Origins

About seven million Armenians are dispersed throughout the world. Over three million live in the recently created Republic of Armenia (1991), formerly the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. Another one million in-habit other parts of the former Soviet Union. Thriving Armenian communities exist in Europe and in North and South America. There are also large settlements in the Middle East, composed originally of refugees from former Ottoman Turkey and their descendants, although these communities have since the 1950s been weakened because of emigration resulting from political instability in the region. (See also EGYPTIANS.)

Armenians show a strong attachment to a heritage that has endured for over 3,000 years. They refer to themselves as Hai and to their historic homeland as Haiastan, a mountainous and volcanic region south of the Caucasus that in terms of present-day borders includes Armenia, eastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and parts of neighbouring Georgia and Azerbaijan. The heart of historic Armenia (Haiastan), which lay in the shadow of Mount Ararat, was a battleground for warrior tribes from the steppes north of the Caucasus Mountains who for centuries were drawn to the rich sedentary civilizations of Mesopotamia to the south.

A powerful kingdom was established in Armenia during the first century B.C.E., but afterwards the country was subjected to frequent invasion by armies from Persia, Greece, Rome, and the Arab Caliphate, as well as by Turkic tribes from Central Asia. Despite these many incursions, Armenians managed to retain a measure of political autonomy, religious independence, and cultural freedom, or they fled and founded colonies elsewhere. They settled in the cities of Tiflis, Baku, and Constantinople, farther westward in Italy, Transylvania, and Poland, or eastward in India. For nearly three centuries (1199–1375) an independent kingdom, sometimes known as Lesser Armenia, flourished in Cilicia (present-day south-central Turkey) along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Contemporary religious affiliations and political alignments of Armenians in Canada have their roots in the old country. The majority of Armenians belong to the Holy Armenian Apostolic Church. It is called Apostolic because it claims descent from the apostles, Thaddeus and Bartholomeus, who, between 43 and 68 C.E., brought Christianity to the Armenians. In 301 C.E. St Gregory the Illuminator converted the Armenian king, making Armenia the first state to adopt Christianity as its official religion – hence the name Gregorian, which, together with the term Orthodox, is often used to describe the Armenian Apostolic Church. When, at the very outset of the fifth century, St Mesrob Mashtots and St Sahag invented the Armenian alphabet (thirty-eight characters), they ushered in the Golden Age of Armenian literature that included a translation of the Bible (c. 433). Religion and language, therefore, became integral components of a distinct Armenian identity.

It was also during the fifth century that the Armenian Apostolic Church broke with the rest of the Christian world based in Constantinople and Rome, and followed its own course under the spiritual and sometimes temporal leadership of a primate, called the catholicos. From the time of St Gregory, the original seat of the catholicos was at Echmiadzin near Armenia’s present-day capital, Yerevan, but, after 485, it was based in several different cities. Ever since 1441, two seats (catholicates) of the Armenian Apostolic Church have existed: one at Echmiadzin, the other at Sis, the capital of Cicilia, whose catholicos today resides in Lebanon. There is also an Armenian patriarch of Constantinople, who after 1461 functioned as head of the Armenian millet (religious community) in the Ottoman Empire; and the Armenian patriarch of Jerusalem, who since 1311 has been responsible for the Holy Places in that city. On the eve of World War I, about 95 percent of the estimated 4 million Armenians in the Ottoman and Russian empires adhered to the Apostolic Church.

Armenian Roman Catholics or Armeno-Catholics also trace their origins to St Gregory in the fourth century, but it was not until 1742 that they received their own jurisdiction, the Armenian Roman Catholic patriarchate; in 1830 they obtained the status of a millet in the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian Catholics also have two male and one female monastic orders, one of which, the Mechitarist, has since its establishment at the outset of the eighteenth century become renowned for its contributions to the development of the Armenian language, literature, and education. Before World War I, approximately 200,000 Armenian Catholics lived for the most part in the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, as well as in Ankara, Aleppo, and Mardin.

Protestantism came to Armenians as a result of American and Canadian missionaries proselytizing in the Ottoman Empire. By 1846 the Ottoman authorities recognized Armenian Protestants as a millet with specific rights and responsibilities. The Protestant missionaries were to have a profound impact on the Armenian national reawakening, even though the number of converts reached only about 80,000 before World War I.

With the fall of the kingdom in Cicilia (1375), the last independent Armenian state ceased to exist and the lands of historic Armenia gradually came under the control of the Ottoman, Persian, and Russian empires. By the nineteenth century, the majority of Armenians lived in the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and their fate was to be closely linked to the gradually declining political fortunes of that state.

Increasing oppression and intolerance characterized the condition of the Armenian masses, a development partly attributable to the religious, economic, and political changes in the Ottoman Empire and to its relations with Europe’s Great Powers, notably Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia. Armenian bankers, artisans, professionals, and businesspeople formed a small but prosperous and influential elite in the capital, Constantinople, and in other large cities, such as Izmir (Smyrna). Most Armenians, however, eked out a living as agriculturalists, artisans, and shopkeepers in the small towns and villages of eastern Anatolia. There Armenian villages were interspersed among settlements of Kurds, Turks, Georgians, and Azeris.

There were as well approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the Russian Empire, especially in the cities of Tiflis and Baku. Their situation was marked by periods of tolerance and progress that were interspersed with repression and persecution. The Russian imperial government introduced a modern administration in the Armenian province based in Yerevan, assisted the Armenian Apostolic Church at Echmiadzin, and promoted the general welfare of Armenians. There were also times, however, when it confiscated church property, closed Armenian schools, and imprisoned political dissidents.

The nineteenth century was characterized by a national reawakening that was stimulated by the work of Armenians abroad, the growth of a nationalist intelligentsia within the Armenian homeland, and the spread of literacy among the masses. The widespread poverty of the Armenian masses gave rise to self-defence bands and protest movements, and eventually to political parties that championed basic human rights for Armenians in all three empires where they lived. The Armenian Social Democrat Hunchagian party (Hunchags), founded in Switzerland in 1887, called for a proletarian revolution and establishment of a Marxist Armenia. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, or Tashnags), a socialist party founded in Tiflis in 1890, sought to improve conditions through political and economic reform, or through revolution if necessary. The Armenian Democratic Liberal party (Ramgavars), formed in 1921 from several older political organizations, was a predominantly middle-class party representing conservative, Christian, anti-revolutionary, and anti-socialist elements.

It is impossible to understand the mentality and loyalties of Armenian Canadians without reference to developments in the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Armenian demands for political and social reform were supported by Europe’s Great Powers and by certain elements in the Ottoman government. In the end, the authorities rejected the demands of the reformers and responded with force, so that between 1894 and 1896 an estimated 300,000 Armenians were massacred by special forces of Kurdish troops known as the Hamidiya. In 1908 the Young Turk party revolted against Sultan Abdul Hamid II, deposed him, and proclaimed liberty, equality, and fraternity for all. There were hopes for reform and progress under the new Turkish government, but these were dashed the following year with the murder of an estimated 30,000 Armenians in the city of Adana.

Armenian resistance to pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism, demands for improved conditions, and determination to retain a distinct identity served as pretexts to depict the Armenian minority as an enemy of the state. During World War I, the Turkish government, controlled by an ultra-nationalist faction of the Young Turk party, unleashed a systemic program to eliminate all Armenian leaders as well as soldiers serving in the Ottoman armies, and to deport Armenian civilians from their homes. As a result of the arrests and deportations that began in 1915, an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 Armenian men, women, and children either perished during forced marches, were killed in camps, or were massacred by Ottoman troops (primarily Kurdish divisions). Those who managed to survive (in some cases with the help of Kurdish and Turkish neighbours) were eventually forced to flee to the Transcaucasian region of the Russian Empire or to neighbouring Middle Eastern countries. Nor did the armistice of late 1918 that ended World War I stop the bloodshed. In the course of its war with Greece (1920–22), Turkish forces under Mustapha Kemal (Atatürk) attacked Armenians in refugee camps and several cities in eastern Anatolia, while, in the burning Aegean port of Izmir (Smyrna), they drove both Armenians and Greeks permanently out of the city. Meanwhile, the Turkish government passed legislation facilitating the confiscation of Armenian lands and bank accounts, and it even laid claim to insurance policies in the United States and Switzerland belonging to Armenians they said had “disappeared.”

Armenians in the Caucasus region of the Russian Empire took up arms in self-defence. After the withdrawal of Russian army in 1917, they defeated the numerically superior Turkish forces and formed in 1918 an independent Armenian republic. The Armenians appealed to U.S. president Woodrow Wilson to assume mandatory control over the newly created state, but growing American isolationism crushed these aspirations. In the end, the western powers abandoned Armenia to a combined Turkish and Bolshevik Russian invasion in 1920 and to the partition of the Armenian Republic. What remained (about 30,000 square kilometres) became the future Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia.

The traumatic events that began in 1915 and that by 1923 had claimed an estimated 1.5 million lives have become etched into the Armenian historical memory as “The Genocide.” Prohibited by Turkish decree from returning to their home, the survivors began to rebuild their lives in Europe and the Americas as well as in refugee colonies in the Middle East. Almost no Armenians remained in the historic homeland that lies within the borders of post–World War I Turkey. The destruction of the Armenian community in much of its historic homeland forced the diaspora to set about the laborious task of reconstructing all aspects of life, not the least of which was the rekindling of traditions and culture.

Meanwhile, the sovietization of Armenia had widespread ramifications. Soviet leader Josef Stalin implemented a policy of nationalization of businesses, collectivization of the land, and suppression of all political parties, individuals, and organizations opposed to the Communist way of life, including the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Tashnag party. Stalin’s 1923 decision to transfer the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh (Karabakh Mountain Area) to Azerbaijan, whose population was 90 percent Armenian, was to have repercussions to the present day.

In the decades after World War II, Soviet Armenia witnessed a marked demographic increase (2.5 million people in 1970), a rise in educational standards, rapid urbanization, and an aggressive government-directed program of industrialization. There were also manifestations of Armenian nationalism which prompted arrests and trials by the Soviet authorities. By the mid1980s, the Soviet Union had embarked on a program of reform that within a few years produced political instability and the country’s eventual collapse. In 1988 the Armenians, who represented 75 percent of the population in Nagorno-Karabakh, proclaimed their desire to unite with Armenia. This led to conflict with Azeris in the region and to the expulsion of over 350,000 Armenians living in the Azerbaijan cities of Baku and Sumgait. In 1991 Armenia declared its independence and the following year the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh proclaimed an independent state as well.

Since independence, both Armenia and Karabakh, which remain separate political entities, have undertaken to create democratic states with market-oriented economies. At the same time, they have attempted to overcome the economic and environmental problems inherited from the Soviet regime while coping with the ongoing tensions with Azerbaijan over the status of Karabakh. The situation has become more complex as a result of Turkey’s blockade of Armenia and military support of Azerbaijan, civil unrest within neighbouring Georgia, and the sympathy of the international oil cartel towards Azerbaijan largely because of the rich productive capacity of its fields at Baku. The instability in the region will likely assure the ongoing concern of Armenians abroad, including Armenians in Canada, for the fate of their ancestral homeland.