Empires of Conquest and Civilization in Georgian Political and Intellectual Discourse since Late Nineteenth Century
Abstrakt
This article explores understandings of the concept of empire in Georgian political intellectual discourses in the pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet Georgian contexts. Beginning with an elaboration of contemporary political and scholarly understanding of empire, the article then - drawing on the approaches of intellectual and transnational history - distils two meanings: empire of conquest and of civilisation.
Both meanings are mainly attributed to the Russian State in its political incarnations as an empire, as the fulcrum of the Soviet Union and more recently as an entity in search of a Eurasian Union. The article argues that while for most of the nineteenth century, the concept of empire embodied by the Russia state was invested with both meanings, particularly by the end of the Soviet period, it came to be singularised to that of conquest.
More generally, it suggests that while in contemporary international relations empire, as a political entity, remains discredited morally and legally, the Neo-Gramscian concept of hegemony in IR scholarship elucidates why and when some hegemonic states act as empires of conquest, and while some others can do both, thus mustering their 'structural power' as well as 'soft power'.