The Batum oblast roughly corresponded to the present-day Adjara autonomous region of Georgia, and most of the Artvin Province of Turkey.

According to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Russian SFSR ceded the Batum Oblast to the Ottoman Empire, however, the Transcaucasian Seim, the authority in Transcaucasia by 1918, rejected the treaty, opting to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire on its own terms.

After the Mudros Armistice, in which the Ottoman Empire was forced to withdraw its troops from the territories of the former Russian Transcaucasus including Batum, British troops under the 27th Division occupied the district to support the British military presence in the Transcaucasus, and to serve as a terminal for supplying Denikin's Volunteer Army.

The plurality of the population indicated Georgian to be their mother tongue, with significant Turkish, Armenian and Russian speaking minorities.

1 January] 1916, including 66,808 men and 56,003 women, 95,292 of whom were the permanent population, and 27,519 were temporary residents:[3] This Georgian history-related article is a stub.