Bayramov A. – ENLIGHTENMENT IN TRANSCAUCASIA IN 19TH CENTURY
ENLIGHTENMENT IN TRANSCAUCASIA IN 19TH CENTURY
Bayramov A.
PhD student, Department of History,
Hacettepe University, Ankara Turkiye
Abstract
Despite its rich cultural and historical legacy, Transcaucasia has been on the global agenda due to political and military conflicts in the last 30 years. The conflict in Abkhazia and Ossetia, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh Wars, have overshadowed the region’s rich cultural and economic heritage. However, when we look back at the historical past, throughout the empire age, we can see that ethnic groups in the region strove to highlight their own cultural and literary creativity. This literary and ideological development was led by the intellectual elite of Transcaucasia. Influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution and Russia’s imperialist policies, Georgian, Armenian, and Turkish intellectuals struggled to resist the exploitation of their people by the major powers in the region (Iran, the Ottoman, and Russian Empires). In fact, after a thirty-year armed struggle during which Russia invaded Transcaucasia, realists took important steps by changing their methods to develop national ideas and enlighten the people. Despite the differences and similarities among the three ethnic groups, this process, which began with literary enlightenment in the second half of the 19th century, resulted in political organization, national identity formation, and the establishment of independent states. The study presents the literary enlightenment period in Transcaucasia by bringing together second-hand sources of Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani historians along with other relevant individual studies on the subject.
Keywords: imperialism, enlightenment, literature, language, printing
