Cocooned In The Caucasus
Journal: Cahiers du monde russe
Year: 2020

If, in the twilight of the 1800s, oil arose as the coveted “black gold” of the Caucasus, then silk held a strong contention for the stature of “white gold” at the beginning of the century. A Tiflis-based silk company founded in the 1820s by the Frenchman Edouard Castellaz was a bright, yet ephemeral, representation of silk’s economic importance to tsarist officials, local residents, and Russian and Western European investors. This article traces the evolution of the Russian approach toward Caste