\

Armenian Diasp~ra

Khachig Tololyan

DEFINITIONAL ISSUES dispersed people, whatever the cause, size, organization,

or duration of dispersion. By this definition, even the
The term diaspora, whether applied to Armenians or other small, ever-renewed contingents of young Armenian
social formations that do not live in their homeland, has scholars who studied Greek art and science in Athens,
had many definitions and applications throughout its his- Alexandria, Antioch,_ and Caesarea from the fourth to the
~tory. At its simplest and least precise, it has refc;rred to ill . sixth centuries.C.E. were a diaspora. At various times, the
 36 Armenian Diaspora

term has been used to refer to groups or colonies of 7. Duration matters. A dispersion becomes a diaspora only when
expatriates, exiles, migrant populations of elite emigres, it has endured as a distinct entity for a certain, undetermined,
number of generations.
prosperous merchant diasporas and impoverished labor
diasporas, border-crossing transnational nomads, clusters At some point or another in its long history, the
ofrefugees, and communities of guest-workers, as well as Armenian diaspora, the second oldest in history, has
all sorts of ethnics, not to mention oppressed minorities displayed every one of this constellation of features.
(e.g., "the queer diaspora"; Patton and Sanchez-Eppler,
1999). At its most complex, diaspora has been defined by a
constellation of features (Safran, 1991; Tololyan, l996a}: THE HOMELAND

l. The originating dispersion from the homeland occurs due to .Armenia's territory-the land inhabited primarily by
coercion by military force or bureaucratic oppression that makes Armenians, ruled intermittently by indigenous rulers and
continued life in the homeland intolerable for a large number of often by foreign conquerors-has been as large as
people. Alternatively, what pushes people out of the homeland may
be economic or agricultural catastrophe (the Irish in the 1840s),
180,000 km2 and--currently-as small .as 30,000 km2 ,
or forms of underdevelopment and poverty that result in a large, about the size of Maryland. The ancestral territory of the
persistent gap between the local economy and wealthier economies Armenians was bounded to the north by the Fontus
elsewhere that exert a pull. Mountains that line the southern shore of the Black Sea
2. Diasporic dispersion is truly that: not a move by some and by the territory of what is now the Republic of
emigrants to just one other country, but a scattering to several.
3. The dispersed settle in host countries where they live either in
Georgia. It extended about 100 km west of the Euphrates
hierarchically encapsulated enclaves ("the ghetto," "Chinatown," River Valley. To the south, it included the upper reaches
"the Annenian Quarter") or as subjects and citizens of states-and of the Tigris River and bordered on northern
as members of societies-that do not wish to accept them a;; fully Mesopotamia, 'currently the Kurdish-inhabited territory
equal. The situation is complicated by the fact that the dispersed, of Iraq and parts of Syria. To the east, Armenia included
especially in their :first several generations in the hostland, usually
do not desire full assimilation, but prefer to sustain their collective
what is now the extreme northwest of Iran and the west-
identity by maintaining some cultural differences, ~hile overcom- ern third of what is now Azerbaijan, between theAraz and
ing various barriers to economic, social, and political integratjon Kur ~vers. Currently, only one-sixth of that land is
(Tololyan, 1996b). inhabited by Armenians, due first to variously coerced
4. As the dispersed struggle to preserve the collective cultural iden- emigrations and finally to the genocide of the Annenian
tity brought out of the homeland, they inevitably discover over time
that this is impossible; successful diasporas then fashion a new one
inhabitants of the Ottoman Turkish Empire in 1915.
that has some real or imagined continuity with the earlier identity The Armenians are a blend of several peoples who
and that creates boundaries, however porous, between themsel~es inhabited these territories, the earliest of which appeared
and the host society. Both the diaspora and the host society in the records of the Assyrian empire as dwelling to the
often patrol these boundaries, through practices of endogamy and north of Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Turkey,
exclusion on any number of grounds (racial, religious, liuguistic-
cultural, culinary, etc.).
around 2000 B.C.E.; the second oldest group is recorded in
5. The dispersed maintain relationships with their kin in th~ home- Hittite inscriptions from the eastern Euphrates River
land and in other scattered cominunities, at :first throu'gh familial Valley ca. 1350 B.C.E.; other components appear in adja-
ties that sustain transnational social fields, later through organized, cent regions, and also in what is now the southwestern
institutionalized means. These intradiasporic links have played Transcaucasus, in subsequent centuries. By around 530
a crucial role in certain phases of Annenian history.
B.C.., a people known as Armenian to its neighbors and
6. In most diasporas, a discourse of "return" deve!ops, which
sometimes results in actual return or repatriation to the homeland as Hai, Hye, or Khai to its members, emerged from the
by individuals or organized groups (Jews to Israel, Armenians to amalgamation of these peoples. Their cultural identity
Armenia, freed former African-American slaves to Liberia), and evolved slowly at first, through the syncretic amalgama-
more often enables. a rhetoric and practice of re-turn, of various tion of indigenous beliefs and practices with. those
ways of "turning" toward the homeland by contributing to it-
investing in it and intervening in its politics and culture-and
of Zoroastrian neighbors and Hellenistic conquerors. In
drawing from it (anything from new songs to spouses to cheap 301 c.E., a massive .shift of cultural identity began when
labor) (Tololyan, 1996a). Armenia became the first state to convert to Christianity,

/
 History of the Diaspora 37

11 years before Rome. The hold of Christianity was with the earlier wave of Armenian settlers, Greeks and
definitively consolidated in the years 406 to 428 C.E., "Syriac" peoples. There are no reliable data on whether the
when an Armenian alphabet based on remarkably innova- Armenians formed a majority or a plurality. The:ir leaders
tive phonetic principles was adopted and the Bible trans- addressed the question of diaspora in practical terms, keep-
lated. From then on, the Armenian Apostolic branch of ing up religious and cltural relations with the old centers
Christianity became perhaps the single most persistent of the homeland while setting up new centers of worship
feature of Armenian identity, and, though much reduced and scriptoria that could sustain the manuscript tradition
in its influence, it endures in that role to this day, and innovate further. However, they also began to articulate
especially in the diaspora. a textual sense of diaspora. In 1165, Nerses Shnorhali, the
newly elected Catholicos, or supreme leader of the Church,
addressed his first encyclical to "all the fijithful of the
HISTORY OF THE DIASPORA Armenian nation, those in the east who inhabit our home-
land Armenia, those who have emigrated to the regions of
Starting in the late fourth century C.E., Armenians left the west, and those in the middle lands who were taken
Armenia for three reasons: to ~tudy in the centers of Greek among foreign peoples, and who for our sins are scatter~d
cuJture; to fight in long-service military contingents guard- in cities, castles, villages and farms in every corner of the
ing the eastern boundary of the Persian emp:ire and later the earth" (Shnorhali, 2002, p. 13). The word he uses for this
eastern . and northern frontiers of~ the Byzantine Greek scattering, tz'rvyalk, has a modern cognate, tz'ronk, which
empire; and as a permanently deported population of men, is now a seldom-used term for diaspora. For much of their
women, and children who were forcibly relocated to depop, history, Armenians used the word gaghout (from Hebrew
ulated regions of the Byzantine emp:ire (Adalian, 1989). galut, exile) to signify a diasporic community. Currently,
Until the mid-eleventh century, the Byzantine Ernp:ire the dominant word is spyurk, an ancient term whose conso-
recruited large military units both from Armenia pr~d nantal components, spr, are common to many related
from their kin among the relocated population. High offi- words in Armenian and most Indo-European languages,
ciali, generals, and eventually emperors of Byzantium were for example, sperm, spread, disperse, and diaspora.
drawn from the:ir ranks. Such individuals ceased to adhere Armenian also uses severfil other words for those who live
to the Armenian Apostolic version of Christianity or to outside the homeland. This rich vocabulary began to
speak Armenian, but for a very long time retained kinship emerge in the P!:'.riod under discussion.
ties to familial networks in both homeland and hostland. The diasporic Cilician state endured until 1375 C.E.
Between the seventh and tenth centuries, Arab After its fall, AS many as ,150,000 fled the region, con~
Muslims fought with 1the Byzantines over large frontier tributing to the formation of new diasporas in Cyprus, the
territories, causing the depopula9bn of parts of Cilicia Balkans, and Italy (Ajarian, 2003, p. 388), but many more
(now southern Turkey). Some Armenians were either continued to live in the region until the genocide of 1915.
coercively relocated to or chose to settle in these territo- The second, smaller diaspora was founded by an
ries. The pace of such pop,ulation movements was accel- Armenian nobleman who had converted.to Islam and had
erated between 1033, when the Seljuk Turks, who had taken on the name Badr al-Jamali. He retained his vas$als
originated in Central Asia and ruled Persia, began to and recruited other Armenian soldiers to his military con-
invade Armenia, and 1071, when they shattered the tingent. He entered the service of the Fatimid rulers of
Byzantine army and conquered most of the Armenian Egypt and restored order for them, first in S:Yria and then
homeland. At this point, waves of emigration led to the in Egypt. Appointed vizier, he and later his son ruled the
establishment of three very different kind~ of diasporas. r~gion (1073 to 1120), with the result that Armenian arti-
The first, to Cilicia, was a temtorialized diaspora, sans, merchants, clergymen, and their families settled in
which created a state (as much later Chinese immigrants Cairo. This diaspora of some 30,000 people endured for
did in Singapore). Armenian nobles and the:ir knights., several generations, then dispersed to other destinations
clergy, serfs, and supporting artisans moved to and settled (Abrahamian, 1964, Vol. 2, esp. pp. 126-145; Dadoyan,
this sparsely populatel:i territory, in which they cohabited 1997; Kurdian, 1949; Mikayelian, 1980).
 38 Armenian Diaspora

The third diaspora was founded by refugees who of Europe" in large numbers (Adalian, 1989, p. 91).
fled the invasion of the Seljuk Turks by going north cilong A printing press operated after 1616. Throughout the
trade routes with which they were already familiar. period, the diasporic elites of this highly literate society
Consisting primarily of merchants and skilled artisans used the Armenian alphabet, rich in phonetic resources,
(workers in textiles, leather, and precious metals), these to produce works in Kipchak, the Turkic language that
refugees crossed the Black Sea and settled in the Crimean was the lingua franca of the Ukrainian and south Russian
peninsula, especially in the trading community of Caffa- steppes (Schiltz, 1987). Even after the Armenian lan-
Theodosia. Dominated by Genoese merchants, this nomi- guage began to retreat from quotidian life, replaced by
nally Byzantine city connected the trade of the Polish and Turkic languages, and some of the special
Mediterranean to that of easternmost Europe. So many privileges granted by King Casimir were revoked,
Armenian refugees and, later, economic migrants came in ,Catholic missionaries striving to convert the Armenians
waves after 1060 c.E. that by the late fourteenth century it still felt it might be efficacious to use Armenian. This
was mentioned in some travelers' accounts as Armenia effort resulted .in 1668 in the first performance of a play in
Maritima (Adalian, 1989; Mik:ayelian, 1964). Armenian, "The Martyrdom of St. Hripsime." Written by
The Crimean diaspora was the departure point for the missionary Louis-Marie Pidou de Saint-Ollon in
many Armenians who went vfurther into eastern Europe. Classical Armenian, the language of sacred texts, never
Around 1350, Casimir the Great, King of Poland (1333 to spoken in the .diaspora after the eleventh century, it was
1370) extended to non-Polish immigrant craftsmen and performed in Lvov. Remarkably, at a time when women
merchants willing to settle in the city of Lvov (German lived larg~ly sequestered lives, the women's parts were
Lemberg; now Lviv in the Ukrainian Repvblic-)_.the privi- performed by women (Cowe, 2002).
lege of living by their own communal and religious laws. Migration from Lvov to southern Poland Oater
Armenians from the Crimea (and Jews from central Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and elsewhere
Europe), resourceful and already diasporic peoples, came created secondary diaspora communities that developed
in large numbers and helped to make the city the trading along trade routes; many ruined and some standing
crossroads of eastern Europe. The process illustrates Armenian churches and monasteries dot the landscape of
a more general principle of diaspora formation in the the nearby regions of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine,
premodern period: Politically powerless to impose them- attesting to that Armenian presence. Elsewhere in
selves, most diasp~ras develop when a niche opens up in Europe, much smaller and more evanescent diasporic
a host society that its rulers choose or are obliged to fill communities of merchants, clergymen, and craftsmen
by encouraging diasporic migration. emerged.' The first Armenian book was published in
Between 1356 and 1604, Poland's was tb.e largest Venice in 1512, and the first printed Armenian Bible
and richest Armenian diaspora community. At the end of appeared in Amsterdam in 1666, probably commissioned
the 1400s, there was a community of around 200,000 by the. homeland's leading clergy, who as yet had no
Armenians in the kingdom (Ajaryan, 2002, p. 118). access to a printing press. The small, modernized
(Both intrinsically and as a proportion of total population, European diasporas functioned as "pipelines" 6f innova- ,;
this was large. Scale matters, and in the Middle Ages, tions that slowly penetrated the Armenian homeland '.
l
most European populations, especially after the great (Hovannisian and Meyers, 1999). It is estimated that
plagues, were at 1/10 of their current size.) The merchant between 1512 and 1750, the diaspora's presses published '1

elite of this community financed some of the religious around 570 books, some in energetic but ephemeral com-
and quasipolitical activities of the Armenian Church munities, others in enduring diasporic enclaves. It is
in the homeland and elsewhere. Annenian clerical nota- impossible to offer here a full overview of all of them.
bles repeatedly traveled to Poland to raise funds, and In general, at any one time there are three types of com-
Polish Armenians toured other diasporic communities. munities in the Armenian diaspora: residual or declining; :.,
' ~~
In the 1380s, the Armenian bishop of Jerusalem y;as dominant, as at Lvov; and emergent, such as the ones to
Polishbom. The mobility of diasporic elites long pre- be discussed next (Tololyan, 2000, pp. 112-113).
- ceded contemporary globalization. "Lvov Armenians New Arme:rii.an diasporas appeared in response to
were the first to be exposed to the modernizing ~urrents the emergence of new states. When the Ottoman Turks
 History of the Diaspora 39

conquered the Byzantine capital, renaming it Istanbul to all of India and Burma, impenetrable Tibet, and even-
(1453), they encouraged the .immigration of Armenians tually east through the areas now known as Singapore,
and (after 1492) Jews to the city and region. Armenian Malaysia, and Indonesia to the Philippines and south
settlement in Istanbul appears to have begun in earnest in China, even as their kin and colleagues traded in Russia,
1461 (Bardakjian, 1982) and grew slowly at first, thanks the Ottoman empire, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, and
to migration from the older diasporas of the Crimea and Britain. They managed a remarkable "intelligence net-
what is now Romania, due to the Ottoman conquest of work" of couriers that may have accounted for their
these regions, then more steadily due to a series of grim commercial advantage (Aslanian, n.d.). For the :first
events in the homeland. Between 1514 and 1639, the 50 years follo,;ing 1604, New Julfa flourished not only
Sunni Turkish and Shiite Persian empires fought a series economically, but culturally: a press began to operate in
of wars of exceptional destructiveness on the Annenian- 1638. Later, as it began to stagnate, its secondary dias-
inhabited territories straddling their frontier. Hundreds of pora in India flourished not just in terms of wealth, but
thousands of civilians died. A significant number of also in philanthropy and cultural activity. This diaspora
refugees fled west into the Ottoman Empire, where they encow;itered the British in India, and the encounter led to
settled in diasporic communities of villages, towns like many economic, political, and cultural innovations. For
Bursa and Kotahya, and major ports like Smyrna and example, the first Armenian g(l.Zette-newspaper was pub-
Istanbul. In the latter, a community led by an elite of lished in Madras in 1794; none appeared on the home-
:financiers, skilled artisans, and clergy, gathered around land's territory until the mid-nineteenth century. This
the Patriarchate, was to become one of the centers of the community was responsible for a steady remittance of
diaspora after 1715. funds to the homeland as well as the diaspora's religious
. Meanwhile, starting in 1~03 to 1604 and throughout and educational associations, for the flourishing of
his reign, which ended in 1629, Persia's Shah Abbas, "print culture" and the literary imagining of national
eager to populate his new capital, Isfahan, depopulated community in that medium (Anderson, 1983), and :fuially
the region of Julfa in the Armenian homeland (Herzig, for the emergence of Armenian nationalism. (Tololyan,
1996). Before the Turkish massacres of 1895 and the 1999).
genocide of 1915, this was the single largest demographic The Armenian diaspora of the later eighteenth
disaster to befall the Arnfenian people. While the total century saw itself (as did the religious leaders operating
number of Armenians deported is unknown, :figures rang- out of Echmiadzin, the sacred center of A:i:menian
ing from 100,000 up are cited; one contemporary source Christianity in the homeland) as the result of some willed
mentions 60,000 families (McCabe, 1999, p. 54). Since and much coerced dispersion from the homeland, as poly-
families routinely numbered between 6 and 10 individu- centric, and as threatened by' its encounter with European
als, this may well be an exaggeration, but there can be no modernity, both in the West and in increasingly British-
doubting the scale of the deportation, which denuded part dominated India. Responses to this perception included
of Armenia's heartland of its indigenous inhabitants (this (1) a project to create a textual canon that would give the
region is now in Azerbaijan). It is estimated that over half Armenians a unifying national culture, (2) attempts
of the deportees died during the long trek to Isfahan; the by the first secular Armenian intellectuals to theorize
rest settled in New Julfa, a suburb of the capital, which a return to the homeland, and (3) attempts to reempha-
became-thanks to their skill and to official encourage- size the role of Echmiadzin as both a sacred and an
ment and concessions by the Shah-in remarkably short administrative center (Aslanian, 2002). Often stateless,
order, a center of much more than regi011al trade. The Armenians in the occupied homeland as well as the dias-
merchants, especi;illy when politically favored by the pora had come to think of their robed religious leaders as
Persian court, proved exceptionally successfql at organiz- the 'uniformed bureaucrats of the Armenian Apostolic
ing the silk trade to Europe, and then at penetrating the faithful (the protonational entity that began to become
markets of the Indian subcontinent (NicCabe, 1999). a modem nation in this period).
Ambitious youth from this diaspora, trained in innovative Paradoxically, the leaders of the first and most inlme-
accounting methods developed locally, borrowed capital diately consequential of these three projects were not the
from the great magnates, and went on trading expeditions traditional Armenian Apostolic clergy, but rather Catholic
 40 Armenian Diaspora

Armenian monks of the Mechitarist Order or Brotherhood. to the study of religion, literature, and the grammar and
They emerged as a late and entirely unintended result of philology of modern Armenian. This Mechitarist cultural
efforts by the Vatican's missionaries, who had endeavored project was realized entirely in a tiny diaspora, with vital
for centuries first to persuade the Armenian Apostolic contributions from the human, intellectual, and financial
Church to agree to a self-subordinating union with Rome resources of three other diasporas~in Istanbul, Isfahan,
and, failing that, to convert . ordinary Armenians to andlndia.
Catholicism. Diaspora Armenians in the papal dominions The later eighteenth century also witnessed the for-
of Italy, numbering several thousand, were sometimes mation of an Armenian diasporic community in the m.ulti-
coerced to convert, and elsewhere were approached with a ethnic and multinational lands ruled by the Russian Empire
vai:iety of religious and secular inducements. It is all the of the Romanov czars. From the mid sixteenth century on,
more remarkable, then, that Catholics of Armenian origin Russia expanded, slowly, intermittently, but steadily, west
eventually became instrumental in the nurturing of an to the Baltic, south to the Black Sea, east to the Caspian
Armenian national culture with distinct Enlightenment Sea, then to Siberia, Central Asia, and the Pacific Ocean.
overtones and secular aspirations. In 1701, the Catholic Persian Armenian merchant elites had traded with Russia
priest Mechitar secretly founded in the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century and a few had settled there.
the Brotherhood that bears his name. In 1717, this small Between 1711 and 1723, Armenian refugees from the
band settled in Venice, where the city granted the uninhab- Persian-occupied parts of the homeland joined the Russian
ited island of San Lazzaro to them. The Order. grew by army and fought in the Caucasus, hoping that the Russians,
attracting Armenians from the Ottoman Empire who were as Christians, would lift the burdens and restrictions
Catholic in faith but retained their ethnonational identity; imposed by the capricious rulers of the increasingly
later, Catholic Armenians from the diasporas of Hungary, chaotic Muslim state of Persia. Long before diasporic lob-
Romania, and Georgia joined them. With astonishing fore- bies emerged to argue for intervention and assistance from
sight and energy, the scholi--monks of this diasporic the great powers (e.g., the Jewish, Cuban, and Armenian
enclave set out to accomplish what one scholar has lobbies in Washington, D.C., today) Armenian exiles and
described as a totalizing project (Nichanian, 1999), a cul- refugees in the diaspora were lobbying Christian rulers and
tural program of research and publication that imagined organizing squadrons ready to fight in the armies of such
Armenian life and culture as lamentably fragmented, and powers if they were willing to intercede for "regime
launched an effort to equip both the deprived homeland change" in the homeland. There is much evidence and con-
population and the artisans and merchants of the diaspora siderable scholarly debate about the role of clergymen in
with the wherewithal of a national culture on the European these efforts. Of nece.ssity, they traveled back and forth
model. They published;l;he first dictionary of Armenian (in between the homeland's sacred site, Echmiadzin, and the
two volumes, 1749, 1769); a remarkably influential history diaspora communities to which they ministered, and to a
of the Armenian people (in three volumes, 1784 to 1786), considerable extent they acted as pan-Armenian figures
in which Father :Niik:ayel Chamchian, the author, select~d" who contributed to these movements (Aivazian, 2003;
elements from the many manuscript chronicles written by Barkhoodaryan et al., 1989, pp. 158-159).
earlier clergymen who had documented periods of that By the late eighteenth century, Russia had conquered
history and synthesized them in a spirit of eighteenth- what are now its southernmost regions. Its policy was to
century nationalism; the first manual of vernacular and attract Armenian migrants from the homeland, from the
then classical Armenian grammar (1727, 1730); editions Kingdom of Georgia, and even from primary diasporas
of classics; translations from Italian, French, .German, such as the one in the Crimea, to settle them in these newly
Greek, and Latin; and textbooks on every topic. After 1772, conquered territories along its southern border. Due to
a split developed among the Mechitarist ranks, and the a combination of real incentives and unsavory policies,
dissenters moved to Trieste, then Vienna. In the latter, they abetted by some leaders of the Crimean Armenian dias-
founded a monastery where, influenced by German schol- pora and resisted by others, a significant fraction of that
arship and nationalism, they became in the nineteenth cen- diaspora's people migrated to the steppes of the Don.
tury a rival of Venice, and also made decisive contributions Some 7,000 settled in 1778 in Nor Nakhichevan, now
 History of the Diaspora 41

known as Rostov na-Donu. During the next century, its lords served in the Georgian armies as commanders.
population tripled even as that of the Crimea declined. As late as 1821, of the 730 .p.oble families of Georgia, 119
Other small but wealthy communities of Armenian mer- were of Armenian origin (Ajaryan, 2002, p. 28). The
chants formed in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Astrakhan population of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, was tbree-
(on the Caspian Sea), while communities of peasants and fourths Armenian in 1801. Like the Poles, the Georgians
artisans also settled, between 1715 and 1735, .in the most remained for a long time a people of agricultural serfs led
southerly Russian steppes (in the northern foothills of the by a military aristocracy. In Lvov, business'and crafts had
Caucasus mountains), especially in Gh'zlar. For almost been primarily in the hands of Armenians and Jews; in
two centuries, this nucleus of the eighteenth-century Tbilisi, Armenians predominated. This phenomenon of
Russian Armenian diaspora functioned as a magnet for the "middleman diaspora" (Zenner, 1991) is also found
more refugees and small groups of emigrants from the in Thailand and Indonesia, where the Chinese diaspora
Persian and Ottoman Turkish Empires, who came inter- provided both the petty businessmen and the :financial
mittently. As Russia expanded further south, took the magnates in societies whose indigenous majority
Caucasus Range and conquered the Transcaucasus, a new remained peasants until the mid-twentieth century. After
Armenian society emerged on both sides of the mountain the Russian conquest, the development of oil fields in
range. Its elites consisted of the higher clergy and the Baku in Azerbaijan after the 1860s, and the transport
wealthy merchants (as had been the case since the begin- links provided by railway and telegraph, patterns changed
ning of the Armenian diaspora), but by the mid-nineteenth rapidly. At the start of World War I, around 240,000
century a new group of secular intellectuals, pedagogues, An:enians lived in Georgia, more than 10% of that coun-
and artists also joined this leadership, infusing it with new try's population; some 25% of the population of Tbilisi
energy and creating tensions, as a significant fraction of was still Armenian, and 'nearly 20% of Baku's. These
the intellectuals joined populi(lt and socialist movements. Armenians were now an "intrastate diaspora" (Tololyan,
Between 1801 and 1828, Russian expansion into the 1991). That is, like those living in that portion of the
Transcaucasus led to the takeover of what is now the terri- homeland that was incorporated into the Russian Empire,
tory of the Republic of Armenia, with its capital at those living in the diasporas of Georgia, Baku, the
Yerevan; of Georgia and its capital, Tbilisi; and the lands Crimea, Rostov na-Donu, or Moscow were all subjects of
of the Tatar Khans of Persia that lay east of Armenia and to the same state. They did not cross frontiers when they
the north of the river Araz or Arax (after 1918, this latter traveled, but zones of social and linguistic difference.
region became Azerbaijan, with Baku as its capital). Both Russian was always the shared second language-and
of the latter had Armenian populations. Georgia's often the first language-of the diasporic elite, who
Armenian diaspora was concentrated in its cities, while rightly considered the largest town in Armenia proper,
the lands of the Turkic and so-called Tatar lords that would Yerevan, a dusty provincial backwater compared to
eventually become Azerbaijan had indigenous Armenian Tbilisi, a city of considerable culture, let alone when
populations in the conquered lands of Shamakh, Gantzak, compared to Moscow and St. Petersburg. All but one of
and Gharabagh. The latter two were parts of Armenian the major Armenian novelists and poets of the nin,eteenth
kingdoms that had been defeated by the Mongols. In the century in this empire lived in Tbilisi, and its Armenian
first two, the Armenians were a minority by the time of the theatre was exceptionally lively. (Significantly, both the
Russian conquest; in the third, named Nagomy-Karabagh Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian and the great
by the Russians, they were and remain the absolute major- Soviet film maker Sergei Paradjanov were Tbilisi
ity. It is necessary but difficult to o.btain an overview of the Armenians, and possessed a proudly hybrid culture.)
Armenian diaspora in these two countries, whose histories Tbilisi and Baku were the :financial capitals of Armenian
are tumultuous and whose populations constitute a con- philanthropists in the Russian Empire, one of whom
stantly shifting mosaic. :financed the building of the main Armenian Church for
The Georgian Armenian diaspora dates back to the the Paris Armenian Diaspora in 1904, an example of the
twelfth century, when the borders of Armenian and extentto which the Armenian elite's commitments within
Georgian lands were ill established and many Armenian the diaspora were IJ?.Ulticommunal because Armenians Jn
 42 Armenian Diaspora

many countries viewed themselves as one religionational realm, standard western Armenian was formalized as the
entity. . language of newspapers, schools, literature, and public
In the nineteenth century, small numbers of discourse, though the vigdrous forms of the Istanbul ver-
Armenians formed emergent diasporas in the United nacular and the regional dialects of recent emigrants from
States, Britain, France, Bulgaria, and especially Egypt, the homeland persisted in spoken speech. At virtually the
where a prosperous small community existed, with an elite same time, a standard written form of the eastern
of financiers who played a significant role in the country's Armenian dialect emerged in Tbilisi. In other words, mod-
administration. Nevertheless, the polycentric Armenian em standard Armenian was created by cultural producers
diaspora was organized around Istanbul and Tbilisi. in the diaspora. This testifies to the vigor and ingenuity of
In Istanbul, the amira who had emerged in the eigh- the diaspora, which accomplished in short order a linguis-
teenth century as wealthy taxfarmers, money lenders, and tic standardization that is normally performed by the
leaders of emerging industry were supreme until the bureaucracies of the larger nation-states.
1830s. Members of this elite had been competing fiercely The prosperous and educated elites of these two
during the previous century for control of the Patriarchate, intrastate diasporas were not in steady contact with each
whose leading cleric, the patriarch, was recognized by the other, since the Russian and Ottoman Empires fought sev-
Ottoman state as the nominal leader of the Armenian eral wars in the nineteenth century and were not kindly
millet. This consisted primarily of all the adherents to the inclined to cross-border contact among their minority sub-
Armenian Apostolic Church (some non-Armenian eastern jects. With sad irony, what this meant was that only a few
Christians were lumped int0 this group as well). In other clerics and, by the 1880s, students and secular intellectuals
words, the leadership of the Armenian subjects of the were in contact. These created the Armenian Hnchak: Party
Ottoman state, who numbered some 2 million, half of (Switzerland, 1887) and the Hye Heghapokhaganneri
them in the conquered homeland and the others in the Dashnak:tzootyun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation,
intrastate diaspora, were largely led and administered ARF) in Tbilisi in 1890. Both, along with others created
from Istanbul. During a transitional period, the leadership before and after them, played an important role in the
of the amira was challenged after 1848, with some suc- decades that followed, but the Dashnak: Party, nationalist
cess, primarily by a coalition of bourgeois professionals and socialist in orientation, loomed largest. Its activities,
and businessmen who were encouraged by the attempts of though drawing on ideas, funds, and people in diaspora
the Ottoman sultans to reform their state. In the period of (after 1896 funds also came from'the U.S. Armenian dias-
the Ottomanreforms (ca . .1852to1871) change happened pora), were focused by the slogan "depi yerkir" [to the
rapidly within the Istanbul diaspora. In politics, attempts homeland]. The ARF rallied oppressed Armenians in the
were made to democratize the administration of the com- eastern part of the Ottoman Empire, infiltrating militants
munity's internal affairs, from the level of parishes and (anned with the help of the Persian Armenian diaspora)
local schools all the way up to the election of a representa- into those regions. Despite many successes, it could not
tive assembly. In 1863, an azgayin sahmanatrootyun, liter~ substantially challenge the Ottoman Empire, to which
ally a "national constitution;' was signed into law, though change came for a while due to the internal, briefly
all its provisions were never put into practice. The well- democratizing coup of 1908. A very brief honeymoon
designed communal administrative infrastructure that this period followed. Between 1908 and 1914, an extraordi-
diasporic millet, or community, financed through self- narily promising group of young Armenian writers and
taxation was effective and elaborate: a hospital, a semi- thinkers emerged in the Istanbul diaspora community,
nary, orphanages, countless churches, a theatre, and press which surpassed the one in Tbilisi.
media in both Armenian and Turkish emerged. As the Certain features of the pregenocide diaspora should
Apostolic Armenians' leadership competed withAmerican be emphasized. Its upper echelons displayed, as current
and Armenian Protestant missionaries for the communal diaspora theory likes to emphasize, a great deal of
loyalty and religious adherence of their constituency,phil- mobility. They communicated and they traveled. But the
anthropic and pedagogic institutions became stakes in the mass of each dia~poric community-be they prosperous
struggle; they multiplied and improved. In the cultural craftsmen, small shopowners, ~oar laborers, and, in
 The Armenian Diaspora after the Genocide 43

Persia, peasants-was rooted in the Armenian quarters became the capital of a new republic. Two years later,
of cities and surrounding market villages. In Aleppo Lenin's armies, reclaiming what the Romanov czars had
and Jerusalem and especially in Thilisi and Istanbul, lost, ended this republic's existence. It became a Soviet
Armenian quarters for those of modest means endured for Socialist Republic, a component of the USSR, which
some centuries and were inhabited by a sedentary popula- became independe~t again in 1991 with the fall of the
tion which thought of itself as natives .of the l~cality. They Soviet Union. Another 240,000 survivors found refuge in
saw themselves as distinct from the gharib and ban- Greece and especially the Arab .i\lfiddle East. From among
toukhd element, the desperately poor rural Armenians these survivors of the genocide, the new Armenian
who kept on coming from the homeland to look for work diaspora emerged.
as day laborers. While the clerical, merchant, and later
intellectual-artistic elites displayed the diasporic feature
of mobility and developed a rhetoric of the "unity" of THE ARMENIAN DIASPORA
the religionational entity-hye azg, as they called it_:_ AFTER THE GENOCIDE
dispersed across homeland and diaspora, most ordinary
people did not know themselves as diasporics; they were In 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne marked the rise of
locals and often proudly so. Being settled, away from the modern Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman, Empire, a
tormented homeland, in the great and prosperous cities of casualty of World War I; it also officially marked the end
foreign empires, was desirable to them: they built to stay, of Armenian dreams of a return to the 65 % of homeland
and the sources reflect their pride in what they built in territory that the international treaty recognized as part of
"their" cities. The diaspora was indeed a network and a Turkey. Some 60,000 Armenians remain in Turkey1
web-favored tropes of contemporary analysis-along almost all in Istanbul (Anon, 2004). Though reduced, the
whose routes some Armenians moved. But the network stamp of centuries-old local Armenian identity remains
also had nodes, as networks must, and these network- powerf\11, and secondary diasporas of Istanbul Armenians
anchoring nodes had deep roots in heist-country .soil. The in France, Germany, Canada, and the United States
currents of furn;ls, thought, goods, and travelers that remain linked to this great city in a powerful transnational
flowed across diasporic Armenian circuits were gener- social field.
ated from the great cities where the reality and the logic The rest of the Armenian diaspora has undergone
of the sedentary held sway in demography and cultural almost unimaginably rapid and various change in the
patterns. years that have passed since Lausanne. Of the 240,000
This diasporic world came to an end in the Ottoman genocide survivors in the ;Middle East; half entered some
Empire when, during World War I,~from April 1915 on, form of bondage, were converted to Islam, and .disap-
that state carried out the genocide of its Armenian citi- peared. The other half at first lived in shantytowns outside
zens. Of 2 million Armenian citizens, 1.5 million were major cities such as Beirut '.(Lebanon), Aleppo (Syria),
murdered. In Istanbul, 1,500 leaders of the community and Mosul (Iraq). Rallied by the surviving clergy and sec-
were killed but the population was left untouched-the ular leaders who had been active in the infrastructure of
Ottoman capital could not have run without them. The the Armenian millet system of the Ottoman Empire, and
survivors fled to the 1Y1iddle East, to the West, and to helped by some assistance from the U.S. Armenian dias-
Armenia. Around 250,000 took refuge in the Russian pora, the refugees constructed new communities where
Empire's Armenian provinces and in the communities of refugee shacks had stood. "Compatriotic" unions of emi-
its intrastate diaspora. In 1918, these provinces became grants from specific regions of the homeland who had
the territory of a tiny and shaky Republic of Armenia that settled in the United States but stayed in touch con-
emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman and Russian tributed funds to help family and kin who survived to
Empires. It is significant that the declaration of the inde- construct these communities, -often named after their
pendence of this state was made in Tbilisi, in diaspora, homeland towns. This work of survival and development
before the representatives of the Armenians of the was also a labor of memory more complex than the
Transcaucasus moved to Yerevan, the small town that authoring of literary texts and nostalgic memoirs alone.
)
 44 Armenian Diaspora

Together, they created a complex of words and buildings, parties) and businessmen who organized the :financial
narratives, and habitation patterns that requl.re untangling affairs of communal institutions. The reclaiming of old
in other contexts. loyalties and the implantation of new ones was conducted
The development trajecturies of the new diasporic in lively, if poorly funded, media and in a] the sites of a
communities in the Niiddle East were unsteady, given to vigorous diasporic civil society and public sphere
rapid change. Jerusalem, for example, where at least (Tololyan, 2000; Werbner, 1998). Socialists, Communists,
some Armenians have lived continuously since the and nationalists who adhered to the leadership exercised
fourth-century conversion to Christianity and where there by the Communists in Soviet Armenia clashed with oppo-
has been an officially recognized Patriarchate with nents, primarily in the Dashnak Party, both over local
authority over some holy sites since 1311, had a popula- issues--such as control of parish councils and ecclesiastical
tion of 1,300 Annenians in 1914 (Sanjian, 2001), a num- institutions, and geopolitical matters, such as the proper
ber quadrupled by refugees a decade later, and fewer than orientation of the diaspora to the sovietized homeland. On
2,000 now. On different scales, similar changes happened at least one occasion, in 1958, the usual polemic turned
elsewhere. The region that eventually became Lebanon violent in Lebanon, and 30 Armenians died at each other's
had some 5,000 Armenians in 1914, 210,000 in 1974, and hands.
probably no more than 70,000 today, after the cata- The pressure to fully integrate, let alone assimilate,
strophic Lebanese civil war, which lasted from 1975 to into the host societies was minimal until the 1960s, and has
1990. In Syria, the new refugee and old diaspora popula- steadily accelerated since then, leading both to increased
tion combined went from around 110,000 in the 1920s to emigration to the West and to accelerated integration of
70,000 now, with the rest emigrating to Lebanon, Western those who have stayed. In the past two decades, full social
Europe, North America, Argentina, and Australia. and political integration of Armenians into Arab societies
Similarly, the Annenian population of Persia/Iran swelled has become imaginable, and is beginning to occur.
in 1945 to around 225,000, counting the survivors who Despite the tumult of internal struggle, the post-
settled there after the 1915 genocide and those who fled genocide Armenian communities were extraordinarily
communism. Today, after some return mi'gration to successful at constructing thriving economic and social
Armenia and especially after the Khomeini revolution, lives and at instilling a form of "exilic nationalism"
around 70,000 are left. Egypt, which had become an (hoping for return to the homeland) that endured until the
exceptionally prosperous and influential diasporic site, 1970s. Between 1946 and 1948, an astonishing "repatri-
had some 40,000 Armenians in an unusually activi>St com- ation" took place, in which 105 ,000 aging survivors and
munity that deteriorated rapidly after Gamal Abdel their families "returned" to the "homeland": not the
Nasser's regime began to nationaJize minority properties actual sites from which they came, now in Turkey, but
in the mid-1950s. Today, fewer than 7,000 Armenians are the homeland now redefined as Soviet Armenia. The fact
left in the residual diaspora of Egypt. that they were willing to sustain the illusion of a new life
It is necessary ~o make some generalizations (accom- in Stalin's state is a testimony to the extent of patriotic
panied by the usual caveats about them) concerning the -and exilic yearning. Between 1923 and 1962, a total of at
postgenocide trajectories of these communities. They least 200,000 Armenians went to settle in Soviet
were led by religious leaders, but the church had lost most Armenia from all diaspora communities. Since the
of its religious conviction and authority after the genocide 1970s, however, around 1,200,000 have left the home-
of 1915, and functioned as a marker of identity and as an land, enlarging old diasporic communities. In the West,
arena for communal focus, made possible by the fact that the exilic nationalism of the survivors has been replaced
the Arab states followed the Ottoman millet pattern and by a genuinely diasporic transnationalism (Tololyan,
recognized the non-Arab peoples among them as defined 2QOO, p. 107) that is constructing new links with post-
by their religious character. The struggle over who would Soviet Armenia. In post-Soviet Russia, there are now at
organize and lead the survivors was rhetorically fierce. It least 1.5 million Armenians, over half of whom are post-
involved secular :intellectuals (teachers, writers, members 1991 migrants from Armenia. Their links to the home-
of the Dashnak, Hnchak, and newer Ramgavar political land are strong but, evolving. New organizations are
 The Armenian Diaspora after the Genocide 45

emerging to claim leadership and to advertise their role are Armenian-Americans, hyphenated ethnics who are
as mediators of links between the governments of Russia comfortable with a symbolic Armenian identity, which
and Armenia and the struggling new migrants. It is diffi- they sometimes declare and enact spontaneously, and at
cult to characterize, as yet, the nature and extent of their other times when pressed by kin; they manifest a mini-
integration into the host society; currently, tensions are mum of commitment to some communal institutions anq
high. practices (such as the church, dances, and communal
This narrative must tum to what it cannot adequately functions, and sending checks to lobbying organizations)
represent in this space: the steady rise of the "Western" but are not fully engaged in diasporic life. Those who are
diasporic Armenian communities of the United States, so engaged have transnational commitments that they
France, and elsewhere. There were 50,000 Annenians in manifest toward kin elsewhere, to institutions dedicated
the United States in 1914 (Niirak, 1980, 1983). After the to fostering connections between diaspora communities
genocide of 1915 and some slow migration that acceler- and above all with the homeland; they travel to both, and
ated when Nfiddle Easter:p. and then homeland Annenians are active in cultural production-the diaspora's media
joined the post-1965 immigration, there are now around and public sphere remain vigorous. A few diasporic
800,000 Armenians in the United States. Los Angeles Armenians have been political militants, as in Lebanon
may be the second largest ''Armenian" city in the world, from 1975 to 1983, when short-lived but very significant
after Yerevan, Armenil!'s capital. There are some 40,000 Armenian terrorist movements emerged in the chaos of
Armenians in Canada, 30,000 in Australia, 60,000 in the civil war.
Argentina and 15,000 in the rest of Latin America The current agenda of the diaspora, both formally
(Matiossian, in press), around 300,000 in France, and managed by organizations and informally animating indi-
another 100 ,000 in the rest of Europe. The U.S. commu- viduals' commitments, involves several efforts. The most
nity has the population, finances, organization, and some pressing is that of sustaining a distinct identity in the face
access through lobbies to the U.S. government that make of strong inducements to assimilation in receptive and
it matter most both among the diasporic communities and pluralist societies in the West, where pervasive individu-
to the homeland's new government. It also has the attrac- alism, exogamy, erosion of language, and even of religion
tion that comes from being part of American society- (through the efforts of evangelical Protestantism) are all
wealthy, consumerist, offering real and imagined potent factors. The creation of appropriate links to the
opportunities-and so remains the magnet for new sec- post-Soviet republic of the homeland at every le;vel has
ondary and even tertiary migrations. It is common to find also been a pressing concern, made complex by the
Annenians who have held refugee status and two or even painful rec9gnition that kinship alone cannot bridge dif-
three citizenships in a lifetime whose final destination ferences bred by centuries-old, divergent trajectories in
becomes the United States. the development of social attitudes in the homeland and
In the producti9n of ideas and culture, and in various diasporas. The creation of links also involves both
the nurturing of important links with the homeland, the struggle and cooperation at every level of life, as in the
Annenian community of France is very important. intellectual and political task of defining a transnational
The others all conduct similar efforts on smaller scales. consensus as to what "Armenian" interests are, as
The local differences and heterogeneity of these commu- opposed to what Annenia's interest is. The development
nities are ve1y real. However, so are the shared features of philanthropic and investment strategies that the dias-
nurtured by kinship ties and community organizations pora might enact in Annenia is a pressing concern, as is
that make the diaspora part of the Annenian transnation, the formulation of practices that might assist the recovery
composed of the homeland state, the struggling enclave of the Armenian population of Karabagh, which, along
of Nagomy-Karabagh that is formally in Azerbaijan, and with Azerbaijan, was devastated by the war of 1992
the worldwide diaspora. to 1994, which killed; at least 30,000 people and left
Today, Annenian diaspora populations, especially in hundreds of .thousands on both sides homeless. Finally,
the USA, must be thought of as composites. Some bear there is the effort, slowly reanimated since 1965, the
Annenian names but are in effect assimilated. The majority 50th anniversary its launching, to get Turkey and the
 46 Armenian Diaspora

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