furs, slaves and other goods to Mediterranean markets. They also made the sea an arena of Genoese-Venetian competition. The sailors who ran these routes used the compass and the portolan charts of the medieval Mediterranean, which included careful coverage of the Black Sea coastline.
Ottoman control
Following the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans gradually took over the Genoese holdings, including Caffa in 1475, and they came to treat the Black Sea as an essentially closed Ottoman sea for much of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Foreign merchant ships were generally excluded. The sea supplied Constantinople with grain, timber and other goods, and the Ottoman arsenal there produced and maintained fleets. Cossack raiders in small oared boats, known as chaiky, nevertheless attacked Ottoman coastal towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and some raids reached close to Constantinople.
Russia reaches the sea
The balance began to shift in the eighteenth century. After a Russo-Turkish war, the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774 gave Russia access to the Black Sea and trading rights, and Russia annexed Crimea in 1783. The naval base of Sevastopol was founded that year, and the port of Odessa was established in the 1790s, going on to become a major grain exporter in the nineteenth century. The Russian Black Sea Fleet became a central part of Russian strategy against the Ottomans.
In November 1853, at the start of the Crimean War, a Russian squadron destroyed an Ottoman squadron at Sinope, a battle often cited as one of the last major actions fought largely by sailing warships and one that showed the effectiveness of explosive shells against wooden hulls. The long siege of Sevastopol followed in 1854–1855, and the Treaty of Paris in 1856 neutralised the Black Sea, forbidding warships and naval arsenals on its shores, though Russia was able to cancel those restrictions in 1870–1871. Steam and iron replaced sail through the later nineteenth century, and ironclad warships soon made wooden fleets obsolete in the Black Sea as elsewhere.
The Straits in the modern era
The Montreux Convention of 1936 gave Turkey control over the Straits and set rules for the passage of warships, and it remains in force today. In the twentieth century the Black Sea saw fighting in both world wars and, during the Cold War, was a boundary between NATO and Soviet fleets. Ports such as Odessa, Constanța, Varna, Burgas, Novorossiysk, Trabzon and Samsun serve commercial traffic, and the sea continues to be used for grain, oil and other cargoes. Recent conflict has again affected shipping here, but because events are ongoing, the details are best left to current sources.