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  • Georgia
    • Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
    The flag of Georgia

    Georgia is a country in the central part of the Caucasus region between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. The region was one of the first where the inhabitants converted in large numbers to Christianity in ancient times and the name of the country derives indirectly from St George, an early Christian martyr who was born and lived in the Near East. Like its neighbors in the Caucasus, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Georgia has been dominated by more powerful neighbors such as the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire over many centuries. It finally seceded from Russian control in 1991 as the Soviet Union was collapsing at the end of the Cold War. It has had a complex relationship with the Russian Federation ever since, including wars over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The capital Tbilisi is the only major city, with one and a quarter million of Georgia’s 3.7 million inhabitants living here.[1]

    The regions of Georgia

    For an otherwise small country, Georgia is divided into a very large 69 municipalities. Some of the most historically important provinces/regions include:

    • Lower Kartli
    • Inner Kartli
    • Upper Kartli
    • Kakheti
    • Hereti
    • Imereti
    • Samegrelo
    • Guria
    • Adjara
    • Svaneti
    • Racha

    There are also five largely self-governing cities in Georgia, the capital Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi, Poti and Rustavi.[2]

    Finally, there are two autonomous republics within Georgia. The Autonomous Republic of Adjara in the south-western corner of the country is home to the ethnic Adjarian people and has had regional autonomy since Georgian independence. The Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia is in the northwest of Georgia. It is a de-facto part of the Russian Federation today after being taken over during the Russo-Georgian War of 2008.[3]

    History of Georgia

    Owing to its location on the passageway from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe through the narrow Caucasus to the Near East, the region in which Georgia lies today has experienced a great number of migrations over the millennia. Groups as varied as the Hittites and Medians in the second millennium BCE and the Cimmerians in the first millennium BCE passed through here in antiquity.[4] By the middle of the first millennium BCE the region was becoming involved in the wider politics of the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean and the Kingdom of Colchis existed here as a unified state. Georgia remained a frontier society for centuries thereafter, at once experiencing pressure from Indo-European groups like the Sarmatians and Pechenegs that dominated the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to the north and from the Romans and Armenians to the south.

    King David IV

    Georgia’s golden age came between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. After hundreds of years of dominance by the Byzantine Empire based out of Constantinople, a number of smaller kingdoms in Caucasus were united by Bagrat, who emerged as the first ruler of a unified Kingdom of Georgia in 1008. Despite being constantly surrounded by Muslim powers in the shape of the Seljuk Turks and the Arab Caliphate to the south and later the converted Mongols to the north, the Christian Kingdom of Georgia persevered for nearly 500 years here in the Caucasus, flourishing under rulers like King David IV who fought off the Turks in the early twelfth century.[5]

    Ultimately in the early modern period Georgia came under foreign domination once again. It was caught between three competing powers who between them ruled a substantial proportion of Eurasia, the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran and the Russian Empire. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Russia emerged victorious in the clash for control over the Caucasus and Georgia remained under Russian rule down to the late twentieth century.[6] Georgia's immersion within Russia’s politics was clearly demonstrated in the fact that Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1953, was Georgian rather than Russian. Georgia achieved independence in 1991, though its modern history has been one of conflict with its more powerful neighbor, notably during the Russo-Georgian War of 2008. The latter has resulted in Russia establishing de-facto control over the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.[7]

    Geography of Georgia

    Sameba Cathedral, Tbilisi, Georgia

    Georgia lies in the Caucasus on the western side of it along the coast of the Black Sea. It is bordered by the Russian Federation to the north, along with the breakaway Republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Azerbaijan lies to the east and Armenia and Turkey to the south. The country is arid, with desert-like conditions in places. It is also quite mountainous, with the Caucasian Mountains in the west of the country. There are contrasts here, with a subtropical climate in places along the Black Sea coast, but the peaks of the Caucasian Mountains nearly constantly covered in snow. Numerous long rivers like the Minoi River drain the region into the Black Sea. Tbilisi, the history of which extends back thousands of years, is the only major city in the country, with more than one-in-three Georgians residing in the capital.[8]

    Researching family history in Georgia

    There are numerous archives and research libraries in Georgia that have collections relevant for the study of Georgian family history and genealogy. They are as follows:

    The National Archives of Georgia, Tbilisi – The National Archives are the legal repository archive for official documentation in Georgia. This means that all government documentation and other official records are deposited here and made available over time to the public. Copies of censuses and other demographic records are stored here, while the archives also hold a wealth of historical records going back to the medieval era. Many of these records can be ordered remotely.[9]

    The National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, Tbilisi – The National Parliamentary Library is the largest book library in Georgia. Its history dates back to 1846 (as Tiflis Public Library) and since the early 1850s it has been a deposit library for any book published in the Caucasus.[10]

    MyHeritage provides access to over 1.3 million military records pertaining to the lands of the Russian Empire during the First World War, including Georgia.

    A major imperial census of the Russian Empire was carried out between 1897 and 1905, including parts of Georgia, and is of great use for genealogical studies, though unfortunately many of the original records are now lost and fragmentary.[11]

    Georgian surnames

    Georgia has a very diverse surname landscape and unlike many other countries, where hundreds of thousands of people will often have the same surname, there are very few dominant surnames in Georgia. The most common is Beridze, but only just over 20,000 people have this surname. Some of the other more common ones, held by in or around 10,000 people in each case, include:

    See also

    Explore more about Georgia

    References

    1. ↑ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/georgia/
    2. ↑ https://civil.ge/archives/217828
    3. ↑ https://warontherocks.com/2018/08/the-august-war-ten-years-on-a-retrospective-on-the-russo-georgian-war/
    4. ↑ https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/cimmerians-nomads
    5. ↑ https://www.worldhistory.org/David_IV_the_Builder/
    6. ↑ https://www.politico.eu/article/georgia-eu-european-union-membership-georgian-dream-party-history-protests-foreign-agents-law-russia/
    7. ↑ https://www.history.com/news/russia-georgia-war-military-nato
    8. ↑ https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5253.htm
    9. ↑ https://archive.gov.ge/en
    10. ↑ https://www.nplg.gov.ge/eng/home
    11. ↑ https://script.byu.edu/russian-handwriting/documents/record-types/1897-census
    12. ↑ https://surnam.es/georgia


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