Cossacks
Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CC%5CO%5CCossacks.htm

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The name Cossack (Ukrainian: козак; kozak) is derived from the Turkic kazak (free man), meaning anyone who could not find his appropriate place in society and went into the steppes, where he acknowledged no authority.

In European sources the term first appears in a dictionary of the Cuman language in the mid-13th century. It is also found in Byzantine sources and in the instructions issued by Italian cities to their colonies on the Black Sea coast, where it is applied to armed men who were engaged in military service in frontier regions and protected trade caravans traveling the steppe routes. By the end of the 15th century the name acquired a wider sense and was applied to those Ukrainians who went into the steppes to practice various trades and engage in hunting, fishing, beekeeping, the collection of salt and saltpeter, and so on.

The history of the Ukrainian Cossacks has three distinct aspects: their struggle against the Tatars and the Turks in the steppe and on the Black Sea; their participation in the struggle of the Ukrainian people against socioeconomic and national-religious oppression by the Polish magnates; and their role in the building of an autonomous Ukrainian state. The important political role played by the Ukrainian Cossacks in the history of their nation distinguishes them from the Russian Cossacks.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984)]