In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Deborah Saki, covers the new article by Volha Charnysh and Ranjit Lall, “Consequences of the Black Sea Slave Trade: Long-Run Development in Eastern Europe”.
The literature on transatlantic slave trade correctly highlights the ways slave extraction weakened African states over time. But were there cases in which states were able to resist the enslavement of their populations by outside actors by investing in state-building? Volha Charnysh and Ranjit Lall examine this question through a less-studied case: the Black Sea slave trade between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. They argue that the increase in slave raiding during the period of Ottoman expansion pushed raided Eastern European states toward defensive state-building, which over time contributed to higher levels of economic development in the regions most exposed to raids.
The authors first reconstruct the scale of slave raiding from hundreds of sources in multiple languages, assembling what they describe as the most comprehensive¾though not complete¾dataset of slave raids in early modern Eastern Europe. Covering the period from 1453 to 1774, the dataset records 2,511 attacks across territory spanning 13 present-day countries. Most raids were conducted by Crimean and Nogai Khanates operating within the Ottoman slave trade system. The authors use statistical methods to estimate the likely total number of captives at roughly 5 million, including not only those who were enslaved but also those who fled, were freed, or were ransomed.
Because Muslims were prohibited from enslaving coreligionists, Ottoman demand fell heavily on the Christian populations of nearby Poland-Lithuania and Russia. Tatar raiders conducted frequent military incursions into these states’ border regions, capturing civilians who were then marched to Crimea and sold into Ottoman slave markets. These raids followed established routes and were conducted as coordinated military operations. In this period, major Eastern European states had already developed relatively centralized political systems and economies tied to agriculture and trade with Western Europe. Rather than integrating into the slave trade networks themselves, rulers and local elites treated slave raids as a major security threat and invested heavily in preventing them. They built fortresses, mobilized armies, and developed new fiscal instruments to finance these measures.
The authors identify three main mechanisms linking slave raids to long-run development. First, defensive investments redirected labor and resources into vulnerable frontier regions. Governments moved soldiers and settlers into exposed territories. Military spending also created demand for goods and services, attracting artisans and merchants to those areas. Second, the defensive effort encouraged urbanization. Many frontier fortresses gradually developed into commercial towns and regional administrative centers. Third, stronger military and administrative control, accomplished through the incorporation of local cossacks into state service, eventually reduced disorder and banditry in border regions. This created a more secure environment for trade and economic activity.
To test these arguments, the authors use several quantitative methods. Their first approach examines urban population growth over time. They combine their slave raid dataset with a large database of Eastern European city populations covering the years 1100 to 1900. They compare settlements exposed to raids with settlements that were not raided, both before and after the beginning of the Black Sea slave trade. Their findings show that raided settlements experienced faster long-run population growth than non-raided settlements. The authors also control for geography, soil fertility, nearby wars, and state boundaries to make sure these factors are not driving the results.
“The article therefore shows that slave trade did not produce the same political outcomes everywhere.”They also leverage topography to measure how easily raiders could access certain areas from the Black Sea steppe. The idea is that because raiders traveled on horseback, they tended to follow watershed boundaries, avoiding steep slopes, impassable rivers, and marshland. Proximity to these watershed routes shaped exposure to raids, but did not directly affect economic development. Using this approach, the authors find that regions more exposed to slave raids later exhibited higher population density, greater housing stock, and more markets during the nineteenth century.
More broadly, the article argues that the effects of slave trade depend heavily on how societies respond to slave demand. In parts of West Africa, the demand for slaves often encouraged internal conflict and weakened institutions. In Eastern Europe, by contrast, slave raids pushed states to centralize authority and strengthen territorial defense. The article therefore shows that slave trade did not produce the same political outcomes everywhere.
- Deborah Saki is a PhD candidate in political science at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on post-conflict governance, ethnic recognition, and nation-building in post-conflict states. She is currently an Elinor Ostrom Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She has previously worked in communications for the World Affairs Council of Atlanta. She enjoys public facing writing, with her work appearing in Inside Higher Ed, Times Higher Ed, and other publications.
- CHARNYSH, VOLHA, and RANJIT LALL. 2026. “Consequences of the Black Sea Slave Trade: Long-Run Development in Eastern Europe.” , American Political Science Review, 1–23.
- About the APSA Public Scholarship Program.
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