History of Batumi

Batumi ( _ka. ბათუმი) is the capital city of Adjara, an autonomous republic in southwest Georgia, located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

The history of Batumi is inextricably bound with that of Adjara. Founded on the site of the Hellenic colony of Bathys, it was a small fortified town in the medieval kingdom of Georgia. In the 17th century, Batumi was conquered by the Ottoman Empire which relinquished its control of the town to the Russian Empire in 1878. It was under the Russian rule that Batumi became a major port city on the Eurasian crossroads. After the successive Ottoman and British occupations at the end of World War I, Batumi and its region passed to the Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1920. After the Sovietization of Georgia in 1921, Adjara was granted the status of an autonomous republic and Batumi became its capital. Along with Poti, Batumi is one of Georgia’s most important ports. It is also an important cultural and political center.

Early history

Ancient history Batumi is purported to be located on the site of one of the Greek colonies on the coast of Colchis. Its environs the ancient Greeks named Bathus Limen or Bathys Limen (i.e., "deep harbor", a description rightfully applicable to the gulf on which Batumi itself stands),Room, A. (2005), "Placenames of the World: Origins and Meanings of the Names for 6,600 Countries, Cities, Territories, Natural Features and Historic Sites". McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina, and London, ISBN 0-7864-2248-3, p. 361] whence the city’s modern name. [Braud David, "Georgia", in: Wilson, Nigel Guy (ed., 2006). "Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece", p. 320. Routledge, ISBN 0415973341.] This Bathys is sometimes identified with Portus altus, possibly a Latin rendition of the locale’s Greek name, of the Tabula Peutingeriana, a road map from the Roman period. [ru icon Inadze, MP (1968), Причерноморские города древней Колхиды ("The Black Sea cities of Ancient Colchis"). p. 121. Tbilisi.]

The earliest archaeologically confirmed settlement on the territory of present-day Batumi dates to the 8th-7th century BC. It is located along the Karolitskhali River and centered on a hillock which is now popularly referred to as Tamar’s Fortress after the medieval Georgian queen Tamar (r. 1184-1213). A number of unearthed imported items, fragments of amphorae among them, testify to the Greek influence there. The locale was a home to a Roman military fort during the reign of Hadrian (r. 117-138 AD), but was deserted for the fortress of Petra constructed under Justinian I (r. 527-565) on the site of the present-day Tsikhis-Dziri to the north of Batumi.

Medieval Batumi

The medieval history of Batumi, or Batomi as Georgians called it down to the early 20th century, is unremarkable and the town is scarcely mentioned in the contemporary sources. However, it reemerges in both Georgian and European accounts in the 15th century. The Venetian diplomats, Giosafat Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, call Batumi Vati or Vathi. Barbaro reports it being one of the two ports of the lord "Bendian" (the other being Sebastopolis, i.e., modern-day Sukhumi), while Contarini describes it as a maritime town centered on a fortress. The "Bendian" of Barbaro is apparently a corruption of Bediani, the title of the Dadiani princes who governed several western Georgian provinces under the increasingly nominal authority of the kings of Georgia.

A curious incident occurred in 1444 when the Burgundian flotilla, after a failed crusade against the Ottoman Empire, penetrated the Black Sea and engaged in piracy along its eastern coastline until the Burgundians under the knight Geoffroy de Thoisy were ambushed during their landing raid at Vati/Batumi. De Thoisy was taken captive and released through the mediation of the emperor John IV of Trebizond.

Ottoman control

After the fragmentation of the Kingdom of Georgia in the late 15th century, the town and district of Batumi passed to the Georgian noble house of Gurieli, Princes of Guria. In the reign of Kakhaber II Gurieli (1469–1483), the Ottomans occupied Batumi, but did not hold it. They returned in force a century later after the decisive defeat which they inflicted on the combined army of Georgian rulers at Sokhoista in 1545. Batumi was reclaimed, first by the prince Rostom Gurieli in 1564, who lost it soon afterwards, and again in 1609 by Mamia II Gurieli. However, the Ottoman naval blockade imposed on the western Georgian coast forced Mamia II into surrendering Batumi and Adjara to the Ottoman control in the December 13 1614 treaty.

Under the Ottoman government, the city became known as Batum and was made a center of the sanjak which stretched from the Chorokhi-Adjaris-Tskali confluence to Tsikhis-Dziri to the north of Batumi. With the Ottoman conquest the Islamization of the region, hitherto Christian, began and would be completed by the end of the 18th century. The Georgian geographer Prince Vakhushti (1696-1757) describes Batum as a town with an excellent citadel, while the French traveler Adrien Dupré, who visited the area in 1807, reports it being a large village with the population of 2,000 living in the houses scattered along the bay and in the nearby forests. Batum had an active port, which was also a big center of the Caucasian slave-trade.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-9, the Russian general Dmitry Osten-Saken made an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate to Batum by the valley of the Ajaris-Tskali, but he only reached Khulo, far east of Batum. During the following two decades, the Ottoman government consolidated their hold of the Batum area by eliminating the power of the local family of Muslim Georgian beys, the Khimshiashvili.Allen, WED. "The March-Lands of Georgia," "The Geographical Journal" 74 (1929), pp. 142-3.] By 1873, Batum was a principal town of Lazistan province with the population around 5,000, whose chief administrator, mutasarrıf, was directly subordinated to the governor-general (wali) of Trabzon.

The Russian interest to Batum did not fade, however. In 1876, a thorough reconnaissance of the area was made by a Georgian scholar and colonel in the Russian service, Prince Dimitri Kazbegi, who left the only general account of the region available at that time. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8, the Ottomans had Batum heavily fortified and successfully resisted the Russian amphibious attempts at capturing the town. However, an eventual defeat in the war forced the Sublime Porte to cede Batum and Adjara, among other territories, to the Russian Empire in the Treaty of San Stefano of March 3 1878. This clause was confirmed, following dramatic negotiations, by the final act of the Congress of Berlin in July 1878. In exchange for acquiescing in a Russian acquisition of Batum, the British Foreign Secretary Marquess of Salisbury persuaded the Russian diplomats to declare Batum a free port, fortifications, naval arsenal, or naval station being forbidden. [Medlicott, William Norton (1963), "Congress of Berlin and After", pp. 102-3. Routledge, ISBN 0714615013.]

Imperial Russian rule

On August 25, 1878, the Russian army under General Dmitry Sviatopolk-Mirsky entered Batum, and the Ottoman marshal Dervish-Pasha surrendered him a city key in Aziziye Square (modern-day Freedom Square).

The town was declared a free port until 1886. It functioned as a center of a special military district until being incoprorated in the Government of Kutaisi on June 12 1883. Finally, on 1 June 1903, with the Okrug of Artvin, it was established as the region (oblast) of Batumi placed under the direct control of the General Government of Georgia.

The expansion of Batumi began in 1883 with the construction of the Batumi-Tiflis-Baku railway completed in 1900 by the finishing of the Baku-Batumi pipeline. Henceforth Batumi became the chief Russian oil port in the Black Sea. The town expanded to an extraordinary extent and the population increased very rapidly: 8,671 inhabitants in 1882, and 12,000 in 1889.

War, Communism and Independence

During 1901, 16 years prior to the Russian Revolution, Joseph Stalin the future leader of the Soviet Union, lived in the city organizing strikes. Unrest during World War I led to Turkey re-entering in April 1918, followed by the British in December, who stayed until July 1920. Kemal Atatürk then ceded it to the Bolsheviks, on the condition that it be granted autonomy, for the sake of the Muslims among Batumi's mixed population.

When the USSR collapsed, Aslan Abashidze was appointed head of Adjara's governing council and subsequently held onto power throughout the unrest of the 1990s. Whilst other regions, such as Abkhazia, attempted to break away from the Georgian state, Adjara maintained an integral part of the Republic's territory. However due to a fragile security situation, Abashidze was able to exploit the central government's weaknesses and rule the area as a personal fiefdom. In May 2004 he fled the region to Russia as a result of mass protests sparked by the Rose Revolution in Tbilisi.

Present Day

Batumi today is the main port of Georgia. It has the capacity for 80,000-tonne tankers to take materials such as oil. This oil originates from Azerbaijan and is shipped all over the world. Smaller oil exports also come from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Additionally the city exports regional agricultural products. Since 1995 the freight conversion of the port has constantly risen, with an approximate 8 million tonnes in 2001. The annual revenue from the port is estimated at between $200 million and $300 million.

Since the change of power in Ajara, Batumi has attracted several international investors with real estate prices in the city trebling since 2001. Kazakh investors have reportedly invested $100 million to purchase more than 20 hotels in the Ajara region of Georgia. Construction of a number of new hotels will be launched in Ajara’s Black Sea resorts starting from 2007.

Batumi was also host to the Russian 12th Military Base. Following the Rose Revolution, the central government pushed for the removal of these forces, and in 2005 an agreement with Moscow was reached. According to the agreement, the process of withdrawal was planned to be completed in a course of 2008, but the Batumi base was officially handed over to Georgia on November 13, 2007, ahead of planned schedule. [ [http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=16321 Russia Hands Over Batumi Military Base to Georgia] . Civil Georgia, Tbilisi. 2007-11-13.]

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