Black Sea slave trade in the context of "Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire"

The Bosporan Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus (Ancient Greek: Βασιλεία τοῦ Κιμμερικοῦ Βοσπόρου, romanized: Basileía tou Kimmerikou Bospórou; Latin: Regnum Bospori), was an ancient Greco-Scythian state located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus, centered in the present-day Strait of Kerch. It was the first truly 'Hellenistic' state, in the sense that a mixed population adopted the Greek language and civilization, under aristocratic consolidated leadership. Under the Spartocid dynasty, the aristocracy of the kingdom adopted a double nature of presenting themselves as archons to Greek subjects and as kings to barbarians, which some historians consider unique in ancient history. The Bosporan Kingdom became the longest surviving Roman client kingdom. The 1st and 2nd centuries AD saw a period of a new golden age of the Bosporan state. It was briefly incorporated as part of the Roman province of Moesia Inferior from AD 63 to 68 under Emperor Nero, before being restored as a Roman client kingdom. At the end of the 2nd century AD, King Sauromates II inflicted a critical defeat on the Scythians and included all the territories of the Crimean Peninsula in the structure of his state.

The prosperity of the Bosporan Kingdom was based on the export of wheat, fish and slaves. As a result, the Kingdom became the economic center of the Black Sea and is often dubbed the ancient Jewel of the Black Sea. The profit of the trade supported a class whose conspicuous wealth is still visible from newly discovered archaeological finds, excavated, often illegally, from numerous burial barrows known as kurgans. The once-thriving cities of the Bosporus left extensive architectural and sculptural remains, while the kurgans continue to yield spectacular Greco-Sarmatian objects, the best examples of which are now preserved in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. These include gold work, vases imported from Athens, coarse terracottas, textile fragments, and specimens of carpentry and marquetry.

The Venetian slave trade refers to the slave trade conducted by the Republic of Venice, primarily from the Early Middle Ages to the Late Middle Ages. The slave trade was a contributing factor to the early prosperity of the young Republic of Venice as a major trading empire in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Venetian slave trade was divided into several separate trading routes. In the Balkan slave trade, Venetian merchants bought Pagan war captives and then sold them to Southern Europe or to the Middle East via the Aegean Islands. In the later Black Sea slave trade, the Venetians established colonies in the Crimea, and acquired slaves of various religions to sell to Southern Europe via Crete and the Balearic Islands, or to the Middle East directly via the Black Sea. The Venetians met competition in the slave trade by the Republic of Genoa.

Zynoviy Bohdan Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky of the Abdank coat of arms (1595 – 6 August 1657) was a Ruthenian nobleman and military commander of Zaporozhian Cossacks as Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, which was then under the suzerainty of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He led the Cossacks to victory in a successful uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates (1648–1654) that resulted in the creation of an independent Cossack state in Ukraine.

In 1648–1649, the Cossacks under Khmelnytskyi's leadership massacred tens of thousands of Poles and Jews, with more handed over as yasir (slaves) to his Crimean Tatar allies, one of the most traumatic events in Polish and Jewish history. Under his rule of the newly-established Cossack state, the massacres continued until at least 1652. In 1654, Khmelnytsky concluded the Treaty of Pereiaslav with the Russian Tsar and allied the Cossack Hetmanate with Tsardom of Russia, thus placing Ukraine under Russian protection.

The Balkan slave trade was the trade in slaves from the Balkans via Venetian slave traders across the Adriatic and Aegean Seas to Italy, Spain, and the Islamic Middle East, from the 7th century during the Early Middle Ages until the mid-15th century. It was one of the routes of the Venetian slave trade.

The trade rested on the fact that the Balkans was a religious border zone, which was significant in the Middle Ages, when religion was the determining factor on who was viewed as a legitimate target of enslavement. The Balkans was pagan territory long into the Middle Ages. After it had converted to Christianity by the 11th century, it was influenced by Orthodox Christianity and Bogomilism. This influence maintained the region's status as a religious border zone to the rest of the then-Catholic Europe. The slave trade of first pagan and then Orthodox and Bogomil Christian Slavs were exported to Italy, Spain, and Portugal in Southern Europe, but the major part of the export went to the Islamic Middle East.

Hürrem Sultan (Turkish pronunciation: [hyɾˈɾæm suɫˈtan]; Ottoman Turkish: خرّم سلطان; c. 1505– 15 April 1558), also known as Roxelana, was the chief consort and legal wife of Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, mother of his successor Selim II, and the first haseki sultan of the Ottoman Empire. She became one of the most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history, and the first in a series of prominent women who lived during the period that came to be known as the Sultanate of Women.

Presumably born in Ruthenia to a Ruthenian Orthodox family, she was captured by Crimean Tatars during a slave raid and eventually taken via the Crimean trade to Constantinople, the Ottoman capital.