ABSTRACT
The chapter describes the history of Kars as a bridgehead of empires, because the city has been located at the border of empires for centuries and this position has shaped its history more than any other factor. Most significant in the history of Kars are the repeated incidents of massive population exchange since the Middle Ages but especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Looking at Kars as an imperial city, the chapter argues that Kars exemplifies a special case of imperial cities in the borderlands: being a garrison at a contested border meant that the military was not integrated into the civilian population, it was not a productive factor to the cities life, and the presence of a large group of armed men may even bring unrest and destruction to the city. However, a borderland garrison like Kars also represents a special type of imperial city in its capacity as a site of transimperial entanglements. On the one hand, shifting empires manifested themselves in the borderland city through fundamental re-structuring and re-populating of the city. On the other hand, borderland cities developed special forms of the organization of plurality under precarious conditions.
