Georgia Footage

Georgia (Georgian: საქართველო, romanized: sakartvelo, IPA: [sakʰartʰʷelo] ⓘ) is a country located in Eastern Europe and West Asia. It is part of the Caucasus region, bounded by the Black Sea to the west, Russia to the north and northeast, Turkey to the southwest, Armenia to the south, and by Azerbaijan to the southeast. The country covers an area of 69,700 square kilometres (26,900 sq mi), and has a population of 3.7 million people.[b][10] Tbilisi is its capital and largest city, home to roughly a third of the Georgian population.

Georgia has been a wine production site since 6,000 BC, being the earliest known location of winemaking in the world.[11][12] During the classical era, several kingdoms emerged in what is now Georgia, such as Colchis and Iberia. In the early 4th century, Georgians officially adopted Christianity, which contributed to the unification of early Georgian states. In the Middle Ages, the unified Kingdom of Georgia reached its Golden Age during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar. Thereafter, the kingdom declined and eventually disintegrated under the hegemony of various regional powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire, and various dynasties of Persia. In 1783, one of the Georgian kingdoms entered into an alliance with the Russian Empire but Russia reneged on its promises and instead proceeded to annex the territory of modern Georgia piece-by-piece against the wish of the local rulers.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Georgia emerged as an independent republic under German protection.[13] Following World War I, Georgia was invaded and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1922, becoming one of its constituent republics. In the 1980s, an independence movement grew quickly, leading to Georgia's secession from the Soviet Union in April 1991. For most of the subsequent decade, post-Soviet Georgia suffered from economic crisis, political instability and secessionist wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Following the peaceful Rose Revolution in 2003, Georgia strongly pursued a pro-Western foreign policy; it introduced a series of democratic and economic reforms aimed at integration into the European Union and NATO. The country's Western orientation soon led to worsening relations with Russia, which culminated in the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, and entrenched Russian occupation of a portion of Georgia.

Georgia is a representative democracy governed as a unitary parliamentary republic.[14][15] It is a developing country with a very high Human Development Index. Economic reforms since independence have led to higher levels of economic freedom, as well as reductions in corruption indicators, poverty, and unemployment. It was one of the first countries in the world to legalize cannabis, becoming the only former-socialist state to do so. The country is a member of international organizations, such as the Council of Europe, the OSCE, Eurocontrol, the EBRD, the BSEC, the GUAM, the ADB, the WTO, and the Energy Community.

Etymology

Main article: Names of Georgia
The first mention of the name spelled as Georgia is in Italian on the mappa mundi of Pietro Vesconte dated AD 1320.[16] At the early stage of its appearance in the Latin world, it was not always written in the same transliteration, and the first consonant was being spelt with J as Jorgia.[17] Georgia probably stems from the Persian designation of the Georgians – gurǧān, in the 11th and 12th centuries adapted via Syriac gurz-ān/gurz-iyān and Arabic ĵurĵan/ĵurzan. Lore-based theories were given by the traveller Jacques de Vitry, who explained the name's origin by the popularity of St. George amongst Georgians,[18] while traveller Jean Chardin thought that Georgia came from Greek γεωργός ('tiller of the land'). Alexander Mikaberidze wrote that these century-old explanations for the word Georgia/Georgians are rejected by the scholarly community, who point to the Persian word gurğ/gurğān (گرگ, 'wolf'[19]) as the root of the word.[20] Starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, under this hypothesis, the word was later adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic and West European languages, as well as, for example, Modern Farsi as گرجستان, /ɡoɾd͡ʒesˈtɒːn/. This term itself might have been established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region, which was referred to as Gorgan ("land of the wolves").[20][21]

The native name is Sakartvelo (საქართველო; 'land of Kartvelians'), derived from the core central Georgian region of Kartli, recorded from the 9th century, and in extended usage referring to the entire medieval Kingdom of Georgia by the 13th century. The self-designation used by ethnic Georgians is Kartvelebi (ქართველები, i.e. 'Kartvelians'), first attested in the Umm Leisun inscription found in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The medieval Georgian Chronicles present an eponymous ancestor of the Kartvelians, Kartlos, a great-grandson of Japheth. However, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, one of the proto-Georgian tribes that emerged as a dominant group in ancient times.[20] The name Sakartvelo (საქართველო) consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i (ქართველ-ი), specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, or Iberia as it is known in sources of the Eastern Roman Empire.[22] Ancient Greeks (Strabo, Herodotus, Plutarch, Homer, etc.) and Romans (Titus Livius, Tacitus, etc.) referred to early western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians (Iberoi, Ἰβηροι in some Greek sources).[23] The Georgian circumfix sa-X-o is a standard geographic construction designating 'the area where X dwell', where X is an ethnonym.[24]

Today, the official (Georgian language) version of the Georgian constitution refers to the legal name of country as Sakartvelo (Georgian: „საქართველო").[25] The English translation of the constitution refers to the country name as Georgia.[26] Before the 1995 constitution came into force, the country's official name was the Republic of Georgia (Georgian: საქართველოს რესპუბლიკა, romanized: Sakartvelos Resp'ublik'a) and it is still sometimes referred to by that name.[27][28]