Eastern Europe: The Steppe Frontier, 1500–1800

Eastern Europe, stretching from the Danube basin to the steppes north of the Black Sea, was the westernmost reach of nomadic civilization and a heartland that changed the course of European history. Between 1500 and 1800, Eastern Europe underwent profound changes. Through blood and tears, millions of pioneers turned steppe into farmland. Cannons, rather than warhorses, came to decide battles, while the power to build states shifted from mounted raiders to bureaucrats with pens. The three great powers of the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, and Russia; Hungary, Wallachia, and Moldavia, caught between them; and disruptors such as the Tatars and Cossacks: amid the powers' schemes and clashes, the borders of modern Eastern Europe were quietly drawn.

This book describes the transformation of the "steppe frontier" into modern states and recounts three centuries of alternating upheaval and order in Eastern Europe. It may shed light on how the Russian Empire rose, how modern Eastern Europe took shape, and even the region's situation from the nineteenth century to the present day.