South Caucasus

• 1. Introduction

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  The South Caucasus sits at a crossroads that has never been peaceful for long. Flanked by the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east, this strip of mountains and lowlands stretches between Europe and Asia, covering roughly 71,850 square miles across the territories of modern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Herodotus, who ancient scholars called the Father of History, and the geographer Strabo both wrote about the autochthonous peoples living here. Those words were set down long before Scythians, Huns, Mongols, and a succession of empires came and went. What made this sliver of land so persistently contested? Who claimed it, who fought over it, and where does it stand today?

• 2. Where Land Meets Empire

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  The Caucasus Mountains themselves form the physical spine of the region. To the south lies an intricate landscape: the Greater Caucasus and the entire Lesser Caucasus mountain range, the Colchis Lowlands, the Kura-Aras Lowlands, the Talysh Mountains, the Lankaran Lowland, and the eastern portion of the Armenian Highlands. This terrain placed the South Caucasus on the peripheries of Iran, Russia, and Turkey simultaneously. That geographic fact alone explains much of what followed. The Achaemenid, Parthian, Sasanian, Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, Mongol, Ottoman, and successive Russian Empires all pressed their claims here. Most of the South Caucasus was, for long stretches of history, under the direct rule of Iran-based empires and considered part of the Iranian world. Ancient kingdoms, including Colchis, Urartu, Iberia, Armenia, and Albania, rose and were absorbed into these imperial orders one after another. The Iranian Parthians were particularly deliberate in their methods. They established eponymous ruling branches in the region: the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, the Arsacid dynasty of Iberia, and the Arsacid dynasty of Caucasian Albania, binding the local kingdoms into their orbit through family lineage.

• 3. Faiths in Collision

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  Zoroastrianism became the dominant religion of the South Caucasus under Iranian imperial rule. Then Christianity arrived, and the Caucasian kingdoms converted. Zoroastrianism lost its broad hold on the region, though Persian power kept it alive in pockets. In the middle of the 8th century, Umayyad armies captured Derbend during the Arab-Khazar wars, and most of the South Caucasus entered the Caliphate. Islam spread widely throughout the region. For centuries afterward, the area became the fault line between Muslim-ruled empires on one side and the Roman, Byzantine, and eventually Russian empires on the other. The Orthodox Christian Kingdom of Georgia rose to dominate much of the South Caucasus, only to be conquered in turn by the Seljuks, Mongols, Safavids, Ottomans, Afsharids, and Qajars. That layering of faiths never fully resolved itself. In the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, observers noted that the complex mix of Muslim and Orthodox Christian communities contributed to the region's instability, comparing it in intricacy to the Middle East.

• 4. Russia Takes the Region

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  Two wars in the first half of the 19th century reshaped the South Caucasus permanently. The Russo-Persian War of 1804-1813 ended with the Treaty of Gulistan, which forced Iran to cede modern-day Dagestan, Eastern Georgia, and most of what is now the Azerbaijan Republic to the Russian Empire. The Russo-Persian War of 1826-1828 followed, ending with the Treaty of Turkmenchay. Under that treaty, Iran lost all of what is now Armenia and the remaining Azerbaijani territory still in Iranian hands. The historic ties between the South Caucasus and Iran were severed. By 1828-1829, Russia also forced the Ottomans to cede Western Georgia. Russia used its new southern boundary to resettle what it called undesirable citizens and tolerated heretics, referred to in Russian administrative language as sektanty. In 1844, present-day Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan were combined into a single czarist government-general, classified as a vice-royalty in 1844-1881 and again in 1905-1917. Following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, Russia annexed Kars, Ardahan, Agri, and Batumi from the Ottomans and established the province of Kars Oblast as its most south-westerly South Caucasian territory.

• 5. Soviet Experiment, Sovereign States

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  After the Russian Empire collapsed in 1918, the region briefly unified twice. First came the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, which lasted from the 9th of April 1918 to the 26th of May 1918. Then came the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, from the 12th of March 1922 to the 5th of December 1936. Both experiments dissolved, and the three territories settled into separate Soviet Socialist Republics within the USSR. When the Soviet Union itself dissolved in 1991, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan emerged as internationally recognized sovereign states. The transition was not smooth. Transit through the region was already hampered by 1989, when a Turkish-Azeri blockade of Armenia began. Two heavily disputed territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, remained sources of acute tension. The Russo-Georgian War of 2008 cut across the region and deepened that instability.

• 6. Three Countries, Diverging Paths

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  Since independence, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan have each charted a different course. Georgia's Rose Revolution in 2004 turned the country toward Western integration, following a path similar to the Baltic states, with the country opening formal ties with NATO and the European Union. Armenia maintained close relations with Russia while also building ties with the EU. Azerbaijan moved away from Russian dependence and instead built a strategic partnership with Turkey. All three countries joined the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the European Political Community, and participate in the EU's Eastern Partnership. All three are also members of NATO's Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and Partnership for Peace. On the 8th of November 2023, the European Commission recommended granting EU candidate status to Georgia, confirmed on the 14th of December 2023, making Georgia the first South Caucasus country to reach that threshold. On the 12th of March 2024, the European Parliament passed a resolution confirming Armenia meets the requirements of Maastricht Treaty Article 49, opening a path for Armenian EU membership. On the 12th of February 2025, Armenia's parliament approved a bill officially endorsing that accession.