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The Russian advance through the Caucasus and into Persia threatened to restrict the operation of Muslim law and led to some mosques being appropriated and converted to other uses. The Russian advance was therefore perceived as a threat to Islam, and this intensified the conflict. So did the conversion of those among the mountain peoples who had hitherto remained heathens.

In 1830 mountain men, fired by Muridism, began to raid the Cossack lines along the Terek, and even threatened Vladikavkaz at the southern approach to the main pass across the central Caucasus. But steps were already being taken to shore up the south’s defences for the longer as well as the shorter term. From 1829 free peasants were allowed to move south and enlist as Terek Cossacks. Runaway serfs under the age of thirty-five apprehended in the southern provinces were transported to the Terek to work for them and to build the necessary infrastructure for projected settlements. Eighteen months later, for a limited period, townsmen were also allowed to enlist as Cossacks, either on the Terek or in the adjacent Astrakhan Cossack Host. Thanks to these and other measures General Veliaminov eventually succeeded in quietening the Caucasus for the remainder of the 1830s ³¹, but in the early 1840s the region caught fire yet again.

Some time before that, the British had begun to exploit the situation. They were prompted by the threat to their imperial interests posed by Russia’s recent expansion in Asia following the defeat of the Persian army by General Ivan Paskevich, who had succeeded Yermolov, in December 1826. The following summer Paskevich had taken Nakhichevan and advanced on Tabriz. Under the terms of the subsequent Russo-Persian peace treaty, Russia annexed Yerevan, Nakhichevan and the territory north of the river Aras. This territorial gain put the Russians within striking distance of Tabriz, then the Persian capital. Beyond Tabriz lay the road to Baghdad. The treaty also guaranteed Russia a monopoly of trade and shipping on the Caspian, ensured Persian neutrality in any Russian war with Turkey and secured the famous Ardebil Library, with its precious Persian and Islamic manuscripts, for St Petersburg, Tsar Nicholas having professed an interest in Islam. London and Paris, as well as Istanbul, found the treaty’s provisions disturbing.

Russia’s victory over the Turks in the war of 1828—9 deepened their disquiet. Although most of territory occupied during the hostilities was returned, according to the Treaty of Edirne the frontier was moved south to include the entire Danube delta and Akhalkalaki, which rounded out the frontier of southern Georgia. The fact that Russia’s troops had actually taken both Tabriz and Erzurum during the war suggests forbearance in concluding the peace, but Russia’s non-territorial gains were considerable: open access to Danube and to the Mediterranean through the Straits, the right to trade throughout the Ottoman Empire, and reparations which helped retrospectively to finance the wars — 10 million ducats from the Turks, and the equivalent of £3 million from the Persians. ³²

Russia’s strategic position was improved even beyond that. In Europe Russia gained the lasting goodwill of the Greeks for having made the largest military contribution to securing an independent Greek state, and of Serbs for gaining autonomy for the pashalic of Belgrade, core of the infant state of Serbia; and its troops remained in the Romanian principalities, where the elite and the Orthodox Church looked to the Tsar for protection. With access to the Mediterranean, influence in the Balkans, and command of most of the high ground on the frontiers with Turkey and Persia, Russia’s southern provinces seemed secure and set for prosperity.

By the early 1830s Odessa, with its capacious harbour, was fast becoming the dynamic, cosmopolitan emporium of the south. Populated by ‘Russians, French, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Germans, Poles, Turks, Tatars, Americans, English, etc. — all eagerly prosecuting their commercial concerns in this free city’, it was already a handsome town of some 25,000 inhabitants with stone buildings lining spacious, if as yet unpaved, streets, fashionable shops, French restaurants and ‘a public garden, laid out in the English style … [which was] a favourite resort of the citizens in fair weather’. Rational plans for its enlargement and improvement had been devised by no less a figure than the émigré duc de Richelieu. ³³

Another of the Empire’s cities, Tiflis, capital of Georgia, presented contrasts of a different kind.