Georgia

Georgia, country, Asia

Georgia (jôr`jə), Georgian Sakartvelo, Rus. Gruziya, officially Republic of Georgia, republic (2005 est. pop. 4,677,000), c.26,900 sq mi (69,700 sq km), in W Transcaucasia. Georgia borders on the Black Sea in the west, on Turkey and Armenia in the south, on Azerbaijan in the east, and on Russia in the north. Tbilisi is the capital and by far the largest city.

Land and People

Situated on the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus and in the Lesser Caucasus, Georgia is largely ruggedly mountainous. The Suram Mts. separate the Rion (Rioni) and Kura river valleys. The perpetually snowcapped Mt. Kazbek, the tallest peak within Georgia, rises to 16,541 ft (5,042 m). The climate is humid subtropical in the Black Sea lowland of Mingrelia, alpine in the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, and dry in the Kura steppes in the east. Included in Georgia are the Abkhazia, the Adjarian Autonomous Republic (Adjaria), and South Ossetia (see Ossetia). In addition to Tbilisi, other important cities are Rustavi, Kutaisi, Batumi, Sukhumi, and Poti.

More than two thirds of the population are Georgians—a people who speak a language related to the Ibero-Caucasian family of languages. Armenians, Azeris, and Russians are the other major ethnic groups, with Ossetians, Abkhazians, and Adjars in smaller numbers. The Georgian church, to which most of the ethnic Georgians belong, is an independent Eastern Orthodox congregation. Georgian is the official language. There has been a standard Georgian literary language since about the 5th cent. (see Georgian literature). Russian is also widely spoken. Educational and cultural institutions include the university at Tbilisi (est. 1918) and the Georgian Academy of Sciences.

Economy

Agriculture is a leading occupation in Georgia, whose warmer districts produce large quantities of tea and citrus fruits; tobacco, wine grapes, rice, and mulberry trees (for silk) are also grown. Sheep, pigs, and poultry are raised. Georgia is rich in minerals, notably manganese (mined mostly at Chiatura and in Imeritia) and copper; tungsten, coal, lignite, barites, iron, molybdenum, oil, and peat are also found. There are sizable deposits of marble, dolomite, talc, and clays for use in construction.

Georgia had a large and varied industrial sector. Its chief manufactures included transport equipment, electric motors, machine tools, iron and steel, railroad and mining equipment, chemicals, textiles, wine, and building materials, but many industries collapsed after independence, and economic redevelopment has been hindered by warfare, corruption, and the effects of Russia's economic troubles. The Black Sea shore is dotted with resorts and spas that attract numerous tourists. The construction of an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to a Black Sea terminal at Supsa, Georgia, promised greater foreign investment in the economy. The Black Sea coast railway, the line from Batumi through Tbilisi to Baky; the Georgian Military Road; and the Ossetian Military Road are the country's main transportation arteries. Although Georgia has abundant hydroelectric energy, it must import the bulk of its fuel. The chief trade partners are Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.

Government

Georgia is a multiparty republic operating under the constitution of 1995 as amended. The executive branch is headed by the president, who is elected by popular vote for a five-year term and has direct control over those governmental bodies responsible for national security; the prime minister is reponsible for managing the nation's economic policies. There is a popularly elected 235-member parliament. Some of the members are directly elected by districts; the rest are elected on a proportional basis. The country is divided into 53 administrative divisions, or rayons, and nine cities.

History

Early History through Soviet Rule

Georgia developed as a kingdom about the 4th cent. B.C. Mtskheta was its earliest capital; coastal Georgia was the Colchis of the ancient Greeks. The Persian Sassanids, who ruled the country from the 3d cent. A.D., were expelled c.400. In the 4th cent. Christianity was introduced in Georgia. In the 9th cent. the rule of the Bagrationi family began. Alp Arslan held the region in the 11th cent., but King David IV (or David II, known as David the Builder) expelled the Seljuk Turks, united the Georgians, and reestablished their independence.

In the 12th and 13th cent. Georgia under Queen Thamar (1184–1213) reached its greatest expansion (it then included the whole of Transcaucasia) and cultural flowering. From that period dates the national poem, The Man in the Panther's Skin, by Shota Rustaveli. Ravaged (13th cent.) by the Mongols, Georgia revived but was again sacked by Timur (c.1386–1403). In the 15th cent. King Alexander I divided Georgia into three kingdoms (Imertia, Kakhetia, and Karthlia) among his sons, and the period of decline set in.

In the 16th cent. Georgia became an object of struggle between Turkey and Persia. In 1555, W Georgia passed under Turkish suzerainty and E Georgia (Kakhetia and Karthlia) under Persian rule. In the 18th cent. kings of Kakhetia tried to unite Georgia, but, pressed by the Turks and the Persians, accepted (1783) vassalage to Russia in exchange for assistance. The last king, George XIII, threatened by Persia, abdicated (1801) in favor of the czar and ceded Kakhetia and Karthlia to Russia. Between 1803 and 1829 Russia also acquired from Turkey the western parts of Georgia (Abkhazia, Mingrelia, Imeritia, and Guria).

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Georgian Menshevik party (see Bolshevism and Menshevism) proclaimed (May, 1918) Georgia's independence. The Soviet government in Moscow recognized (May, 1920) the independence, but in 1921 the Red Army invaded Georgia, and in Feb., 1921, it was proclaimed a Soviet republic. It joined the USSR in 1922 as a member of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, and in 1936 it became a separate union republic. Parts of Georgia were held by the Germans during World War II. After the war, Stalin, who was himself a Georgian, ordered the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Georgians as suspected collaborators. In Apr., 1989, a protest against Soviet rule in Georgia led Soviet troops to fire on demonstrators, killing 20 and injuring hundreds.

A New Nation

Georgia declared its independence in Apr., 1991, but was not generally recognized as an independent state until the USSR disintegrated in Dec., 1991. Once it achieved independence, Georgia, which had prospered economically as part of the USSR, struggled with social and economic disintegration.

In Jan., 1992, a rebellion against the increasingly dictatorial regime of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia led to his ouster. He escaped to W Georgia and instigated a counterrebellion. Forces in the South Ossetian Autonomous Republic and Abkhazian Autonomous Republic also revolted, the former demanding union with Russia's North Ossetia and the latter demanding independence. A cease-fire with the Ossetians was signed in July, 1992.

In Oct., 1992, Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister and leader of the Democratic Reform movement, was elected speaker of parliament, a position tantamount to president. He faced civil war and a deteriorating economy. In 1993, Georgia reluctantly joined the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States. Georgian military forces, with Russian help, ultimately prevailed against the rebels led by Gamsakhurdia, who died in 1993. Also in 1993, separatists won control of the Abkhazian capital, Sukumi, and within Abkhazia they conducted a campaign of "ethnic cleansing," driving out ethnic Georgians; a cease-fire was negotiated in 1994, but peace talks stalled and fighting has erupted periodically.

In Dec., 1995, Shevardnadze easily won election as president under a new constitution; he was the target of assassination attempts in 1995 and 1998. Pope John Paul II made a visit to Georgia in Nov., 1999, but received a cool reception from its Orthodox hierarchy. President Shevardnadze was reelected as expected in Apr., 2000, but by a lopsided margin that led foreign observers to accuse the government of vote tampering. Corruption hindered economic recovery and strapped government finances, all of which led to unhappiness with Shevardnadze's rule.

Parliamentary elections early in Nov., 2003, were regarded as seriously flawed by most observers and sparked opposition demonstrations that forced the president's resignation before the end of the month. Nino Burdzhanadze, the parliament speaker, became interim president. Presidential elections in Jan., 2004, resulted in a landslide for the main opposition candidate, Mikhail Saakashvili, a former justice minister under Shevardnadze. Constitutional changes in February strengthened the president's powers, and in March, prior to new parliamentary elections, Saakashvili sparked a confrontation with the autonomous region of Adjaria that led in May to the reestablishment there of the central government's authority, which had weakened under Shevardnadze. In the elections, Saakashvili's coalition won two thirds of the vote and 90% of the seats.

There was a subsequent increase in tension with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, In the former, fighting erupted for several weeks during the summer and also strained relations with Russia; in the latter disputes late in 2004 over election results further aggravated Russian relations. Since 2004 there has also been an increase in tensions between ethnic Armenians in Georgia and the central government over perceived discrimination against Armenian speakers.

An national energy crisis occurred in Jan., 2006, when a gas pipeline explosion in North Ossetia, Russia, curtailed natural gas supplies in Georgia, with some Georgians believing that it had been engineered by Russia. In Feb., 2006, Georgia's parliament called for Russian peacekeepers to be removed from South Ossetia and replaced by an international force; the call was repeated later in the year and extended to Abkhazia. A Russian ban (Apr., 2006) on the importation of Georgian (and Moldovan) wines and brandies, ostensibly for sanitary reasons, was similarly regarded with suspicion.

Relations with Russia have been strained since independence. Russia continues to maintain three military bases in Georgia. A 1999 agreement called for closing two of four bases in 2001, but a force that Russia described as "peacekeepers" remained at Gudauta in Abkhazia, providing support for separatists there. A new agreement in 2005 called for Russia to withdraw from its two other remaining bases by 2008. Russia also has been supportive of South Ossetian separatists. Georgia was accused by Russia of sheltering Chechen insurgents (particularly in the Pankisi Gorge near Chechnya) and providing them with support, and Russia threatened unilateral military strikes in areas bordering Chechnya. In Oct., 2002, however, Georgia and Russia agreed to establish joint patrols to prevent border crossings by Chechens.

Tensions with Abkhazia rose again in July, 2006, when Georgia forcibly disarmed the militia that had controlled the Kodori Gorge, part of Abkhazia still aligned with Georgia. In Sept., 2006, a number of opposition politicians were arrested and charged with plotting a coup, and later in the month several Russian officials and Georgians were arrested on charges of spying. Those arrests turned the sour Russian-Georgian relations into a bitter confrontation as Russia halted all transport and postal links with Georgia and subsequently expelled several hundred Georgians as illegal immigrants. The sharp escalation in rhetoric was particularly pronounced on Russia's side; the arrested Russians were subsequently expelled.

In the Oct., 2006, local elections the president's National Movement party won a solid victory. In December, tensions with Russia continued as the Russian Duma expressed support for Abkhazian and Ossetian separatists, and the Russian energy giant Gazprom increased the price Georgia paid for gas, leading Georgia to seek alternative suppliers. The same month, Georgia's parliament passed constitutional amendments that would, in 2008, lengthen legislators' terms and shorten the president's term so that all would be elected at the same time. The tense relations with Russia moderated somewhat in early 2007.

Bibliography

See D. M. Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1658–1832 (1957) and A Modern History of Soviet Georgia (1962); W. E. Allen, A History of the Georgian People (repr. 1978); R. G. Suny, Sakartvelo: The Making of the Georgian Nation (1987).

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Georgia, state, United States

Georgia (jôr`jə), state in the SE United States, the last of the Thirteen Colonies to be founded. It is bordered by Florida (S), Alabama (W), Tennessee and North Carolina (N), and South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean (E).

Facts and Figures

Area, 58,876 sq mi (152,489 sq km). Pop. (2000) 8,186,453, an 26.4% increase since the 1990 census. Capital and largest city, Atlanta. Statehood, Jan. 2, 1788 (4th of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution). Highest pt., Brasstown Bald, 4,784 ft (1,459 m); lowest pt., sea level. Nickname, Empire State of the South. Motto, Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation. State bird, brown thrasher. State flower, Cherokee rose. State tree, live oak. Abbr., Ga.; GA

Geography

Georgia is the largest state E of the Mississippi River and has three main topographical areas. Extending inland from the coast is a low coastal plain that covers the southern half of the state. In mountainous N Georgia are the Appalachian Plateau, the valley and ridge province, and the Blue Ridge province. Bridging these two sections and embracing about one third of the state is the Piedmont foothill region in central Georgia. A number of islands, part of the Sea Islands chain, lie off Georgia's coastline.

The state is well drained by many rivers, including the Savannah, which forms the boundary with South Carolina; the Ocmulgee and the Oconee, which merge in the southeast to form the Altamaha; the Chattahoochee, which forms part of the Alabama boundary and joins with the Flint in the extreme southwest corner of the state to form the Apalachicola; and the Saint Marys, which rises in the large Okefenokee Swamp and forms part of the Georgia-Florida line. The most important cities are Atlanta, Columbus, Savannah, Macon, and Albany.

Economy

Although the trade and service sectors supply the majority of jobs in Georgia, manufacturing and agriculture remain important to the state's economy. In addition, federal facilities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, near Atlanta; Fort Benning, near Columbus; and the Kings Bay naval base, contribute to the economy.

Cotton, once Georgia's most valuable crop, has declined in importance; in the 1990s it was rivaled by peanuts, tobacco, and corn. Georgia is easily the nation's largest producer of peanuts. Tobacco is the principal crop in the central and southern sections of the state, peanuts in the southwest. Livestock and poultry raising account for the largest share of farm income; broilers, eggs, and cattle are major products.

The manufacture of textiles and textile products has long been Georgia's leading industry, centering mainly around Columbus, Augusta, Macon, and Rome. Other major manufactures include transportation equipment, foods, paper products, and chemicals. Automobile manufacturing is important around Atlanta. Much of Georgia is heavily forested with pine, and the state is a leading producer of lumber and pulpwood. Although the state is rich in minerals, mining is not as important as manufacturing and agriculture. The most valuable minerals produced are clays, stone, kaolin, iron ore, sand, and gravel. Georgia is famous for its fine marble.

With its moderate winter climate and its Southern charm and beauty, the state is a popular vacation area. The Sea Islands are especially noted for their scenery and resorts. Warm Springs, established with the help of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the treatment of poliomyelitis, is now a historical landmark. Georgia's other attractions include Okefenokee Swamp, a large wilderness area; Chattahoochee and Oconee national forests, with facilities for hunting and fishing; Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park; Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park (see National Parks and Monuments

acres (hectares)

Description
Acadia NP SE Maine 1919 48,419 (19,603) Mountain and coast scenery.
..... , table); and Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, on which is carved a Confederate memorial.

Government, Politics, and Higher Education

Georgia's constitution provides for an elected governor who serves for a term of four years. The legislature, called the general assembly, is made up of a senate with 56 members and a house of representatives with 180 members. Members of both houses are elected to terms of two years. Georgia sends 11 representatives and 2 senators to the U.S. Congress and has 13 electoral votes. Zell Miller, elected governor in 1990 and reelected in 1994, was succeeded by another Democrat, Roy E. Barnes, elected in 1998, but Barnes lost his 2002 reelection bid to Republican Sonny Perdue. Perdue was reelected in 2006.

Leading educational institutions include the Univ. of Georgia, at Athens; Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State Univ., Emory Univ., Clark College, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Morris Brown College, all at Atlanta; Agnes Scott College, at Decatur; and Mercer Univ. and Wesleyan College, at Macon.

History

Early Exploration and Conflicting Claims

The Creek and Cherokee inhabited the Georgia area when Hernando De Soto and his expedition passed through the region c.1540. The Spanish later established missions and garrisons on the Sea Islands. In 1663, Charles II of England made a grant of land that included Georgia to the eight proprietors of Carolina. However, Spain claimed the whole eastern half of the present United States and protested the grant. The English ignored the protest, and the English-Spanish contest for the territory between Charleston (S.C.) and St. Augustine (Fla.) continued intermittently for almost a century. England became interested in settling Georgia as a buffer colony to protect South Carolina from Spanish invasion from the south.

Oglethorpe's Colony

In June, 1732, the English philanthropist James E. Oglethorpe received a charter from George II (for whom the colony was named) to settle the colony of Georgia and form a board of trustees to manage it. Oglethorpe planned to settle Georgia as a refuge for debtors in England. The first colonists, led by Oglethorpe, reached the mouth of the Savannah River in Feb., 1733. On a bluff c.18 mi (29 km) upstream, the colonists laid out the first town, Savannah. In 1739 war broke out between Spain and England. Fighting occurred in Georgia, and in 1742, near Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island, Oglethorpe defeated the Spanish in the battle of Bloody Marsh, thereby effectively ending Spain's claim to the land N of the St. Marys River.

Georgia's early settlers included English, Welsh, Scots Highlanders, Germans, Italians, Piedmontese, and Swiss. Jews, Catholics, and settlers from other American colonies were at first barred. Immigrants fell generally into two groups: charity settlers, who were financed by the trustees, and adventurers, who paid their own way and came to receive the best land grants. The trustees had hoped that the colony would produce silk to send back to England, and early colonists were required to plant a specific number of mulberry trees for the cultivation of silkworms. The scheme, however, came to nothing. At first slavery was prohibited, but this and other restrictions impeded the colony's growth, and by the time Georgia became a royal colony in 1754, most of the restrictions had been abolished.

Georgia flourished as a royal colony. It fitted well into the British mercantile system, exporting rice, indigo, deerskins, lumber, naval stores, beef, and pork to England and buying there the manufactured articles it needed. Georgia's citizens were slower to resent those acts of the crown that exasperated the other colonies, but by June, 1775, Georgian patriots had begun to organize, and the following month delegates were elected to the Second Continental Congress. Georgia's colonists were about equally divided into Loyalists and patriots during the American Revolution, but the patriots, exposed to Loyalist Florida on the south and Native American tribes on the west, fared badly. In Dec., 1778, the British captured Savannah, and by the end of 1779 they held every important town in Georgia.

Statehood

After American independence had been won, Georgia was the first Southern state to ratify (1788) the Constitution. Georgia came into conflict with the federal government over states' rights when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), that an individual could sue a state, a decision equally distasteful to other states as well as to Georgia. (This decision was later nullified by the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.)

Further difficulties with the federal government stemmed from the related issues of the removal of Native Americans and land speculation centering around the Yazoo land fraud. In the midst of the Yazoo controversy, Georgia ceded (1802) its western lands to the United States in return for $1,250,000 and a pledge that the Native Americans would be removed from Georgia lands. By 1826 the Creek had yielded their lands, but in 1827, the Cherokee set themselves up as an independent nation. The U.S. Supreme Court held (1832) that the state had no jurisdiction over the Cherokee, but President Jackson declined to support the Chief Justice, and in 1838 the Cherokee were forced to migrate west to government land in present day Oklahoma. The path of their journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

Cotton and the Confederacy

With the invention of the cotton gin (1793) by Eli Whitney, Georgia began to prosper as a cotton-growing state. Cotton was grown under the plantation system with labor supplied by slaves. By the 1840s a textile industry was established in the state. Although Georgia was committed to slavery before the Civil War, state leaders opposed secession. However, successive defeats on the national scene, culminating in the election of Lincoln as president, fostered separatist sentiment in the state.

On Jan. 19, 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union and shortly afterward joined the Confederacy. The coast was soon blockaded by the Union navy, and in Apr., 1862, Fort Pulaski (which had been seized by the state in Jan., 1861) was recaptured by Union forces. Georgia became a major Civil War battlefield when, in 1864, Union Gen. W. T. Sherman launched his successful Atlanta campaign. On Nov. 15, 1864, Sherman set fire to Atlanta, and his subsequent march through Georgia to the sea, culminating in the fall (Dec.) of Savannah, left in its path a scene of great destruction.

The Long Aftermath of the Civil War

During Reconstruction, Georgia at first refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and was consequently placed under military rule. During the period of military rule Rufus B. Bullock, a radical Republican, was elected governor. Corruption prevailed during Bullock's administration (1868–71), but after the legislature approved the Fifteenth Amendment (the Thirteenth and Fourteenth having been ratified earlier), Georgia was readmitted (1870) to the Union, and Bullock resigned. Georgia's Democratic party has dominated the state's politics since the end of Reconstruction.

The textile industry recovered from the effects of the war and was expanding by the 1880s. Atlanta, which had succeeded Milledgeville as the capital in 1868, grew into a thriving industrial city, largely due to its importance as the center of an expanding regional railroad network.

The effect of the war on agriculture—which had formerly been dependent on slave labor—was more serious. The breakup of large plantations resulted in the rise of tenant farming and sharecropping, systems often accompanied by poverty and abuse. After World War I agriculture suffered further setbacks as the boll weevil caused great destruction to cotton crops and the soil became exhausted through erosion and overuse. A farm depression began in Georgia long before the general depression of the 1930s. The state weathered the depression, but its subsequent history was marked by political and racial conflict.

The Struggle for Racial Equality

In 1941, Gov. Eugene Talmadge caused nationwide commotion by discharging three educators in the state university system alleged to have advocated racial equality in the schools. The state university system lost its accreditation for a time as a result of Talmadge's action. Talmadge was defeated in the 1942 Democratic primary by Ellis G. Arnall.

Under Arnall's administration, Georgia became the first state to grant the vote to 18-year-olds, and in 1946 (on the strength of a U.S. Supreme Court decision) blacks voted for the first time in the Georgia Democratic primary. Among Arnall's other administrative acts was the adoption of a new constitution in Aug., 1945. The 1945 constitution, which, in amended form, is still in effect in the state, contained a provision for Georgia's notorious county-unit system. This system for nominating state officials in Democratic primaries led to the political control of urban areas by sparsely populated rural areas.

The integration of public schools, following the 1954 Supreme Court decision, was strenuously opposed by many Georgians. However, in 1961 the legislature abandoned a "massive resistance" policy, and Georgia became the first state in the deep South to proceed with integration without a major curtailment of its public school system. Racial tensions persisted, however, and in May, 1970, racial disorders broke out in Augusta.

Georgia's county-unit system (held constitutional by the Supreme Court in Apr., 1950) was abolished by federal court order in 1962. In 1972, the Georgian Andrew Young became the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress; he later became mayor of Atlanta. Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and the 39th president of the United States (1977–81), had been governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975; his administration brought attention to the state, whose urban centers, especially Atlanta, were beginning to experience rapid growth. Today, roughly one half of the jobs in Georgia are in the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is sprawling into formerly rural districts, highlighting the cultural and economic gaps between Georgia's rural and urban areas.

Bibliography

See H. E. Bolton, The Debatable Land (1968); R. H. Shyrock, Georgia and the Union in 1850 (1926, repr. 1968); R. M. Myers, ed., The Children of Pride (1972); J. Crutchfield, ed., Georgia Almanac, 1989–90 (1990); N. V. Bartley, The Creation of Modern Georgia (2d ed. 1990).

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Georgia

State (pop., 2000: 8,186,453), southeastern U.S. It is bordered by Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama; the Atlantic Ocean lies to the southeast. The last of the original 13 English colonies, Georgia covers 58,930 sq mi (152,629 sq km) and is the largest state east of the Mississippi River; its capital is Atlanta. The area was inhabited by the Creek and Cherokee Indians when Spanish missionaries arrived in the 16th century. English settlement began in 1733 at Savannah when James Oglethorpe established a refuge for debtors. European settlement accelerated after the American Revolution, and the last of the Indians were forcibly removed in the 1830s. Georgia seceded from the Union in 1861, and the American Civil War was particularly hard on the state. It was the last former Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union in 1870. Its landscape sweeps from the Blue Ridge in the north to the Okefenokee Swamp (which it shares with Florida) in the south. For most of the 19th century it was the capital of the cotton empire of the South; in the 20th century industry predominated. The state's population grew throughout the 20th century, with Atlanta especially attracting national corporations.

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Georgia

Country, Transcaucasia, western Asia. Located within the Caucasus Mountains, on the southeastern shores of the Black Sea, it includes the autonomous republics of Abkhazia and Ajaria (Adjara). Area: 27,086 sq mi (70,152 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 4,490,000. Capital: Tbilisi. Two-thirds of the people are Georgian (Kartveli); minorities include Armenians, Russians, and Azerbaijanians. Language: Georgian (official). Religions: Christianity (Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic); also Islam. Currency: lari. Most of Georgia is mountainous, and many peaks rise above 15,000 ft (4,600 m). The Caucasus protect it against cold air from the north, and the climate is mainly subtropical. Fertile lowlands lie near the shores of the Black Sea. Georgia has a well-developed industrial base noted for its hydroelectric power, coal mining and steel making, machinery production, and textiles. Agricultural land is in short supply, and farming is difficult; crops include tea, citrus fruits, grapes (for wine), sugar beets, and tobacco. Georgia is a republic with one legislative body; the head of state and government is the president, assisted by the prime minister. Ancient Georgia was the site of the kingdoms of Iberia and Colchis, whose fabled wealth was known to the ancient Greeks. The area was part of the Roman Republic by 65 BC and became Christian in AD 337. For the next three centuries, it was involved in the conflicts between the Byzantine and Persian empires; after 654 it was controlled by Arab caliphs, who established an emirate in Tbilisi. It was ruled by the Bagratids from the 8th to the 12th century, and the zenith of Georgia's power was reached in the reign of Queen Tamara, whose realm stretched from Azerbaijan to Circassia, forming a pan-Caucasian empire. Invasions by Mongols and Turks in the 13th–14th century disintegrated the kingdom, and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 isolated it from Western Christendom. There were repeated invasions over the next three centuries by the Armenians, Ottomans, and Persians. Georgia sought Russian protection in 1783 and in 1801 was annexed by the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the area was briefly independent; in 1921 a Soviet regime was installed, and in 1936 Georgia became the Georgian S.S.R., a full member of the Soviet Union. In 1990 a noncommunist coalition came to power in the first free elections ever held in Soviet Georgia, and in 1991 Georgia declared independence. In the 1990s, while President Eduard Shevardnadze tried to steer a middle course, internal dissension sparked conflicts in Abkhazia.