History of The Cossacks - Early History

Early History

The origins of the first Cossacks are uncertain. The traditional historiography dates the emergence of Cossacks to the 14-15th centuries. Non-mainstream theories have ascribed their earlier existence to as early as the tenth century specifically mentioning 948 as the year when the inhabitants of the Steppe under the leader named Kasak or Kazak routed the Khazars from the area of modern Kuban and organized a state called Kazakia or Cossackia.

Some historians suggest that the Cossack people were of mixed ethnic origins, descending from Turks, Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians and others who settled or passed through the vast Steppe that stretches from Asia to southern Europe.

However some turkologists argue that cossacks are descendants of native Kipchak (Russian половцы) people of Ukraine, who lived there long ago before Mongol invasion and were closely related to modern Kazakhs. These people were highly admired for their esquestrian talents by the early Russian military. Many were hired as cavalry by Russian and Ukrainian warlords, much as they hired Black Klobuks as personal guards.

It is after 1400 that the Cossacks emerge as an established and identifiable group in historical accounts. Rulers of Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth employed Cossacks as mobile guards against Tatar raids from the south in the territories of the present-day southwestern Russia and southern Ukraine. Those early Cossacks seemed to have included a significant number of Tatar descendants judging from the records of their names. From the mid-15th century, the Cossacks are mostly mentioned with Russian and Ukrainian names.

In all historical records of that period, Cossack society was described as a loose federation of independent communities, often merging into larger units of a military character, entirely separate from, and mostly independent of, other nations (such as Poland, Russia or the Tatars).

In the 16th century, these Cossack societies created two relatively independent territorial organisations:

• Zaporizhia (Zaporozhie), on the lower bends of the river Dnieper in Ukraine, between Russia, Poland and the Tatars of the Crimea, with the center, Zaporizhian Sich;
• The Don Cossack State, on the river Don, separating the then weak Russian State from the Mongol and Tatar tribes.