History of Armenia Book

Holy cow, I didn't realize how long it took me to finish this book!

Okay, so my quest for a book about Armenia started with a, "Gee, I really ought to know a bit more about my boyfriend's birth country's history than just the genocide," proceeded with a, "Wait, why aren't there more books about Armenia as a whole?" and ended with a, "Seriously? The book with the best reviews is one that my former employer published? And I didn't take advantage of downloading it while I worked there? *sigh*."

Seriously, though, I was very surprised at how hard it was to find a comprehensive history of Armenia. I mean, granted the people have several thousand years of history, but people manage to compile ancient Egypt, India, China, etc. into one book--and given the large Armenian diaspora, which I can only imagine is growing more distant from its roots as generations pass, I'm surprised there's no accessible overview.

This book seemed by best option, based on reviews, but man...this was so incredibly dry. It felt like a laundry list of battles, kings, generals, and cities, floating about with little context. There were some quick sections describing societal structure, but I felt very disconnected from a sense of culture. There were few anecdotes about individuals to anchor me in time so that I could build my understanding of the family lines and politics around them. Geopolitics. This book is almost entirely geopolitics, with little about the people or the culture to create a connection with it.

I'm not saying anything that other reviewers haven't said already (and I know, because I read most of them before settling on this one), but this book desperately needed maps. I don't care about "the availability and far superior quality of [maps and photographs] on the Internet" (vii-vi), I want to know where the heck the Cilician empire is right now, gosh darn it! And I'm on the subway with no internet! Argh! (As a publisher, I know the reason is more likely related to the difficulty of securing copyright permissions--and frankly, I understand Payaslian's decision not to pursue them. Doesn't stop me from really, really needing them, because I just couldn't wrap my head around the location of Cilica without a visual.)

I've learned bits and pieces about the areas around Armenia in the past'I took a class on the Mongol empire and its legacy in college, I've read books set in medieval Persia and the Ottoman empire, an alternative history set in the Khazar empire, and of course Jerusalem during the Crusades and Constantinople at several points in history have come up throughout the fiction and nonfiction I favor. In the midst of all of this, I'm a bit incredulous as to how Armenia never once came up, either historic Armenia or Cilicia. Perhaps they did and I didn't notice, but still…

Throughout it all, I'm amazed that Armenians survived. The Jews were persecuted wherever they went, kicked out, subject to the Inquisition, but since the first centuries of the first millennium they didn't concentrate in one place and suffer near-constant warfare. Through all the battles and the sheer, bare numbers of dead Payaslian listed, through the wars and the genocide and the Soviet pogroms, it seems astounding that the Armenian people survived in the numbers that they did. The sheer tenacity is amazing.

But what becomes of it? Like today's Syria, modern Armenia seems to have been a country pitied and lamented but never supported by Western and European powers. I hear stories about the ruin left behind by the 1988 earthquake, the post-Soviet resource scarcity, the brain drain, and the everyday corruption. I've heard stories of other countries in similar states. How do any of them survive? How do we let our fellow humans go on like this?

Sorry for getting maudlin. It's hard not to get hung up on the deteriorating state of the world these days. I only hope that there might be a few scraps of silver linings to learn about when I visit my boyfriend's family in a few days and ask about the fifteen years since the book's publication.

Quote Roundup

28 - [Armenia] had the misfortune to be the 'cockpit of the Near East'.
Areg mentioned that the history of Armenia was one of being run over by different conquering empires, but even a laundry list of those empires without details is daunting.

48 - Here was where I really started noticing my Mongol history class coming in useful. I was also struck by the historic divisions among Armenians'for being such a strong cultural identity today, prior to the genocide their history seemed to be one of internal division and discord.

67 - Ani became one of the most important cities in Armenian history… Contrary to the romanticized images, however, the city also had its poor population, most of whom resided in storgetnya (subterranean) Ani. Built in caverns by the riverbanks, storgetnya Ani consisted of rows of residential rooms, small churches, hotels, and cemeteries, all connected by underground roads and tunnels. By one estimate, such habitable caverns numbered more than 1,000 in the tenth century.
As always, I find this kind of history fascinating: ordinary people's lives and underground living? Cool! I'll be looking into the storgetnya some more.

81 - It honestly never occurred to me that any country in the Middle East wanted Crusaders around, but to hear that they were giving the knights bases of operation was eye-opening!

90 - I was so shocked to see a woman mentioned that I just had to flag it:
"Although Levon had appointed his daughter Zabel (Isabelle) as his successor, Ruben Raymond (his grand-nephew) conspired to usurp the crown, but the pro-Zabel barons swiftly imprisoned him. Zabel assumed the throne, under the care of the Hehtumian regent. … Constantine was successful in establishing the Hetumian kingdom in Cilicia by arranging Zabel's marriage with his son, Hetum."
Well, it was fun seeing a woman while she lasted. *sigh*

120 - This page contains yet another laundry list…this ones of pre-genocide massacres carried out by the sultan of the Ottoman empire. Between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians were killed, to say nothing of the other areas where national movements were crushed. I couldn't help but wonder why Armenians didn't start moving out of Turkey at that point, but this book is such a glancing overview that it's possible some of them did'and those that didn't may either have been too poor or too connected to generations of family history. It always sounds so easy to just move when things get bad, I have to remind myself that it must actually be very emotionally and logistically difficult.

127 - The Turkish government and Turkish masses in general vented their collective outrage and nationalist chauvinism against the Armenians, who, the Turks were convinced, had become instruments of foreign subversion conspiring against the Ottoman government.
Wow, if that isn't a disturbingly familiar sentiment. Thank goodness the post-9/11 suspicion of Muslims hasn't escalated to institutionalized racism, though I know a certain unqualified person of literally unnatural (or else carrot-caused) color has threatened things like registers. All the more reason to keep a sharp eye on what's happening in America today.

137 - On May 24 [1915] the Allied Powers issued a joint declaration condemning the deportations and massacres committed by the Turkish government against the Armenians. The declaraitons warned that the Allied governments "will hold personally responsible [for] these crimes all members of the Ottoman government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres."
Ah, the western/European world. Offering useless, hollow support since the 1900s, if not earlier. Really thoughtful of you, folks.

170 - Armenians soon realized that the new Soviet order imposed on them through the Revkom and the secret police, or Cheka, could be as brutal as any Russian tsarist rule in recent memory. … Soviet repressive rule now appeared to be a mere continuation of the persecution and plunder they had experienced in the Ottoman Empire.
This really felt like a tragic moment to me. After all the suffering the Armenian people had been through, all the struggling for their very survival and hope for revolutionary reforms, their best option was nothing more than continued repressive rule. I can't imagine how hopeless any survivors of the genocide must have felt at that point.

201 - Despite the difficult conditions in the [new] republic, the entire nation at home and across the diaspora was ready to serve the homeland, to give concrete shape to its dedication to the imagined independent republic that it had yearned for, from afar, for decades, to transform long-held aspirations into realities.
I don't understand why, at this point, more of the Armenian diaspora didn't invest in the homeland. It's one thing to send financial support, governmental advice, and a few politicians. What the country desperately needed was jobs and economic stimulus. Weren't there any wealthy Armenians in the diaspora who could open factories? Doctors to establish hospitals, teachers to fund schools? Yes, it would undoubtedly be difficult, but surely a large return of the diasporan community, with their education, connections, and resources, would have been incredibly helpful. Jewish people moved to Israel'why didn't Armenians move back to Armenia?