Zaporizhia

Zaporizhia was the land of the Zaporozhian Cossacks beyond the Dnieper rapids, centered on their fortified Sich. Its emergence in the sixteenth century included the building of Khortytsia Castle in the 1550s, amid efforts to defend against Crimean Tatar raids.

The Khmelnytsky uprising beginning in 1648 produced a Cossack Hetmanate farther north. The Treaty of Andrusovo in 1667 placed the Sich under joint Polish and Russian administration. In 1775 Catherine II disbanded the Sich and incorporated its lands into the Russian province of Novorossiya.