Reality Check: Georgia Was Never on the Silk Road until Now
Op-Ed
A closer look at historical sources from the ancient, medieval or even 15th-19th cc. history of Georgia shows an unchanged pattern of major trade routes running to the south, west, east and north of Georgia. Those routes were usually connected to outer Middle East, Central Asia, and the Russian hinterland.
Only rarely did the routes include parts of the Georgian land and, when it happened, it lasted for merely a short period of time as geography precluded transit through Georgia: the Caucasus Mountains and seas constrained movement, while general geographic knowledge for centuries remained limited.
It was this problem that drove many Georgian monarchs to seek to break out of this geographic blockade. One of the solutions was to expand southwards, towards the Caspian Sea, as well as towards eastern Anatolia. No surprise that those policies coincided with the famous Golden Age of the Georgian monarchy in the 11th-12th cc.: King David, Giorgi III and Queen Tamar spent decades of their rule trying to gain control over North Armenia and modern-day Azerbaijan with the goal to control international caravan routes, nowadays commonly known as the Silk Road.
But then the Mongols came, and all hit a downwards turn when the Georgian monarchy officially disintegrated in 1490.
Thus, despite the commonly held belief, Georgia was never part of the Silk Road, but always strove to be.
Almost five centuries had passed since the end of the Georgian monarchy when the country re-appeared as a unified state after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
With the five centuries, technologies changed, reducing the geographic factor, and even greater change was seen in the political situation in the region and wider Eurasia overall. Routes through Armenia and Turkey should have taken precedence, but the war over Nagorno-Karabakh negated Armenia's transit capabilities. Then came Azerbaijan's increased cooperation (almost full-blown alliance) with a regional power - Turkey. Numerous roads, pipelines, and railways followed these routes from the Caspian to the Black Sea.
This conditioned Georgia's status as a transit state, but at first only on a regional level. Advantageous development on a much larger level was seen when China reintroduced the Silk Road concept, trying to reconnect to the Mediterranean and Europe through numerous routes. As in ancient medieval times, modern trade routes from China go through Russia and Central Asia, and Georgia has a real chance to play a crucial role at least on second-tier level routes, if not among the first level ones.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, we have seen a definite break with Georgia's perpetual dilemma, the geographic blockade. No longer is Georgia closed off and at the periphery of regional or even global trade and transit routes. One could even say that from an economic point of view, modern opportunities far outweigh the ancient or medieval potential of Georgia.
The 11th and 13th cc. were the only times before the modern era when Georgia had Silk Road routes on its land, though incorporated from Armenians, Seljuks and various other Turkic groupings.
From the millennia-wide perspective, modern Georgia, despite its under-developed infrastructure, has always had the historic momentum to become a hub for trade and transit.
By Emil Avdaliani
The Silk Road and Arab Sea Routes (11th and 12th Centuries). Source: transportgeography.org