Between Empire and Nature: Land Ownership and Territorial Transformation of Georgia's Black Sea Coast

• In Event: Echoes of Empire: Taming the Nature, Bodies, and Knowledge of Georgia's Black Sea Coast

Abstract

Infamous for their highly humid subtropical climate, treacherous wetlands, deep ravines and swamps, the Kolkheti lowlands have often attracted the attention of travelers and missionaries passing through the Black Sea ports of present-day Georgia, more so than state-sanctioned imperial expeditions aimed at exploring its peripheral estates and territories. Up until the mid-19th century, the territories of the Kolkheti lowlands remained what Dane Kennedy refers to as 'the last blank spaces' - regions that were either unexplored or overlooked by imperial gaze. However, this imperial perspective shifted amid the ascendancy of global trade and commodity capitalism, when tea, citrus, and exotic plantations became emblematic of Russian nobility's consumption patterns. Subsequently, research expeditions were initiated to expand imperial knowledge about the climatic, geological, and agronomical features of these territories. Drawing on archival sources, expedition notes, and other historical materials, I will examine how the reconceptualization of nature from "oppressive" to "productive" catalyzed fundamental shifts in land ownership regimes, transforming these lands from common to private ownership under imperial governors and nobility. This research interrogates how this transformation in land ownership regimes reshaped the territoriality of Kolkheti wetlands, remapping its physical and social geography through new patterns of spatial organization, infrastructural installations, resource allocation, and labor relations.

Author

• Tamar Qeburia, Ilia State U (Georgia) / IOS Regensburg (Germany)