Alan Fisher’s A Precarious Balance explores the meeting point between two great empires, the Ottoman and the Russian. While the Russians and the Ottomans were embroiled in wars from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries, Fisher does not fail to address the times in which the frontier was the site of exchanges – be they commercial or diplomatic. The two main focal points of contact, the Black Sea and the Caucasus, were of great importance to the development of relations as the Russians began to shift the balance in their favour. Fisher describes the changing shape of interaction, from cross-border slave trade to the mass migration of Muslims into the Ottoman Empire following the Crimean War. Fisher’s works reveal the importance of the multifaceted relations over the centuries until both empires collapsed due to the First World War.

• TABLE OF CONTENTS (page 7)
• INTRODUCTION (page 9)
• ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM AND ISLAM UNDER CATHERINE II (page 15)
• MUSCOVY AND THE BLACK SEA SLAVE TRADE (page 29)
• MUSCOVITE-OTTOMAN RELATIONS IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES (page 49)
• AZOV IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES (page 61)
• THE SALE OF SLAVES IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE:MARKETS AND STATE TAXES ON SLAVE SALES,SOME PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS (page 79)
• CHATTEL SLAVERY IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE (page 107)
• STUDIES IN OTTOMAN SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE,II:MANUMISSION (page 131)
• OTTOMAN KAMANETS-PODOLSK (page 141)
• EMIGRATION OF MUSLIMS FROM THE EMPIRE IN THE YEARS AFTER THE CRIMEAN WAR (page 173)