Thomas de Waal discusses the unintuitive history of the South Caucasus, a beautiful land at the historic crossroads of the Russian, Persian and Ottoman empires:

A century ago, neither Tbilisi (Tiflis), Baku, nor Yerevan had a majority population of Georgians, Azerbaijanis, or Armenians, respectively. Tbilisi can lay claim to being the capital of the Caucasus, but its Georgian character has been much more intermittent. For five hundred years it was an Arab town…[until] the medieval period, [when] the city was taken over by the [sic] Armenian merchant class…..Baku became a metropolitan city with many different ethnic groups from [in] the late nineteenth century. Russian became its lingua franca.

…[U]p until the First World War, Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, had a Persian flavor and a Muslim majority population. Its major landmark was a blue-tiled mosque, and there was no big church.

How did these capitals become nationalized? The same way that Europe built its nation states: with a lot of killing and forgetting.

Anyway, it’s an extremely well-researched book well worth your time. But boy could de Waal use a better editor.