Political relations between Russia and Georgia began in the end of the same century, namely in 1492, when the king of Kakhetia sought the protection of Ivan III. during a war between the Turks and the Persians. In the 17th century the two states were brought into still closer relationship. In 1619, when Georgia was harried by Shah Abbas of Persia, Theimuraz (1629-1634), king of Georgia, appealed for help to Michael, the first of the Romanov tsars of Russia, and his example was followed later in the century by the rulers of other petty Thargamosid or Caucasian states, namely Imeretia and Guria. In 1638 the prince of Mingrelia took the oath of allegiance to the Russian tsar, and in 1650 the same step was taken by the prince of Imeretia. Vakhtang VI. of Georgia put himself under the protection of Peter the Great early in the 18th century. When Persia fell into the grip of the Afghans early in the 18th century the Turks seized the opportunity, and, ousting the Persians from Georgia, captured Tiflis and compelled Vakhtang to abdicate. But in 1735 they renounced all claim to supremacy over the Caucasian states. This left Persia with the predominating influence, for though Peter the Great extorted from Persia (1722) her prosperous provinces beside the Caspian, he left the mountaineers to their own dynastic quarrels. Heraclius II. of Georgia declared himself the vassal of Russia in 1783, and when, twelve years later, he was hard pressed by Agha Mahommed, shah of Persia, who seized Tiflis and laid it in ruins, he appealed to Russia for help. The appeal was again renewed by the next king of Georgia, George XIII., in 1798, and in the following year he renounced his crown in favour of the tsar, and in 1801 Georgia was converted into a Russian province. The state of Guria submitted to Russia in 1829.
(J. T. Be.)
Ethnology.—Of the three main groups into which the Caucasian races are now usually divided, the Georgian is in every respect the most important and interesting. It has accordingly largely occupied the attention of Orientalists almost incessantly from the days of Klaproth. Yet such are the difficulties connected with the origin and mutual relations of the Caucasian peoples that its affinities are still far from being clearly established. Anton von Schiefner and P.V. Uslar, however, arrived at some negative conclusions valuable as starting-points for further research. In their papers, published in the Memoirs of the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences and elsewhere (1859 et seq.), they finally disposed of the views of Bopp and Brosset (1836), who attempted on linguistic grounds to connect the Georgians with the Indo-European family. They also clearly show that Max Müller’s “Turanian” theory is untenable, and they go a long way towards proving that the Georgian, with all the other Caucasian languages except the Ossetian, forms a distinct linguistic family absolutely independent of all others. This had already been suspected by Klaproth, and the same conclusion was arrived at by Fr. Müller and Zagarelli.
Uslar’s “Caucasian Family” comprises the following three great divisions:
1. Western Group. Typical races: Circassians and Abkhasians.
2. Eastern Group. Typical races: Chechens and Lesghians.
3. Southern Group. Typical race: Georgians.
Here the term “family” must be taken in a far more elastic sense than when applied, for instance, to the Indo-European, Semitic or Eastern Polynesian divisions of mankind. Indeed the three groups present at least as wide divergences as are found to exist between the Semitic and Hamitic linguistic families. Thus, while the Abkhasian of group 1 is still at the agglutinating, the Lesghian of group 2 has fairly reached the inflecting stage, and the Georgian seems still to waver between the two. In consequence of these different stages of development, Uslar hesitated finally to fix the position of Georgian in the family, regarding it as possibly a connecting link between groups 1 and 2, but possibly also radically distinct from both.
Including all its numerous ramifications, the Georgian or southern group occupies the greater part of Transcaucasia, reaching from about the neighbourhood of Batum on the Black Sea eastwards to the Caspian, and merging southwards with the Armenians of Aryan stock. It comprises altogether nine subdivisions, as in the subjoined table: