What Was the Treaty of Jassy?
The Treaty of Jassy, signed on 9 January 1792 (29 December 1791 old style) in the Moldavian city of Iași, ended the second Russo-Turkish War of Catherine the Great’s reign. By its terms, the Ottoman Empire formally recognised the Russian annexation of the Crimean Khanate (carried out in 1783) and the Russian frontier on the Dniester, with the new border running from the Dniester to the Southern Bug. The treaty also confirmed the free passage of Russian merchant shipping through the Black Sea and the Straits, and extended Russian protection over the Danubian principalities.
The Treaty of Jassy was the second of the two treaties that fixed the Russian conquest of the North Black Sea coast, the first having been the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774. Together, they converted the Crimea from a Tatar khanate and Ottoman dependency into a Russian province and gave Russia its first sustained access to the Black Sea.
Background
The second Russo-Turkish War (1787-1792) had broken out in part over Catherine’s annexation of the Crimea in 1783, which the Ottoman Empire refused to recognise, and in part over the Russian claim to the Georgian kingdom of Kartl-Kakheti, also formalised in 1783. The war opened with the Russian victories of Kinburn and Fokshany, but the long siege of Ismail (1790) — under the command of Alexander Suvorov — was the decisive action of the later years. By 1791, the Russian advance on the Danube and the victories of Alexander Suvorov and Nikolai Repnin had forced the Ottoman Empire to negotiate.
The treaty was signed by Alexander Bezborodko on the Russian side and the Ottoman grand vizier Koca Yusuf Pasha on the Ottoman side, in the council chamber of the Moldavian metropolitan’s palace in Iași.
The terms of the treaty
The Treaty of Jassy confirmed the Russian annexation of the Crimea, the Kuban, and the Black Sea coast as far as the Dniester, where the new frontier was drawn. It obliged the Ottoman Empire to evacuate the territories between the Bug and the Dniester, which were transferred to Russia. The Russian frontier now ran from the Dniester to the Southern Bug and the Turkish frontier; the Yedisan and the Ochakov region, contested in Catherine’s first war, were firmly in Russian hands.
The treaty also confirmed the free passage of Russian merchant shipping through the Straits and the Russian right of protection over the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, building on the privileges granted in 1774. Several clauses dealt with the exchange of prisoners, the appointment of consuls, and the conduct of the Tatar communities along the new border.
Why it mattered
The Treaty of Jassy was the diplomatic settlement that fixed the Black Sea as a Russian lake and made Russia a Black Sea power. Within a few years, the Russian navy would be operating freely in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea coast would be settled by Russian and Ukrainian colonists, and the new cities of Odessa, Sevastopol, and Nikolayev would be among the largest in the empire.
The treaty also shifted the balance of power in southeastern Europe. The Ottomans had lost the Crimea, lost their ability to threaten the Russian southern frontier, and accepted the Russian protectorate over the Orthodox Christian populations of the Danubian principalities. The principalities themselves remained formally Ottoman until 1856, but the new settlement prefigured their eventual incorporation into the Russian sphere.
The legacy of Jassy
The Treaty of Jassy remained the diplomatic foundation of the Russian position on the Black Sea until 1856, when the Treaty of Paris would partly undo it in the wake of the Crimean War. Within the Russian Empire, the conquest of the Crimea and the North Black Sea coast was the prelude to a wave of colonisation, the development of a Russian merchant marine, and the incorporation of the region into the imperial economy. The city of Odessa, founded in 1794, became the empire’s principal grain port within a generation.