The scientific exploration and occupation of the Ottoman territories had already started in the second half of the nineteenth century and, like in the Scramble for Africa, all European powers were active in this occupation. In the course of World War I, the Russian Caucasian Army occupied several provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Anatolia. The military occupation gave scholars of the Russian Empire an opportunity to forestall the European scholars in a region where Russian forces entered before the European armies. The scientific societies of Russian Empire organized, funded and dispatched several teams of scholars to the occupied regions. In the course of the occupation, however, Russian scholars had other rivals: the representatives of the nationalist intelligentsia of the Caucasus region. This paper analyzes the scientific irredentism of Russian scholars and their cooperation and conflict with the nationalist intelligentsia from the Caucasus.
