Imperial Confrontation or Regional Cooperation?: Re-conceptualizing Ottoman-Russian Relations in the Black Sea Region, 1768-1830s The Black Sea region from 1768-1830s has traditionally been characterized as a theater of warfare and imperial competition. Indeed, during this period, the Russian and Ottoman Empires engaged in four armed conflicts for supremacy in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and on the Black Sea itself. Based upon research conducted in Ottoman, Bulgarian, Russian, and Ukrainian archives, my paper will seek to balance the historiography of Russian and Ottoman relations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While not discounting geo-strategic or ideological confrontation between the Ottoman and Russian Empires, my paper will emphasize the considerable amount of exchange – of trade, populations, and disease – that took place between these two empires. It will contend that despite repeatedly engaging in military conflict for control over the Black Sea region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Ottoman and Russian states communicated about and coordinated their response to surges in population movements across their mutual Black Sea frontier. Building upon a case study of Bulgarian population movements between the Russian and Ottoman Empires my paper will specifically address: the “transnational” character of Ottoman-Russian relations in the Black Sea region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Ottoman migration and refugee re-settlement initiatives in Rumelia in the early part of the nineteenth century; the impact of imperial competition on the Ottoman state’s adoption of pro-migrant policies to retain and attract reaya populations in Rumelia; the Ottoman state’s evolving conceptualization of subjecthood and “citizenship” in the first part of the nineteenth century; the codification in the Treaty of Bucharest (1812) and Treaty of Adrianople (1829) of ad-hoc agreements concluded by provincial-level Ottoman and Russian state servitors; the extension of the principal of reciprocity to all types of migrants and refugees moving between the Ottoman and Russian Empires as in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; and the question of whether and to what extent Ottoman and Russian state servitors drew upon a common set of ideas and experiences when developing and implementing administrative, economic, military, and political reforms in their respective empires.