The Embrace of an Empire, 1801–1813

Abstract

This chapter clarifies the forging of the Russo-Armenian political partnership in the fires of the First Russo-Persian War, during which the shah's Armenians systematically assisted the tsar's military and political agents. It examines Russo-Georgian and Armeno-Georgian tensions and Russia's rivalries with its Western and Eastern counterparts. The chapter also explores how, and why, Armenians emerged as imperial Russia's primary partners in the early nineteenth century. Although the political symbiosis between Russia and Armenia blossomed in that era, they were already familiar to each other well before the onset of tsarist imperialism in the Caucasus. It investigates the Russo-Armenian encounter that happened centuries before the Romanov incorporation of Eastern Armenia in 1828.

Praskovia Uvarova’s Archeological Ambitions: Sex, Science, and Empire in Nineteenth‐Century Russia

“…From the annexation of the Georgian kingdom in 1801 to the capture of the Imam Shamil in 1859, the tsarist government had deployed a variety of strategies to incorporate the Caucasus into the empire. 45 Praskovia took the next steps, using archeology to affirm a scientific basis for imperial integration. 46 More than simply cataloging the artefacts of material culture, she authored a series of travelogues that helped to integrate the region into the imperial imagination.…”