JEDYSAN - Oczakowski Tatars, Podolia, Wallachia, Moldavia, Bessarabia. Map by Johann Matthias Haas, published by the outhouse of the Homannian Heirs, Amsterdam 1769; copper color, bdb. condition, small paper loss in the right margin, slight soiling of the lower margin; plate dimensions: 513x475 mm; Tabula Geographica continens Despotatus WALLACHIAE atque MOLDAVIAE, Provinciam BESSARABIAE Sub elientela Turcica, itemque Provinciam Polonicam PODOLIAE, tanquam Regiones, in quibus bellum praefens geritur....
The map was published a year after the outbreak of Russia's third war with Turkey. It took place between 1768 and 1774. Russia, according to the logic of the Third Rome doctrine, had been dreaming since at least the second half of the 15th century of access to the Turkish straits and the ancient capital of the Roman emperors - Byzantium. To realize her desire, she had to meet two conditions. To regain at least Constantinople from the Byzantine legacy and to unite all of Rus under her scepter, basing her western border roughly on the line of the Bug River, west of Bialystok. This is what the limes of the Third Rome were to look like.
The Turkish-Russian struggle was closely watched in Europe. Despite this attention, then as now, there was no realization of Russia's far-reaching goals. The West only rarely had flashes of common sense, such as when it triggered the Crimean War. Homann's publisher described the state of affairs as of 1769. At stake was the continued existence of the Crimean Tatar and Yedisan state. The Tatar territories were marked in green: Sceptra Russice subiecta, meaning already "under the Russian sceptre." In white are marked Terrae de industria a Turcis et Tataris deserta redditae, i.e. lands abandoned by Turks and Tatars and given to Russia, and the reduced possessions of Tartaria Crimae and Tartaria Oczakoviensis. The peace treaty of 1774 settled the matter. The Crimean Khanate then gained independence from Turkey, only to be absorbed by Russia in 1783. A truncated Yedisan for the time being still lasted. Tartarie Budziacensis, or Budziak (the land between the Danube delta and the Dniester, part of Bessarabia) was still under the Turks.
