Peter Butkov about the Situation in the Caucasus in 1783-1784

Abstract

The retired officer of the Russian army Peter Butkov (1775-1857) collected a large amount of materials for the history of the Caucasus and its neighboring countries and presented it in the form of a fundamental work. It was published by the special commission created for this purpose at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy after the author's death in 1869: Materials for the History of the Caucasus in 1722-1803 in two volumes.

The work contains a lot of important data for researchers interested in the history of the Caucasus and the Middle East in the 18^th century. In this issue of Georgian Source-Studies we present a Georgian translation of part of Butkov's work, which discusses the situation in the Caucasus in 1783-1784 and the plans of the Russian authorities in relation to some of its countries. In the corresponding chapters of this section, the author mainly talks about the Kartli-Kakheti kingdom, the Imereti kingdom and the Shamkhalate of Tarki.

The Georgian translation of the text was made by Davit Merkviladze and Erekle Khutsishvili.