On November 7, at 7 pm Tbilisi time, the biweekly research colloquium of the Institute for Social and Cultural Research, Ilia State University, will host Samuel Coggeshall, visiting assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, with a talk on his current research project: “British Occupation Regimes in Georgia, 1919-1920”.
Abstract:
This paper examines British civil and military occupation regimes in Georgia after the First World War, in 1919 and 1920. Nearly 20,000 British troops were deployed to Georgia in 1919. The use of fresh archives and local records breathes life into this forgotten episode of the extension of British imperial power in the new independent national states emerging from the former Russian Empire after the First World War.
The years after the Armistice, or the “long” First World War, were characterized by British imperial expansion across the former Ottoman Empire and the British Empire’s greatest territorial extent. This British expansion made use of new forms of statehood and imperial rule, like the Mandates system. The role of occupation in the extension of British power, and the place of British intervention in the former Russian Empire within this imperial system, have been less well documented or theorized. Ultimately, this presentation will argue that British postwar occupations in the Caucasus were primarily concerned with maintaining social order within independent Georgia and using Georgian territory as a military backstop against the Soviet state.
Bio:
Sam Coggeshall is a historian of modern Europe focusing on late imperial Russia and the early Soviet state. He currently teaches as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian and Soviet History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 2023. His current book project covers the role of local Soviet and British imperial officials in the making of national territories during the Russian Civil War.
The event will take place in English via Zoom. Registration is required.
To register please follow this link
Source: British National Archives (TNA), MPI 1/397