1 Introduction
Notes 1 Introduction 1. Well into that century, the absolute majority of Tbilisi’s population was ethnic Armenian: mostly traders and artisans brought there by subsequent Georgian kings aiming to complement their largely agrarian co-ethnics with an urban population (Suny, 1994: 86–95, 116–117). The co-habitation of Armenians and Azeris (then called ‘Caucasian Tatars’) in Baku, Shushi, Yerevan and throughout the territories that now make up Armenia and Azerbaijan – where both groups were substan- tially intermingled – was relatively peaceful until 1905 (Altstadt, 1992: 28–33; Bournoutian, 1996). 2. Most of the literature approaches the Southern Caucasus from issue- or actor- specific angles, often in combination with the Northern Caucasus, Central Asia, the Black Sea or the ‘Caspian Basin’, social-scientific monographs and edited volumes have concentrated on secessionism/nationalism and state weak- ness (Chervonnaia, 1994; Closson, 2007; Coppieters, 1996b; D. Lynch, 2004; Matveeva, 2002), bilateral inter-unit relations (Croissant, 1998), the regional role of single great powers (particularly Russia) (Baev, 1997; R. Menon, Fedorov, & Nodia, 1999) or have limited their view to single issue-areas: geopolitics/military- strategic matters (Gadzhiev, 2001; Matveeva & Hiscock, 2003), or the one issue that elicits real interest in Western policy circles – energy security (Ebel & Menon, 2000; Karagiannis, 2002; Van der Leeuw, 1999). Very few have tried to take a compre- hensive and theoretically systematic view of security in the Southern Caucasus as the regional interplay of multiple phenomena emanating from both material and ideational factors (e.g. Cheterian, 2008). 3. In fact, RSCs are described as ‘process formations’ within the Waltzian interna- tional system (p.
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