South Caucasus §

Small region, imperial pressure system

The South Caucasus is the mountain and lowland region between the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, Anatolia, Iran and Russia. In this atlas it is not a neutral backdrop. It is the pressure system in which three small modern states, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, inherited frontiers shaped by the Russian Empire, Qajar Persia, the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union.

The region's modern political geography begins with Russian imperial expansion. The Treaty of Gulistan in 1813 and the Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828 transferred much of the eastern South Caucasus from Persia to Russia, including the khanates that later became central to Armenian and Azerbaijani territorial memory. Those treaties did not create Armenians, Azerbaijanis or Georgians, but they changed the institutions through which older communities were counted, resettled, educated and mobilised. editorial

The twentieth century layered new borders onto old imperial corridors. The 1918 republics attempted national statehood under conditions of war and collapse. The Soviet settlement then converted disputes over Karabakh, Zangezur and Nakhichevan into internal borders and autonomies. After 1991 those internal borders became international borders, while the unresolved autonomy question became war. The South Caucasus is therefore a region where maps harden late, memories reach back early, and outside powers repeatedly turn local disputes into strategic instruments. editorial