Although Azov was the site of the earliest initiatives of the reign of Tsar Peter I, few western studies have focused on empire-building in the early Petrine period. In her exhaustive survey of Peter's reign, Lindsay Hughes avoided issues of imperial integration and consciously eschewed discussion of “Cossacks or tribespeople.” Others focused primarily on the imperial rhetoric of the later years of Peter's reign, a period in which abundant legislation, treatises, and discourses were generated. Histories of the Don region have failed to measure piecemeal changes in administrative practice against the revolutionary transformations taking place in the new government colony next door. This chapter argues that the conquest of Azov in 1696 brought incorporation of the Don region into the boundaries of the empire, but not coordinated integration of the region into Russian legal structures.

This and subsequent chapters will heed Paul Bushkovitch's admonition against notions of Tsar Peter “as a sort of Deus ex machina, whose magic wand effects all change in a society that is a vacuum.” Correspondingly, this study will devote attention to the intricacies of Petrine policy decisions and invoke the name of the tsar only in cases of his participation in deliberations. In documents devoted to Cossack affairs, Peter emerges as an ambivalent empire-builder who left no clear decree on the degree to which Cossacks would be made to conform to imperial norms.