Manning examines the formation of nineteenth-century intelligentsia
print publics in the former Soviet republic of Georgia both
anthropologically and historically. At once somehow part of "Europe," at
least aspirationally, and yet rarely recognized by others as such,
Georgia attempted to forge European style publics as a strong claim to
European identity. These attempts also produced a crisis of self-defi
nition, as European Georgia sent newspaper correspondents into newly
reconquered Oriental Georgia, only to discover that the people of these
lands were strangers. In this encounter, the community of "strangers" of
European Georgian publics proved unable to assimilate the people of the
"strange land" of Oriental Georgia. This crisis produced both notions of
Georgian public life and European identity which this book explores.