AbstractThe Russians and Ottomans fought seven major wars after 1700 before the climactic confrontation in the Balkans in 1877–1878: 1710–1711, 1736–1739, 1768–1774, 1787–1792, 1806–1812, 1828–1829, and the Crimean War (1853–1856). First under Peter the Great, then under Catherine and her successors, the aim of the “southern project” of Russian ambitions was the acquisition of a Black Sea port, an outlet to the Mediterranean and the expansion of Russian influence into Poland and Ukraine, Georgia in the Caucasus, then Serbia, Moldavia, and Romania north of the Danube River. Ideological justifications for such expansion included the protection of the Orthodox brothers of the tsar in Muslim lands and the recapturing of Constantinople. This slowly evolved into Panslavism, which became central to the Eastern Question crises of the later nineteenth century.
