King David (“The Builder”) Agmashenebeli, regarded as Georgia’s greatest monarch, ruled from 1089 until 1125 uniting the country, making it the most powerful in the Near East and leading to the nation’s Golden Age. Behind his statue is the Iveria Hotel, the most prestigious during the Soviet period, but now home to refugees from the Abkhazian conflict.

Geography explains so much about Georgia. The high Caucasus Mountains form its Northern boundary with Russia, the great Black Sea is to the West and not far away to the East, beyond Azerbaijan, is the oil-rich Caspian Sea. Georgia is bound-in by nature but also is a natural corridor between East and West. It is located in a place that could be called Eurasia.

Near-by neighbors to the South are Armenia, Turkey, Syria, Iran, along with Pakistan and Afghanistan. And just beyond are the lands of Central Asia. Georgia forms a passageway for the “new” silk route connecting East with West.

So, Georgian geography is of crucially important economic and political significance.

Political Geography
Its strategic significance was recognized early as the Czars of Russia sought a warm water port and later needed a barrier for Russia’s battles with Turkey and ancient Persia, which we know as Iran. Beginning with a take-over in 1783 and continuing through the end of the Soviet empire in 1991, Georgia was dominated by its big neighbor to the North. Even today Russia is the country’s largest trading partner, but also a source of continuing irritation over border skirmishes at Chechnya and in the break-away Georgian area of Abkhazia. In late August Russian business-government interests bought controlling ownership of the entity that provides natural gas–heat and cooking energy–for most of Georgia. Russia wants to keep Georgia on as tight a leash as possible.

With the huge oil fields in Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea and with the global war on terrorism, Georgia has become even more important to the United States than merely as a place to help post-Soviet democracy flourish. These goals are shared by the European Union nations, as well as by the United Nations. All of the above have a large and focused assistance commitment to Georgia. More than $1.5 billion in U.S aid alone has gone to the country in the ten years since the closing down of the Soviet Union. The sum jumped in 2002 when the annual contribution of $103 million in foreign aid was supplanted by $64 million in military funds for an important “Train and Equip” program, designed to not only boost the internal capabilities of the Georgia defense forces, but to help in the American global war on terrorism.

Economic Geography
The possibilities for Georgia to benefit from its location were quite apparent to Eduard Shevardnadze when he accepted the country’s leadership in1992. He had thought about a bridge between East and West as Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union and after working to create stability in his country torn by civil war, the “Energy Corridor” became one of three main goals for his presidency. (The others being containing Russia and creating internal democratic institutions.)

Geography formed Georgia’s destiny also by creating a separate people in a small area about half the size of the American state of Georgia. Georgian history tells this story.

History of a People
The Georgians claim descent from Karthlos, the great grandson of Noah, of Ark fame. In the Georgian language, they still call themselves Karthians and refer to their country as Sakartvelo, land of the Kartvelians.

Earliest Pre-Humans Out of Africa
Protohuman remains about 1.8 million years old (two skulls) were found in the summer of 2001, and augmented this past summer (at Dmanisi about 90 miles from Tbilisi) with teeth and other bones. This discovery, by an expedition led by the Georgian National Museum and joined by archeologists from around the world, represents the oldest pre-humans to be discovered out of Africa and has caused a sensation in science with a cover story in National Geographic Magazine and rampant speculation about its meaning for the history of human evolution.

Forming civilization and the early builders of Georgia
Tribes were on the verge of statehood in the region as early as 14 centuries before Christ and the first state of Kartli was formed in the 4th Century BC, ruled briefly by Alexander the Great and allied with Rome in the 1st Century BC. An early King was Mirian who was converted to Christianity by Nino, a female slave from Turkey. Thus Georgia became the world’s second Christian state, preceded only by Armenia. East and West Georgia were united in 1008 but remained a minor state until the reign of King Davit IV (David the Builder). He made Georgia the most powerful state in the Near East and its economic strength led to a cultural Golden Age in the 12th Century. Georgia’s favorite monarch is Davit’s great-granddaughter, Queen Tamar, also known as King Tamar, who extended Georgian rule from the Black Sea to the Caspian. This “Golden” reign came to a shocking end, though, when Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes moved in, resulting in the end of the centralized state and sub-division into numerous smaller family conquests. All this was further divided in a huge fight between the Persian and the Ottoman Empires that lasted nearly 200 years.

Then came the Russians
The 18th Century saw the beginning of modern times for Georgia, with the rise of a new power, Peter the Great’s Russia, and the Czar’s efforts to expand toward warm water ports. In 1783 Persia’s new Shah tried to reimpose his sovereignty and the then King of Kartli was forced to ask for Russian aid. A treaty of protection was signed in 1783, with Count Paul Potemkin, cousin of Catherine the Great’s lover and counselor, Grigori Potemkin, coming to Tbilisi in May 1785 as Russia’s first viceroy of the Caucasus.

For the next 200 years first Russia, then the Soviet Union would rule Georgia. Under the Czars economic development moved rapidly forward but the local population did not greatly benefit. By 1900 two-thirds of Georgia’s land was owned by Russians. Ilya Chavchavadze and Akaki Tsereteli were prominent intellectuals who helped develop a sense of national consciousness among the people and political unrest grew with the beginning of the 20th Century, as it did all over the Russian Empire.

With the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 Georgia briefly gained independence, but great power struggles over the Caspian oil-fields resulted in a deal between Britain and France with Moscow, resulting in the Red Army occupying Tbilisi in early 1921. For the next 70 years the Communist Party ruled. Eduard Shevardnadze had been appointed first secretary of the Georgian Party in 1972 and was asked by his political ally Mikhail Gorbachev to become Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union in 1985.

Contemporary history
With the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Georgia was the first Soviet Republic to elect a non-Communist government, as an ardent Georgia Nationalist, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, came to power. Extremely controversial, with an aversion to criticism and a program that isolated Georgia from the West and from Russia, he almost bankrupted the country. Within a year Shevardnadze was invited back to power, by a Military Council to be its chairman, with the body being renamed the State Council. Shevanardze was elected President in 1995 and re-elected in 2000. He was popular at first until economic difficulties set in, in the late 90s. He continued to be respected for his ability to balance Georgian interests between Russia and the West. With Parliamentary elections scheduled for 2003, and with Shevardnadze to be replaced in Presidential elections in 2005, Georgia had evolved into a dynamic multi-party democracy.