Concluding Thoughts

Abstract

The Imeretian revolt of 1819 was the last serious attempt undertaken by force of arms to stop the administrative absorption of the Georgian lands into the Russian Empire. While there would be other attempts to throw off Russian rule, such as the plot of the Georgian nobles to murder most of the Imperial officials stationed in Georgia at a ball in 1832 and then to recall Prince Alexander as king, and the peasant uprisings in Guria in 1828 and 1841, all these took place after the transformation of the Georgian lands from independent states into Imperial provinces. Teimuraz Bagrationi, one of the sons of King Giorgi who was the author of several books on Georgian history, viewed the year 1819 as the closing year of the period in which ‘the fate of Georgia’ was ‘sharply altered’. It was also in that year that his brother, Prince David, the temporary regent and abortive King of Georgia in 1801, died. His passing marked the close of the generation which had witnessed the entire cycle of events from the first embassy of Teimuraz II to St. Petersburg to the destruction of the last vestiges of Georgian sovereignty.¹