Pontos Axeinos: Kara ya da kasvetli deniz... Karadeniz’in en eski Yunanca adı böyle. Çeşitli dillerdeki adları da anlam olarak aynı... Yunanca Maure Thalassa, Bulgarca ve Rusça Çerno More, Romence Marea Neagra, Ukraynaca Çorne More, Gürcüce Şavi Zğva. Asırlar boyu denizciler fırtınalı sularına açılmaktan korktukları, belki de derin sularının karanlığı yüzünden bu adlar verilmiş. Charles King, çeşitli dillerdeki kaynaklardan yararlanarak hazırladığı bu eserde, bizlere Karadeniz’i bütün yönleriyle anlatıyor. 18-20 bin yıl önce, jeologların Neoeuxine göl olarak adlandırdıkları bir formasyon olan, coğrafyacı Strabo’ya göre ona dökülen ırmaklar yüzünden taşan bu denizin nasıl oluştuğunu, bölgenin coğrafyasını ve eko sistemlerini inceledikten sonra bizi önce MÖ 700’e götürüyor. Eski Yunan kolonileri döneminin öykülerini efsanelerle iç içe anlatıyor. Yunan halk dilinin dokusunu oluşturan efsanelerin çoğu Karadeniz’de geçiyordu. Kafkaslardaki Akalar’ın ataları, Agamemnon’un ordusu Troya Savaşından dönerken yolunu kaybedenler miydi? Strabon, MÖ ı. Yüzyılda Sinop için “dünyanın bu kesiminde en kayda değer kenttir” diyordu. King, Karadeniz kabilelerinin Roma imparatorlarını nasıl uğraştırdığını, bu arada Pontus kralı Mitradates’e pek çok öyküyü anlatıyor. Karadeniz’de İtalyan ticaret kolonilerinin yoğun faaliyetlerini , bir Karadeniz limanı olan Yafa’da başlayan vebanın ticari gemilerle yayılıp nasıl tüm Avrupa’yı kasıp kavurduğunu, Moğolların Asya ticaretini güvenli hale getirerek Karadeniz üzerinde nasıl olumlu bir etki yarattıklarını, Trabzon merkezli Pontus İmparatorluğu’nun çevresindeki Türk beylikleriyle ilişkilerini öğreniyoruz. Daha sonra Karadeniz’in bir “Türk Denizi” olduğu 1500-1700 yıllarına götürüyor bizi kitap. Ancak bu tarihten sonra Karadeniz’de güçlü bir donanma bulunduran Rusların rekabeti denize bu vasfını kaybettiriyor. Yazar uzun bir tarihsel yolculuktan sonra bizi günümüze , Karadeniz Ekonomik İşbirliği Örgütü’ne kadar getiriyor. Charles King Georgetown Üniversitesi öğretim üyesi.
Çeviren: Zülal Kılıç
Yayın Yılı: 2008
343 sayfa
İthal Kağıt
16,5x21 cm
Karton Kapak
ISBN:9756051993
Dili: TÜRKÇE

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NOT: Google kitapları arasında Charles King'in olağanüstü çalışması “The Black Sea: A History” Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 019928394X de mevcut BU linkten ulaşılabilir (indirilemiyor)

Charles King: KİŞİSEL SİTESİ

The Black Sea: A History
by Charles King
296pp, Oxford, £20

With the centre of Europe having taken a giant step eastwards in last month's EU expansion, the Black Sea, once the place where the world ended and myth began, is now looming into clearer view. In this timely book Charles King, an American academic, provides a stretchy timeline for the murky pool (once a lake, now a tideless sea) which has always sat on the edge of everything: Europe, Asia, civilisation, barbarism, us and other. Most importantly, Knight tries to make us see that the idea of the Black Sea as a kind of lacuna in "real" land-based political geography, a deep hole where nothing happens, is an unhelpful way of seeing. For instead of the sea being at best a boundary and at worst a dead space, Knight asks us to think of it as an entity in its own right, with a history that cannot simply be reduced to its bad-tempered shore-line.

For a start the sea's physical make-up is complex, tricky. The bottom bit is a dead zone, where nothing flourishes but everything is, paradoxically, perfectly preserved. Excavations in the 1990s turned up a ship from the 4th century BC off the coast of Bulgaria, its cargo of amphorae perfectly intact thanks to the fact that in this anoxic soup the usual agents of degradation are unable to do their work. The thin surface layer of the sea, by contrast, is flapping and splashing with all kinds of fish, both ancient and modern. Here you will find archaic forms of herring and sturgeon that have survived from the sea's time as a wide and shallow lake, sealed off from its later exchange with the Mediterranean, which brought, in turn, blue-fish and bonito.

In much the same way the sea has at times turned in on itself, uninterested in the world beyond, and at other times gazed confidently out at hinterlands which span two busy, profitable continents. By the 15th century the place was humming with the sounds of the marketplace. In Crimean cities such as Caffa, Genoese merchants lived alongside Tartars, the last remnants of the great Mongol invasion of the previous century, and traded happily in Russian furs, pearls and women (you could get a virgin for a measure of wine). Indeed, the trade in people was so brisk that buyers could afford to be choosy: when four Dominican friars decided that selling two of their party into slavery would be the best way of continuing to fund their Christian mission among the Tartars, they were taken aback to learn that they weren't wanted. Since the only practical skill they had was a facility for carving wooden spoons, the slave traders decided to pass on their offer. Three of the friars returned home dejected to Budapest, but the remaining one travelled on to the Volga, where he was astounded to run into a party of Tartars, one of whom spoke six languages, including German and Hungarian.

As Brother Julian's experience suggests, outsiders have always projected their fantasies of exotic savagery on to the people who live around the Black Sea. Following the huge media exposure that came with the Crimean war in the mid 1850s - this was the first time that a conflict had been photographed and wired home instantly - visitors poured into the area known as "Russia's Garden" to see for themselves whether it was quite as pretty as it had looked in the papers. (The answer was "yes", although everyone agreed that it was irritating the way that the Americans couldn't resist carving their names into the soft, crumbling stone.)

More crucial, perhaps, was the way that this first burst of tourism had the effect of bringing the phenomenon of "local foreigners" into sharper focus. Splashing about in the sea at Odessa or walking along the Prom at Yalta, it was impossible not to notice how different were the people who lived only a few miles along the coast. To the Russian, the Romanian of Bessarabia was a light-fingered Gypsy who wanted watching. To the Romanian, the Bulgarian from Dobrudja was a clod-hopping peasant with an identity crisis to boot. And to them all the Turk was a heathen whose stay on the European continent was thankfully drawing to a close. This natural clannishness might seem to make the embracing of racially and culturally discrete nationhoods the next easy step. But the problem, as administrators in the inland capitals were beginning to discover, was that people were not quite as tidy as places. In every emerging nation state clustered around the Black Sea you would find Jewish inkeepers, Greek and Armenian merchants and Muslim highlanders, all of whom insisted on living outside the geopolitical map. The way was set for the confusions of the Versailles treaty of 1919 and the horrific fallout of the 1930s and 40s.

The Black Sea is a piece of survey writing and so, at times, one longs to slow down the narrative and ask for an extra detail or a bit more explanation. Still, this is an essential book for anyone who feels they ought to know about what used to be called "the eastern question" and worries, secretly, that it is too late to start finding out.

· Kathryn Hughes is writing a biography of Mrs Beeton

 
* Yazar dostlar: Karadeniz Bölgesi, Gezi, Folklor ve yöresel tarih ile ilgili kitaplarınız hakkında bilgi bu köşede tanıtalım