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The isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas, one of the great routes between Asia and Europe, has been one of the real crunching grounds of history, with innumerable waves of people washing in from all directions and turning it into one of the world's ethnic jigsaws. Georgia, along with the other Caucasian states of Azerbaijan and Armenia, is a relatively young entity. It first came together when a number of small principalities united from the 10th to the 13th centuries. Over time, this unification disintegrated, only to commence reformation in the late 18th century.

Long before Georgia was on anyone's mind, though, the land had been regarded as strategically important. What is now western Georgia was colonised by Greeks probably around the 8th century BC. Anatolian tribes from Turkey moved into the eastern regions about a century later, fusing with people already there and forming the kingdom of Iveria. Between 550 BC and 300 BC, the area was tossed from one dominant empire to the next, being variously connected with the Persian Achaemenians, the Macedonians and the Seleucids. The Romans defeated the Seleucids in 189 BC and allowed the locals to set up independent Armenian states. These were united about a century later, forming the strongest power in the Roman east, holding sway from the Caspian Sea to central Turkey, and taking in a great deal of modern Georgia.

In around 400 AD, western Armenia, including western Georgia, was swallowed up by the mighty Byzantine Empire. The eastern area of Iveria fell under Persian control until Muslim Arabs set up shop in the mid 7th century, establishing an emirate in Tbilisi. To-ing and fro-ing between the Arabs and the Byzantines ended when the Seljuk Turks rode in and seized power over most of Armenia in the 1060s, causing many to flee to predominantly Christian Georgia. By this stage most of what is now Georgia was united under the name Iveria. The period following the recovery of Tbilisi from the Arabs in 1122 was a kind of golden age for Georgia, with power extending from western Azerbaijan to eastern Turkey.

Stability was short-lived, however, and for the next 800 years the region was roiled by land grabs and power plays. The Mongols, Persian Safavids and Ottoman Turks vied for supremacy, and by the 18th century, the Ottomans were on top. Enter Russia. Catherine the Great's troops moved into the region to wrest control of the territories from the Turks. In 1795 the Persian eunuch Agha Mohammed Khan Qajar sacked Tbilisi before the Russians annexed the Georgian princedoms, taking total control forcibly from the Turks by the 1870s. As the technology and economy developed, so did nationalism. The Georgian social nationalist movements First Group, Second Group and - you guessed it - Third Group, each more radical than the last, sprang up. Third Group counted Iosif Dzhugshvili as one of its members. He later changed his name to Man of Steel, which, in Georgian, is Stalin.

Transcaucasia declared itself a federation independent of Moscow in 1918, but quickly split into three separate republics: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia fell to the Red Army in 1920, having been briefly occupied by the British after WW1, and was linked with its neighbours again and called the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (TSFSR), which was a founding member of the USSR. Under Stalin a wave of nationalism swept over Georgia, resulting in over 100,000 locals being sent to Siberia. The TSFSR was dismantled in 1936, and Georgia went back to being Georgia, though still under Soviet rule.

After the iron curtain finally rusted away, Georgia became the first of the Soviet republics to hold multi-party elections in 1990. Many believed that the economically dynamic Georgia had the best chance of short-term success. With independence struggles in the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and a brief civil war in 1992 and 1993, anarchy and mob rule became part of life for some time. Soviet strongman Shevardnadze eventually restored calm and put Georgia well on the road to economic recovery. He was given a fresh mandate when re-elected in April 2000.