In May 1918, the Democratic Republic of Georgia declared its independence, as the new Bolshevik state to the north attempted to consolidate its power, and as Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Bolshevik Russia all eyed strategic opportunities in the newly independent Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The year 1918 was in many ways an inflection point – in the window between the Brest-Litovsk settlement which Bolshevik Russia negotiated to end fighting with the Central Powers in March 1918, and the Paris Peace Conference which took place throughout 1919 to determine the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. Giorgi Astamadze examines an important diplomatic partnership of this chaotic period – that of Germany with Georgia. Drawing on foreign ministry and defense ministry archives in Berlin, Vienna, London, and Tbilisi, as well as personal papers of German, Georgian, and British officers and diplomats engaged in the Caucasus, Astamadze shows how Great Power politics, economic interests, and nationalist and social-democratic ambitions intersected to bring Germany to Georgia's aid in that strategic, if brief, window of opportunity.

Germany's links to the Caucasus spanned at least a century prior, when the first German settlers arrived in the region in 1817. They settled in Katharinenfeld (Bolnisi, today in Georgia) and Helenendorf (Göygöl, today in Azerbaijan) as farmers, including developing wine production. By 1917, there were 10,856 German villagers in Georgia. In the mid-nineteenth century, German firms began to develop commercial ties to the region, led by the Siemens family. Siemens was granted a contract to construct a telegraph line in the Caucasus; Walter Siemens was dispatched to Tiflis, the seat of Russian governance in the Caucasus, to oversee the telegraph project. He served thereafter as Prussian consul in Tiflis and as consul of the North German Confederation in 1865-1868. When he died in Tiflis in 1868, his brother Otto replaced him. As commercial relations deepened for Siemens and other German firms, Germany expanded its diplomatic footprint in the Caucasus, opening vice-consulates in Batumi, Poti, Kedabeg (now Gadabay, Azerbaijan, where Siemens had a copper mine), and Baku.

While Baku and its vast oil resources are typically touted as a significant reason for geopolitical contests over the Caucasus, Georgian manganese was another local resource of strategic significance. On the eve of World War I, 40% of global manganese production came from the Georgian town of Chiatura. Unlike the Baku oil industry, which had significant investment stakes by firms from different foreign states, German firms had a monopoly over Georgian manganese production. Moreover, as German-Georgian links deepened through 1918, Germany sought to reinforce its firms’ strategic advantage by securing long-term contracts not only for mining, but also for rail transit through the Caucasus and access to the Black Sea port at Poti to bring product to Europe, as well as establishing Black Sea telegraph links, so that Georgia would be more closely integrated into German and European infrastructure.

While the priority of German engagement in the Caucasus was the promotion of commercial interests, even prior to the outbreak of war, German officials sought to cultivate contacts with emerging nationalist circles in the region, which could be leveraged for German interests in the event of war with Russia. With the start of the war and development of Eastern Question, the Kaiserreich sought to establish a buffer zone with Russia, comprising independent states of non-Russian peoples, which led Germany to promote revolutionary politics throughout the north and south Caucasus. In the case of Georgians, this effort drew upon recent, proactive overtures from the Georgian National Committee in Berlin, as well as taking advantage of intellectual and cultural links established among a generation of leading Georgian thinkers who studied in Germany over the previous two decades. Economic interests and intellectual/cultural linkages made German-Georgian collaboration particularly appealing at the time. According to one contemporary observer in 1918, “It seems as if the intention of Germany was to make Georgia her deputy-governor in the Caucasus and the Middle East, just as she is attempting to make Finland her deputy governor to North Russia, and Bulgaria to the Balkans” (40). In the event, Germans ended up working not with the Georgian nationalists who sought to restore the Georgian monarchy, but rather with Georgian social democrats who garnered significant popular support in the country.

May 1918 saw Georgia's declaration of independence and increasing competition between Germany and the Ottomans in the Caucasus. The perceived security threat from Turkey led Germany to deploy troops to Georgia for the rest of the year, in the capital at Tiflis as well as in Abkhazia and in southern border districts. In Astamadze's telling, “In the summer and autumn of 1918, thanks to the presence of German battalions, Georgia was the safest country in the South Caucasus. The acceptance of the Germans in Georgia was undoubtedly good. If the war had lasted longer, it is likely that the German-Georgian economic agreements would have come into force. The connection between Georgia and Germany would have developed further. Three factors were decisive for the Georgian sympathies towards Germany: 1. The proclamation of independence and the establishment of the first modern Georgian state ever. 2. Rescue from the Ottoman occupation and also from the Bolshevik threat. 3. Non-interference in the country's internal affairs.” (228) Astamadze concludes not only that, for Georgia, the German Kaiserreich's intervention in the Caucasus was the greatest success of its diplomatic efforts, but also that only through German entanglement was Georgia's independence from Russia and Turkey possible.

Giorgi Astamadze's book provides a welcome, multifaceted, and archivally grounded perspective on the opportunities, challenges, and choices confronting German and Georgian leaders in that pivotal year. His work enriches our understanding of the tumultuous “continuum of crisis” faced by the Caucasian borderlands, as well as the possibilities – and limits – of new diplomatic alignments in the face of war.