Charles King’s scientific contributions

The Black Sea has long formed a zone of interaction-sometimes cordial, sometimes conflictual-among the peoples and states around its shores, from the Balkans to the Caucasus, from Russia to Turkey. To the ancient Greeks, the sea lay at the edge of the known world. In time the growth of Greek trading colonies linked all the coasts into a web of economic relationships. In the Middle Ages the sea was tied to the great commercial cities of the Mediterranean. Later the Ottomans used the region's resources to build their own empire. In the late eighteenth century the sea was opened to foreign commerce, and the sea coasts were part of a genuinely global system of trade. After the collapse of the Russian and Ottoman empires, the coastline was carved up among a number of newly formed nation-states, with each asserting its right to a piece of the coast and a section of the coastal waters. Today, efforts to resurrect the idea of the Black Sea as a unified region are once again on the international agenda. Based on extensive research in multiple languages, this book provides a comprehensive guide to the history, cultures, and politics of the sea, and its future at the heart of Europe and Eurasia.