s, c. 1015 in Eurasia c. 1200 circa 1600. Note that the areas marked
Poland and
Muscovy were claimed rather than administered and were thinly populated. From the Neolithic Era and intermittently until the middle of the second millennium AD, the area served as a borderland and area of intense struggle between agriculture-practicing settled peoples to the west and the nomads of the Eurasian Steppe. Nomadism prevailed in the Wild Fields since antiquity, and
settled life (civilization) was established with great difficulty. For centuries, the region was sparsely populated by various nomadic groups such as
Scythians,
Sarmatians,
Alans,
Huns,
Cumans,
Khazars,
Bulgars,
Pechenegs,
Kipchaks,
Turco-Mongols,
Tatars and
Nogais. There were
Pontic Greek colonies on the Pontic steppes of the Wild Fields —
Tanais,
Olbia,
Borysthenes,
Nikonion,
Tyras. The rule of
Great Khazaria on these lands was won by
Kievan Rus, then Kievan Rus was replaced by the
Mongol Empire. The steppes of the Wild Fields were suitable for the development of agriculture, animal husbandry,horse breeding and crafts, which led to their colonization as early as the Kievan state. These attempts to settle the land was hindered by aggressive raids from the steppe nomads that ranged across those lands in waves. After the
Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus', the territory was ruled by the
Golden Horde until the
Battle of Blue Waters (1362), which allowed
Algirdas to claim it for the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As a result of the
Battle of the Vorskla River in 1399, the successor
Vytautas lost the territory to
Temür Qutlugh, the khan of the Golden Horde. After the pillaging and devastation of the agriculturally based villages and people on these lands by the
Tatar-Mongols, the Black Sea steppes became more officially known as the Wild Fields (wilderness) on boundary maps and for governance. In 1441, the western section of the Wild Fields,
Yedisan, came to be dominated by the
Crimean Khanate, a political entity controlled by the expanding
Ottoman Empire from the 16th century onward. The 14th and 15th centuries were particularly favorable for
Ukrainians to settle the Wild Fields, when these lands became part of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Thus, the Wild Fields were partly inhabited by the
Zaporizhian Cossacks, as reflected in works of the Polish theologian and Catholic bishop of Kiev Józef Wereszczyński, who settled there in the 15th century under the condition that he would fight off expansion by the
Nogai Horde and the growing danger from attacks by the
Crimean Khanate. The
Crimean-Nogai Raids, a long period of raids and fighting between the Crimean Tatars and Nogai Horde on one side and the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow on the other side, caused considerable devastation and depopulation in the area before the rise of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who periodically sailed down the
Dnieper in
dugouts from their base at
Khortytsia and
raided the coast of the Black Sea. The Turks built several fortress towns to defend the littoral, including
Kara Kerman and
Khadjibey. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the government of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth considered the Ukrainian lands to the east and south of
Bila Tserkva to be the Wild Fields, and distributed them to magnates and nobility as private property as uninhabited, although Ukrainians lived there. By the 17th century, the east part of the Wild Fields had been settled by runaway peasants and
serfs, who made up the core of the
Cossackdom. During the
Bohdan Khmelnytsky Uprising (from 1648 to 1657) the north part of this area was settled by Cossacks from the Dnieper basin and came to be known as
Sloboda Ukraine. After a successful uprising of
Bohdan Khmelnytsky, in which he allied with
Crimean Tatars, a new state of
Cossack Hetmanate was established on the territory of the Wild Fields. Hetman Khmelnytsky made a triumphant entry into
Kiev on Christmas 1648, where he was hailed as a liberator of the people from Polish captivity. As ruler of the Hetmanate, Khmelnytsky engaged in state-building across multiple spheres: military, administration, finance, economics, and culture. He invested the
Zaporozhian Host under the leadership of its Hetman with supreme power in the new
Ruthenian state, and he unified all the spheres of Ukrainian society under his authority. This involved building a government system and a developed military and civilian administration out of Cossack officers and Ruthenian nobles, as well as the establishment of an elite within the Cossack Hetman state. After the
Crimean Tatars betrayed the Cossacks for the third time in 1653, Khmelnytsky realized he could no longer rely on
Ottoman support against Poland, and he was forced to turn to
Tsardom of Russia for help. Final attempts to negotiate took place in January 1654 in the town of
Pereiaslav between Khmelnytsky with Cossack leaders and the Tsar's ambassador,
Vasiliy Buturlin, in which the
Pereiaslav agreement was signed. As a result of the treaty, the
Zaporozhian Host became an autonomous Hetmanate within the
Tsardom of Russia. The period of Hetmanate history known as "
The Ruin", lasting from 1657 to 1687, was marked by constant civil wars throughout the state. The newly re-installed
Yurii Khmelnytsky signed the newly composed
Pereyaslav Articles that were increasingly unfavorable for the Hetmanate and later led to introduction of
serfdom rights. In 1667, the Russo-Polish war ended with the
Treaty of Andrusovo, which split the Cossack Hetmanate along the Dnieper River:
Left-bank Ukraine enjoyed a degree of autonomy within the Tsardom of Russia, while
Right-bank Ukraine remained part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was temporarily occupied by the Ottoman Empire in the period of 1672-1699. After the defeat of the Ottomans at the
Battle of Vienna in 1683, Poland managed to recover Right-bank Ukraine by 1690, except for the city of
Kiev, and reincorporated it into their respective
voivodeships of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, while all the Hetmanate administration was abolished between 1699 and 1704. The period of the Ruin effectively ended when
Ivan Mazepa was elected hetman, serving from 1687 to 1708. He brought stability to the Hetmanate, which was again united under a single hetman. During his reign, the
Great Northern War broke out between
Russia and
Sweden. Mazepa and some Zaporozhian Cossacks allied themselves with the Swedes on October 28, 1708. The decisive
battle of Poltava (in 1709) was won by Russia, putting an end to Mazepa's goal of independence, promised in an earlier treaty with Sweden. The
Liquidation of the autonomy of the Cossack Hetmanate has begun. During the reign of
Catherine II of Russia, the Cossack Hetmanate's autonomy was progressively destroyed. After several earlier attempts, the office of hetman was finally abolished by the Russian government in 1764, and his functions were assumed by the Little Russian Collegium, thus fully incorporating the Hetmanate into the
Russian Empire. On May 7, 1775, Empress Catherine II issued
a direct order that the Zaporozhian Sich was to be destroyed. On June 5, 1775, Russian artillery and infantry surrounded the
Sich and razed it to the ground. The Russian troops disarmed the Cossacks, and the treasury archives were confiscated. This marked the end of the
Zaporozhian Cossacks. After a series of Russo-Turkish wars waged by
Catherine the Great, the area formerly controlled by the Ottomans and the Crimean Tatars was incorporated into the
Russian Empire in the 1780s, during which nomadic life in these territories ceased to exist in its ancient version. The Russian Empire started active colonization and built many of the cities in the Wild Fields, including
Odessa,
Yekaterinoslav, and
Nikolaev. The definition of Wild Fields does not include the
Crimean Peninsula. The area was filled with Russian and Ukrainian settlers, and the name "Wild Fields" became outdated; it was instead referred to as New Russia (
Novorossiya). At the end of the 18th century, the name "Wild Fields" ceased to be used. According to the
Historical Dictionary of Ukraine, "The population consisted of military colonists from hussar and lancer regiments, Ukrainian and Russian peasants, Cossacks, Serbs, Montenegrins, Hungarians, and other foreigners who received land subsidies for settling in the area." In the 20th century, after the collapse of the USSR, the region was divided among Ukraine,
Moldova, and
Russia. In 1917, the world's first
anarchist state was formed on the territory of Wild Fields —
Makhnovia. The territory of Wild Fields is located in the modern
Dnipro,
Donetsk,
Zaporizhzhia,
Kirovohrad,
Luhansk,
Mykolaiv,
Odesa,
Poltava,
Kharkiv and
Kherson oblasts of
Ukraine. File:Ukraine. Camporum Desertorum 1648. Beauplan.jpg|Delineatio Generalis Camporum Desertorum vulgo Ukraina (General sketch of devastated fields commonly known as Ukraina) File:Ukraine. Camporum Desertorum. Beauplan 1648.jpg|The Wild Fields on a map by French-Polish
cartographer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan, 1648 File:17 century Wild Fields.jpg|Map of the Wild Fields in the 17th century File:Partition of Ukraine after the Truce of Andrusovo (1667).jpg|Partition of
Cossack Hetmanate after the
Truce of Andrusovo (1667) File:Typus Generalis Ukrainae sive Palatinatuum Podoliae, Kioviensis et Braczlaviensis terras nova delineatione exhibens 1681 B Lukashyk.jpg|General type of the Ukraine or Palatinate of Podolia, showing the lands of Kiev and Braslav with new delineations, 1681 File:Witsen - Tartaria.jpg|In 1705, Amsterdam mayor
Nicolaas Witsen published a map of Tartaria, or
Tartary (Land of the Tartars), the Wild Fields File:Ukrania quae et Terra Cosaccorum cum vicinis Walachiae, Moldoviae, Johann Baptiste Homann (Nuremberg, 1720).jpg|The Wild Fields (Dzike Polie) on a 1720 map by
Johann Baptist Homann. File:Karta Rizzi-Zannoni.jpg|Map by cartographer
Giovanni Antonio Rizzi-Zannoni, 1772 ==See also==