70 Orientalism and Empirementality, “by nature foreign to order and subservience,” into “some-
thing similar to a correctly organized state.”^72
The Orientalist preoccupation with antiquity put Georgia in a spe-
cial relationship to the expanding regime, even a scholarly inspiration
for the exploration of the North Caucasus. It was thus again an im-
portant model shaping the colonization of the North Caucasus. Its
heritage of noble service and incorporation, for example, was fresh in
the minds of officials as they sought similar arrangements with lead-
ing mountain families. Among the antiquities of Georgia, of course,
was the Christian heritage, and scholars such as Bakradze and nu-
merous officials moved naturally from searching for the remnants of
Christian churches, structures, and rituals in Georgia to the North
Caucasus. Archaeology was a science of empire, and military officials
were not just supportive but were actively involved in the process of
the archaeological exploration of Georgian antiquity. Berzhe and
Radde benefited from the active contributions of military figures to a
series of archaeological conferences in Tbilisi, where one of the princi-
pal topics was the archaeology of ancient churches in the region.^73
Georgian church officials and commentators declared their apprecia-
tion and support of the work of the Imperial Archaeological
Commission and its local branch and emphasized the common
ground between the two religious and secular institutions.^74 In the
Georgian case, the question of Christian antiquity again posed Islam
as a problem and impediment to the preservation of the authentic
past. With a perpetual refrain, as we discussed in the last chapter,
Georgians themselves contributed to this imperial preoccupation:
“For thousands of years, with the sword in one hand and the cross in
the other, [Christian Georgia] has defended its fatherland and the Or-
thodox faith from the hands of Muslims,” declared the Georgian
ekzarkh, I.Aleksei, in 1905.^75
The imperial preoccupation with history, archaeology, and
Christianity in the Georgian context coincided with the efforts of
Georgian nativists to recover their own frontier peoples lost to Islam
and conquering empires. In an essay presented to the Academy of
Sciences in 1873, Dimitri Bakradze was careful to insert a case for the
historically Georgian character of numerous peoples in his discussion
of these matters.^76 The Udis (near Dagestan), explained Ingalo
Janashvili in a similar vein, deserved schooling in Georgian because
they “formerly lived in Georgan cities, which were then destroyed in
Mongol times.” The truths of history and archaeology outweighed
the practices of the present: “Their contemporary existence is Tatar,
but the Udis were formerly Georgian.”^77 The situation to the south of
Georgia was similar, emphasized Z. Mtatsmindeli, where Georgians