Prince Ioane of Georgia

Who was Prince Ioane of Georgia?

Ioane Bagrationi was a Georgian prince, writer and encyclopedist.

A son of George XII, the last king of Kartl-Kakheti kingdom, eastern Georgia, by his first wife Ketevan Andronikashvili, Ioane commanded an avant-garde of a Georgian force annihilated by the Persian army at the Battle of Krtsanisi in 1795.

Following the battle, the kingdom entered a period of economic crisis and political anarchy. To eradicate the results of a Persian attack and to overcome the retardation of the feudal society, Prince Ioane proposed on 10 May 1799, a project of reforms of administration, army and education. This project was, however, never materialized due to the weakness of George XII and a civil strife in the country. In 1800, he commanded a Georgian cavalry in the joined Russian-Georgian forces that defeated his uncle, Alexandre Bagrationi, and the Dagestani allies at the battle of Niakhura.

Upon the death of George XII, Kartl-Kakheti was incorporated into the expanding Russian Empire, and Ioane was deported to Russia. He settled in Saint Petersburg where he wrote most of his works with a didactic encyclopedic novel Kalmasoba being the most important of them.