Case Study Circassian Migration FV - EUROCLIO

Contemporary painting by Faruk Kutlu
“The tyranny of the Russians was not confined to capturing
our cattle, burning our dwellings, and temples, and other
unheard-of atrocities, but in order to starve us on the
mountains they destroyed all our growing crops in the plain,
and captured our land. In fact, they have treated us in an
unbearable and barbarous manner, unprecedented in the
annals of war. Driven to despair, we resolved to make a last
firm stand against our enemies with all the energy we
possessed.........Russia by brute force, is trying to conquer us;
on the neutral Black Sea she is capturing, whenever she can,
every ship carrying any of our countrymen, so that we have no
home on land, no means of travelling or refuge by sea. Still we
would rather die than submit to the yoke of Russia. If we were
to emigrate, abandoning our homes, for ages protected by our
forefathers, who shed their blood for them, our poverty would
prove a great obstacle to our doing so; in fact, how could we
take away our own wives and children, and the widows,
orphans, and helpless relations of those slain in this war? Such
an undertaking would decimate the emigrants, and blot out
for ever our Circassian name from the face of the earth.”
Address of the Circassian deputies (Hadji Hayden Hassan and Kustar
Ogli Ismael) to the Queen of England, London, 26 August 1862
(published in the Journal of the British Houses of Parliament Foreign
Affairs Committee; 7 January, 1863
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