The Black Sea has played a formative role in the creation of the idea of Europe. It was here where the ancient Greeks first came into contact with the nomadic Scythians, out of which developed the Greek discourse of “civilization” vs. “barbarism,” argues Neal Ascherson in his brilliant Black Sea. “In this particular encounter began the idea of ‘Europe’ with all its arrogance, all its implications of superiority, all its assumptions of priority and antiquity, all its pretensions to a natural right to dominate,” he writes, “a ruthless mental dynasty which still holds invisible power over the Western mind.” [...]
Herodotus’ was the minority view: Most of his contemporaries put the Europe-Asia border much farther north, where the Black Sea meets the Don River in today’s Russia. And Georgia, which considers itself the successor to Colchis, has generally been considered geographically part of Asia. To the British historian, statesman, and diplomat James Bryce, touring the Russian empire in 1876, Poti was a port through which “every traveller from the West is condemned to pass through, the most fever smitten den in Asia.” [...]
Saakashvili left power in 2013, but his version of Georgia’s history in Europe has remained the consensus. In 2015, political scientists surveyed Georgian officials from across the political spectrum and found that they espoused a remarkably consistent narrative about Georgian history and its ties to Europe: that Georgia was part of the ancient Greek world and then medieval Christendom, both of which tied it to Europe’s history. In addition, according to this narrative, Georgian values have traditionally been the same as those of other Europeans, with an inherent love for freedom and individuality. [...]
The irony of Georgia’s European identity is that, when it first emerged in the 19th century, it was essentially a Russian import, and the Georgians who picked it up used it to justify closer ties with Russia. Tbilisi was the center of the Russian colonial administration in the Caucasus, and tsarist officials encouraged a sense of shared European identity in order to co-opt Georgians against the more rebellious Caucasian highlanders like Chechens and Dagestanis.
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