In the Shadow of Great Powers is the second volume of Christoph Baumer's History of the
Caucasus. It covers the period from the Seljuk domination of the Southern Caucasus around 1050
CE to the present day. After the Kingdom of Georgia's golden age of independent power and
cultural blossoming in the 12th and early 13th centuries the Caucasus was overrun by the
Mongols and soon disintegrated into innumerable smaller kingdoms principalities and khanates.
At the same time an Armenian kingdom in exile maintained a precarious independence in Cilicia
today's southern Turkey by applying a three-way diplomatic policy balanced between the Mongol
Il-Khanate the Crusader states and to a lesser degree the Mameluke Empire. Then followed
four centuries during which the highly fragmented polities of the North and South Caucasus
became political pawns of the regional great powers above all the Ottomans Iran and Russia.
In the wake of World War I the South Caucasus enjoyed a short-lived independence whereas its
northern neighbours were engulfed by the Russian civil wars. But by 1921 the Soviet Union had
re-established Russian dominance over the whole region and from a Western perspective the
region 'disappeared' behind the Iron Curtain. Nevertheless the Caucasian nations kept their
pronounced identities even under Soviet rule giving rise at the dissolution of the Soviet
Union to a number of internecine conflicts. Whereas the Russian Federation managed to maintain
its supremacy over the North Caucasus - albeit at the cost of bloody wars and insurrections -
Armenia Azerbaijan and Georgia succeeded in more or less gaining control over their destiny.
Of these three republics only Azerbaijan secured a wide-ranging independence thanks to its
fossil fuel resources. Following Russian interference Georgia lost control over two of its
provinces while Armenia remains dependent on Russian support in the face of its notoriously
antagonistic relations with neighbouring Azerbaijan and Turkey over the unresolved issue of
Karabakh. In the Shadow of Great Powers includes some 200 full-colour images and maps which
further bring the turbulent history of this region to light.
