Circumstances of the Development of Internal and External Expansion of the North Caucasus Mountain People at the Beginning of the 19th Century

The article substantiates the socio-cultural and other conditions, causes and essence of mountain internal and external expansion, which in the local interpretation took the form of raiding practice. The author lists the problems that the mountaineers of the North Caucasus sought to solve with the help of raids on close or distant neighbors. This phenomenon had a long history and reflected the peculiarities and specifics of the everyday life of mountain societies that maintained a militarized way of life. Together with traditional agricultural activities, equestrianism played an important role in their sociocultural development, contributed to the formation of new social relations in the mountain environment, built on status stratification, and established the institution of private property and inequality among the mountaineers. These processes, however, should not be taken into account as absolutes, since mountain communities had well-developed mechanisms to prevent the decomposition of the established social system. To the greatest extent by the beginning of the 19th century the practice of raiding was developed among the Circassians and the peoples of Dagestan, although all other ethnic groups of the North Caucasus used raids at the first opportunity, due to the fact that it was an attribute of their everyday upbringing and manifestation of the spirit of belligerence.