Contested Frontiers: Borders and Border Spaces in the South Caucasus from the Second Half of the 19th Century to the 1920s

Abstract

A closer look at the 19th century ethnographic maps of the Caucasus reveals the demographic diversity of the region at the crossroads of three empires: the Persian, the Ottoman, and the Russian. To consolidate their power in this peripheral region, these empires, and later the Soviet authorities, experimented with various scenarios of resettlement, making the region an imperial “laboratory” with massive border shifts. This article discusses the processes of border development in the South Caucasus, beginning with the integration of this region into the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century and continuing until Sovietization in the early 1920s. During this period, the borders in this region were particularly characterized by constant discourses, territorial claims, identity struggles, and ethnic divisions. The article considers the emergence and function of borders and border spaces from the perspective of their temporal evolution and analyses their mutability over time in an era marked by wars, revolutions, conflicts, and political upheavals. The aim is to provide a better understanding of why borders, whose meaning had diminished almost to insignificance during the Soviet period, became subjects of conflict again, turning them into sites of unpredictable aggression.

Keywords: Armenia; Azerbaijan; war; contested borders; conflict; territoriality.