CHAPTER 2:
ARMENIAN TERRITORIAL NATIONALISM, 1828-1915

[index]  [chapter 3]

Pre-Modern Armenia: Exile, Church and Nation

The history of modern Armenian nationalism is, in effect, the history of the Armenian diaspora. For the Armenians, the diaspora is not a mere aberration or anomaly. Until the consolidation of the Soviet Armenian Republic, and even to a great extent since, modern Armenian nationalism has been largely cultivated in conditions of exile. This is in contrast to the earlier concentration of Armenian life in the mountainous regions of what is now Eastern Turkey and the adjacent territories.

Much of my study, therefore, will focus on the institutions, literature and community structures of the diaspora through which modern Armenian territorial nationalism was imagined. This is due to the fact that, in the absence of the state, the national heritage is invested in these vehicles. Firstly, it is invested in the Churches, the language, and more recently the political parties and organisations, creating several epicentres of identity and contributing to a sense of disunity. Secondly, it exists within the individual. Certainly the diasporan institutions play a large role in shaping the diaspora's identity. However, in the absence of a centralised state structure and a universally recognised ideological-political body, there is great scope for the privatisation of that identity, so that being Armenian becomes a 'state of mind' which is the property of the individual. Thirdly, the national heritage exists in the community. The ghetto, trading outpost or host country is adopted as the interim 'homeland', providing a "dual landscape".

These then are the forces which pull the diaspora away from the homeland and provide a source of cleavages within the diaspora. As Oshagan writes:

"Today the diaspora is a multilingual, centrifugal reality struggling to maintain its unity, preserve its heritage, and define its dynamic identity both through a mainstream Armenian-language culture and via moral reference to the Armenian homeland as the symbol of its historical continuity."

At the same time, another force is at work, pulling the diasporan 'inwards' towards the homeland, or the idea of the homeland. This homeland-orientation, which is a force for unity within the diaspora, is described by Oshagan as the

"centripetal principle of attraction to a Center. But the Center is not a location - it is an Idea, an Ideal. . . . Hence, the Diaspora is a state of mind rather than a geographic location."

These two forces have been at work for as long as the Armenians have been subject to dispersion. Exile and homelessness are nothing new in Armenia's history. For example, in the past two millennia they have experienced two extended periods of foreign domination, one in 387-885 AD and the other in 1375-1918 AD. In both periods, in the absence of a state, national "continuity was maintained by the literate clerical elite" who preserved the heritage via the language and the Armenians' unique Monophysite Christianity.

An interesting and unique period of Armenian history was the Kingdom of Cilicia which lasted from 1080 until 1375. As a result of the mass exodus of Armenians following the invasion by Seljuk Turkish armies, Cilicia, a strategic mountainous region located on the Mediterranean, became an Armenian 'diasporan kingdom'. Thus the epicentre of Armenian political, cultural, economic and religious activity shifted away from the traditional homeland. The kingdom of Cilicia acted as a 'diasporan' repository for the Armenian heritage, particularly through its monasteries and libraries. The legacy of Cilicia was significant in other ways too. First of all, it provided a strong link with Europe through the Cilician monarchy's intermarriage with the French monarchy, and through contact with the Crusaders who passed through the country. Following the collapse of the kingdom, a large number of Armenians made they way to France where they established a small but significant community.

Secondly, soon after Armenia was overrun by invaders, the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church - the Catholicosate or the Holy See - was relocated from Echmiadzin in Armenia to the Cilician city of Sis. However, after the collapse of the Cilician kingdom, the head of the Armenian Church, the Catholicos, refused to move the See back to Armenia. Nevertheless, he consented to the election of a second Catholicos in Echmiadzin, and in 1441 the Catholicosate was split in two. This was a significant event in the history of the Armenian nation, one that was to have major consequences as I will show later. Following the Genocide of World War One, the Catholicosate moved to Antellias, Lebanon, where it has remained since.

Between the fall of Cilicia in 1375 and the establishment of the Republic of Armenia in 1918, Armenia was divided among three Empires: the Ottoman, Persian and later Russian. The Armenian population in Armenia itself had been depleted through deportations, massacres and emigration, and this pattern continued throughout the rest of the millennium. Large communities sprung up in places such as the Crimea, Theodossia, and other parts of Eastern Europe, and later other parts of Russia and the Balkans. Later, the Afghan invasion of Persia sent thousands of Armenians into exile, many of whom ended up in South Asia and especially India. In this period, much of the Armenian heritage was preserved through diasporan institutions, namely the Church and, later, the mercatorial class who acted as benefactors for the building of churches, monasteries and educational institutions.

Through contact with the West, the communities of the dispersion were later influenced by the European Enlightenment. For example, the first Armenian printing press was established in Venice in 1512 and published six books including the Divine Liturgy. In 1666 the first Armenian Bible was published in Amsterdam. A printing press was also later established in the thriving Armenian community of Calcutta, where a number of nationalist works were published. In 1772 Shahamirian published a tract called Nor Dedrag (A New Tract) written by Movses Baghramian, an Armenian from Karabagh, which called for the liberation of that region by armed revolt. Baghramian imagined a democratic republic of Armenia, and argued that the cause of the Armenians' decline was their reluctance to enter modernity. A year later he published Parki Dedrag (Tract of Glory) which laid down 521 laws of the constitution for a future independent Armenia which would be centred around the Church. The first Armenian periodical, Azdarar, was published in Madras in 1794 but had only 28 subscribers and lasted only eighteen months. The contribution of the Madras community also came through the Rafaelians, who established Armenian schools in Vienna, Venice and Moscow, and through Joseph Emin, who wrote an extensive account of his travels throughout Armenia and attempted to formulate a program for nationalist 'awakening' among Armenians.

The European Enlightenment also made its way into Armenian life via a group of Armenian Benedictine monks known as the Mekhitarists. Mekhitar of Sebastia was born in 1676. As a trained priest, he read widely and travelled throughout the Armenian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, but was confronted by the stiltedness of Armenian cultural and religious life. He sought to establish a religious order which would dedicate itself to the canonisation and dissemination of knowledge, but finding no support among Armenian priests he eventually converted to Catholicism, and in 1701 he founded the Mekhitarist Order in Constantinople. Two years later, persecution by the Armenian Apostolic Church sent the Mekhitarists fleeing to Morea, and in 1715 they finally settled in Venice. Later, a Mekhitarist monastery was also established in Vienna.

The Mekhitarists' contribution to Armenian culture has been prolific and strategic. Their work represents Phase A of Hroch's stages of nationalism - that is, the activity of a small elite on a scholarly level aimed at the canonisation and elaboration of the national heritage. Apart from the production of many translations, historical works, linguistic and grammatical books and journals, the Mekhitarists preserved many important Armenian manuscripts and engaged in the study of classical and medieval Armenian literature. They also established numerous high-standard schools throughout the world.

Thus throughout much of Armenia's recent history, the national heritage was transferred and preserved through non-state institutions which more often than were not based in the diaspora. By 1828, diasporan existence had become the norm for Armenians. Bakalian writes that: "Sojourning had become an Armenian tradition." Oshagan writes that there emerged "two ways of being Armenian" - "born in the shadow of Ararat", and "born abroad, but holding to certain norms".

In this and the next chapter, I will discuss the role of the diaspora in the imagination of modern Armenian nationalism. Specifically, I will focus on the notion of territory and homeland in that process, and the impact of the (idea of the) homeland on diasporan identity. The analysis will focus on a period of just over 150 years, starting with the Treaty of Turkmenchai in 1828 and ending with the coming to power of Gorbachev in 1985. For the pre-1915 period, I will trace the transformation of the ecclesiastical Armenian community into a trans-parochial, territorial-political 'nation', and the role played by the diaspora in this process. By promoting the idea of self-determination and a common homeland for all Armenians, the nationalist movement sought to imagine an Armenian nationalism that would overcome the cleavages between East and West, metropolis and rural 'interior', and so on. With the Genocide of 1915-23 and the gradual globalisation of the diaspora between 1920 and 1985, my focus will shift in Chapter Three to an analysis of diaspora-homeland relations and the impact of the homeland on diasporan identity.

History of the Armenian People: Literature Review

Ethnic Traditionalism Versus Critical Scholarship

Spicer describes 'ethnic traditionalism' as a "persistent cultural identity system", that is "a pattern of beliefs and sentiments concerning historical events which is maintained for hundreds or even thousands of years." It is not that these groups have not entered modernity, argues McKay. Rather, as a response to modernity they have retained and further reinforced traditional norms, values and beliefs as central tenets of their ethnic identity.

After the fall of the Cilician Empire, Armenian medieval monks preserved the glorified accounts and writings of the past. These were transmitted from generation to generation until they were taken up by the Mekhitarists and systematised, thus providing the raw material for modern Armenian nationalism. The ethnic discourse that has emerged as a result has maintained its hegemony over Armenian nationalist discourse for over a century, and it is to this that I will refer as 'ethnic traditionalism'. Even in recent times when it is facing a growing challenge from 'symbolic ethnicists', ethnic traditionalism continues to maintain quite a strong hold on the Armenian ethnic discourse. Nevertheless the struggle between the two paradigms has only just begun, and as I will discuss in the last chapter the challenge from the new ethnicity cannot ultimately be ignored.

How is it possible to explain the persistent strength of ethnic traditionalism among Armenian diasporans? Suny argues that ethnic traditionalism provides a sort of ongoing "compensation for rootlessness". There is a strongly perceived need to present the Armenians in a positive light amidst the dual danger of persecution and assimilation. This might explain why the writings of ethnic traditionalists are "[o]ften directed toward an ethnic rather than a broader international or scholarly audience", since their purpose is often to preserve a sense of uniqueness and even superiority in the face of external challenge.

Certainly ethnic traditionalism does overstate the uniqueness of its particular group, however at least in the Armenian case the claims to uniqueness do have some basis in reality. For example, even many foreign observers have been quick to pick up on the relative racial, religious, and linguistic homogeneity of the Armenian ethnie. In ancient and medieval times the Armenian ethnie did experience a peculiar bonding by virtue of its unique religion and language, and also due to the fact that it was so often subject to foreign occupation. Thus, when the mythologists present Armenian history as a continuum throughout which the Armenians have manifested noble ideals - defence of their faith, their Church, their self-determination, or their motherland - they are presenting a half-truth. The 'other half' of the story, of course, is the divisions and cleavages that existed and continue to exist within the Armenian ethnie, and the absence of a coherent sense of nationhood until recent times.

Within the ethnic traditionalist school, Kurkjian's classic treatise on Armenian history is a thorough and quite objective examination of the events surrounding the formation and preservation of the Armenian ethnie and the formation of modern Armenian nationalism. Kurkjian attempts to trace the numerous racial minglings, cleavages, internal divisions and inconsistencies that have characterised the Armenian nation. However, the writing of such a volume in itself unwittingly contributes to the process of the nationalist imagining, since it does not question the very notion of Armenian nationhood, and the continuity of that nationhood. Furthermore, the generally scholarly style is often interspersed with romantic descriptions of the Armenian land and people, often glorifying the themes of suffering, victimisation and dispossession.

The same could be said for the works of David Marshall Lang . Though he denies being "starry-eyed" about the Armenians, his account is, in his own words, "to a great extent a labour of love". Thus he hopes that his second book,

"which is partly autobiographical, and to some extent impressionistic, will show the world what human courage and endeavour can achieve in the face of apparently insuperable odds."

His account is not, therefore, meant as a critical analysis of the rise of Armenian nationalism. Rather, as with many non-Armenian scholars, he sees his work as a contribution to the recognition of the achievements and struggles of a dispossessed people.

Louise Nalbandian, the author of the classic work dealing with the modern Armenian revolutionary movement, also manifests strong hints of this sentimentality. For example, she writes:

"The nineteenth-century revolutionary movement manifested the same dedication to freedom as had the fifth-century battlefield of Avarair. The love of liberty, which had burned in the hearts of the Armenian people even during the darkest centuries of their history, now became ablaze."

This is the essentialist view of Armenian history, where Armenians are deemed to "have always and everywhere possessed a core of discernible, ethnically determined qualities" such as heroism, the right of self-determination, and so on.

In contrast to the ethnic traditionalist approach, scholars such as Rouben Adalian, Anny Bakalian, George Bournoutian, Richard G. Hovannisian, Vahakn Dadrian, Vigen Guroian, Gerard. J. Libaridian, Jenny Phillips, Ronald Grigor Suny, Anahide Ter Minassian, Khachig Tololyan and others emphasise the passing down of national tradition as a deliberate choice. Ethnic identity is defined as "a cluster of beliefs, practices, symbols and shared values that have passed from generation to generation in constantly modified and reinterpreted form". Whilst not denying the existence of certain cultural 'givens' that span generations, these scholars focus on the deliberate act of myth-making which helps the process of the imagination of a cohesive national identity that may not otherwise have been evident. Thus what is important is the consciousness of a sense of Armenianness which is common to all Armenians to varying degrees:

"What links the pagan Armenians of the Iranian frontier to the urban dwellers of Erevan or the farmers of Fresno is the idea that they are the same people, a sense of solidarity and communality that is the basis of any nation."

Critical to this approach however is an acknowledgment of the ongoing cleavages which characterise any nation, not least the Armenians. These authors point to the various geographical, cultural, linguistic, religious, social and political cleavages that continue to pervade Armenian life, in spite of the imagination of an apparently cohesive sense of Armenian nationhood, the adoption of a homeland-orientated ideology, and the growth of transport and communication possibilities that linked hitherto disparate population centres. The most obvious division, of course, continues to be that between Eastern and Western Armenians, which has its source in a long legacy of divided historic destinies, regimes, and different pace of revolutionary development, resulting in what Suny calls "at least two distinct political cultures among the Armenians". This cleavage has over time been translated into a diaspora-homeland cleavage.

The point of all of this is to illustrate the obstacles faced by nationalist activists and literati in their task of imagining an Armenian nationalism. Specifically for this thesis, it highlights the complexities involved in attempting to arrive at a single nationalist agenda for territorial restoration. Torossian proclaims that: "Through their history, the Armenians have developed a special and strong sense of attachment to a distinctive part of the world as their national homeland." In a general sense, he is right; however, exactly what constitutes 'the' homeland has not always been clear. For example, should it include Cilicia, Eastern Armenia, Western Armenia, or all three? Should the Armenians seek a Greater, United Armenia, or is this a forlorn hope?

The above discussion is not intended to dismiss the usefulness of works written in the ethnic traditionalist approach. On the contrary, it is the belief of this author that exploring national myths and discourses is just as important in understanding identity as analysing 'objective' social phenomena such as institutions and social structures. Whether these myths are true or not is beside the point - what matters is that they are perceived as being true by a significant portion of the nation, and have practical consequences on how people behave and powerfully shape the agenda of the nationalist movements and institutions. Therefore, in an attempt to understand the evolution of Armenian diasporan identity and the diaspora-homeland dynamic, this thesis draws on materials that lie at different points on the traditionalist-instrumentalist spectrum.

Ethnic Traditionalism Confronts Modernity

The different approaches to the writing of Armenian history represent different responses to the dual phenomena of modernity and modernisation. Modernity is best defined as "a state of mind, a form of consciousness" through which humans interpret the world. According to Tabibian, it is an intrinsically positive, dynamic concept, denoting much more than "contemporary" or "present". Modernity is an ongoing catharsis and, in theory, a movement towards a brighter, more progressive and enlightened future.

Modernisation is the institutional aspect of this process. It refers to the "transformations which characterize society" encompassing the "cultural, social, structural, and political phenomena" that are involved in this process. Modernisation describes both the "content" of power as well as the "means" through which this power is implemented. It may be considered "intrinsically revolutionary because it attempts to reject existing bases of the distribution of benefits available to society."

If defined negatively, however, modernity can be viewed as "a mode of civilisation which is opposed to tradition." In this paradigm, rather than being hailed as a positive force bringing about intellectual, moral, cultural and political emancipation and diversity, modernity is resisted as an intrusive force that threatens to expose the mystique of 'nature' and tradition and to smash the "gods" or idols of the pre-modern vested interests.

To a large extent, it is this negative perception of modernity and modernisation that has informed much of Armenian intellectual and political life over the past two centuries. Tabibian argues that, on the whole, the Armenians have resisted modernisation, and have refused to deal with the pre-modern / modern dialectic, viewing it instead as an irreconcilable conflict. As a result, he argues, the traditional institutions have become more preoccupied with "bickering" rather than with real ideological struggle. Modernisation has been seen as a threat to nationalism, despite the fact, it might be added, that this very nationalism was born in the era of modernity and was nurtured by it.

A similar though somewhat less damning analysis is offered by Oshagan with regard to the Armenian suspicion towards anything foreign and, by association, anything modern. He argues that initially, throughout the nineteenth century, an increasingly secularised literati viewed the West as a positive influence, as they were somehow able to disassociate it from the general and more threatening term 'modernisation'. They drew their inspiration largely from the West, and often imitated it "in a rather hasty manner". Later, however, with the post-Genocide dispersion and the entrenchment of the 'siege mentality' among the Armenians in Europe and the Middle East, even the term 'Westernisation' began to represent the 'other' (odar or foreigner) and was viewed with suspicion.

Tabibian argues a similar case, contending that for many Armenian scholars, political and cultural leaders, modernity has been viewed as something 'foreign', as imported and therefore a threat. A pervasive fear underlying this protectionism has been the realisation that an acceptance of modernisation would create greater fragmentation among Armenians at a time when national survival is seen as depending on 'unity' and the "crystallisation" (Kortian) of that which is uniquely Armenian. This helps to explain why throughout the latter part of the twentieth century 'unity' has so often been proposed as a panacea for the diaspora's problems.

Consequently, despite a growing number of recent exceptions, those who have engaged with modernity have been cautious to frame their work in acceptable form and to avoid an objective structural analysis of Armenian life. For this reason, Tabibian wrote in 1983 that Armenian "political culture and structures" are not modernising, but rather they are

"in a period of disorder where the old system is clearly breaking down and there is absolutely no clearly defined modernization setting in. Instead of being an orderly transformation from traditional to modern political structures, Armenian society is essentially going from traditional to entropic, disorderly, fragmented, uncoalescing, shaped but unformed patterns. . . . the traditional is replaced by a sort of disorder, a form of suspended animation, a phase of contradictory cultural and political values."

Tabibian's commentary must be analysed in view of the broader perspective of modern Armenian history. Firstly, the conservatism of Armenian cultural and political life can partly be attributed to the Armenians' chronic statelessness and victimisation. Tabibian himself alludes to this factor later on in his article, pointing out that the Armenians face a debilitating disadvantage because of their smallness of numbers and their radical marginalisation from the cultural and political mainstream of world society. However, although Tabibian recognises the impact of statelessness and victimisation on the Armenian experience, he underrates the significance of these factors. Secondly, perhaps the Armenians' resistance toward that which is foreign can be related to the late development of Armenian nationalism and the 'imitation effect' described in the previous chapter. Perhaps then the Armenian political and cultural norms and institutions are currently going through precisely the process which Tabibian laments has not eventuated. The answer to this question will become apparent as the thesis progresses.

Nevertheless, it is true that on the whole the Armenian organisations and intellectuals that have attempted to lead the nation have not been able to confront the challenges of modernity, and as such have largely hindered the modernisation process. Much of the literature has identified the problems but been short on solutions. Those that have offered an alternative have largely been marginalised by the traditional organisations. However, it is necessary to qualify this analysis in one final way: the phenomena described in this discussion are not unique to the Armenians. Certainly the Armenians might be experiencing some of them with greater intensity, but the difference is perhaps quantitative rather than qualitative. Fatalism, ethnocentrism, parochialism, conservatism are terms that could all be used to describe any group. In an odd sort of way, the critics of Armenian political and cultural norms and institutions are themselves falling into a trap of ethnocentrism, by seeing the Armenian experience as unique in a negative sense.

On balance, then, the Armenians' relationship with modernity is best summarised as a paradoxical one of simultaneous resistance and assimilation. The Armenian response to Western influence has been in many ways similar to that of Meiji Japan: imitation and isolation. Western nationalist thought was heavily adopted by the Armenian intelligentsia but became frozen in time as the descendants of the first nationalists did not engage in ongoing critical evaluation of their ideologies and the institutions that carried them. Ultimately, what was initially modern and revolutionary soon became conservative and reactionary. The revolutionary zeal of the early nationalists was fossilised into the fatalistic scholarship of 'ethnic traditionalism' of subsequent generations. Finally, as Tabibian argues and Kortian suggests, modernity has been understood more as a fad which must be imitated for the sake of survival rather than as a mode of consciousness that must be internalised and contextualised.

Finally, a word about postmodernity. This notion refers both to the fulfilment, the peak, and the ultimate expression of modernity, as well as to its antonym, its dialectical opposite. The latter is the understanding that is most often expressed by the postmodern pioneers themselves, such as Lyotard, Habérmas, Foucault, Derrida and so on, who regard postmodernism as anti-modern and for whom postmodernity supersedes modernity which has simply "exhausted itself". This being so, it is nevertheless also helpful to understand postmodernity as an extension of modernity, in that it defines itself, albeit inadvertently, in dialectical relationship to modernity.

Furthermore, it is in many ways difficult to separate the processes of modernity and postmodernity. This is partly because of the ambiguity in defining what postmodernity actually is, and partly also because of the fact that the processes of modernity and postmodernity are always occurring simultaneously and have borne fruit in varying degrees in different places. Therefore, to make things more simple, in analysing the data I will usually not seek to distinguish between modern and postmodern phenomena. Rather, I will focus on the movement, the process, of American-Armenian cultural and political life towards modernity and the options this process has opened up for the reimagination of Armenian identity. Postmodernity will be understood as the late modern phase of development.

The Imagination of Territorial Nationalism Among Eastern Armenians

The Setting: Armenians and Empire

The rise of the Armenian nationalist movement and the claim to a 'national' territory must be understood in the context of the process of state-building of the Ottoman and Russian Empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In response to the 'revolutionary imperialism' adopted by France in the wake of the French revolution, various linguistically and / or historically related ethnie throughout Europe embarked on a program of state-building. This process was accelerated during the Napoleonic Wars, culminating later in the century in the unification of Italy and Germany. Over the course of the nineteenth century, nationalism was increasingly adopted by European states as a political tool for the mass mobilisation of its people and the tightening of national boundaries. In doing so, these governments intensified the centralisation of their administrative and military structures, and also strengthened the place of the administrative vernacular, for example German, Italian, Turkish, and so on. This process later culminated in the adoption of policies of cultural nationalisation, variously referred to as 'Russification', 'Turkification' and so forth. That which initially inspired out of administrative utility was gradually transformed into a new raison-d'etre of politics.

An unintended side-effect of the strengthening of the state was to increase nationalist awareness and the demand for reforms among stateless minorities. Thus, nationalism offered a tool for legitimacy not just for the state, but also for elements opposing it. In many instances those minorities whose language had not been exalted felt discriminated against. For example, where the French Revolution compelled states to strengthen their military and territorial power, it also created the potential for internal challenge to these states by inspiring national minorities with the same ideals of 'liberté, egalité et fraternité'. For these minorities, self-determination increasingly came to centre around the concept of territorial autonomy or independence.

The Russian Annexation of Eastern Armenia

Torossian, writing in 1980, divides the history of modern Armenian nationalism into five periods: 1860-1878; 1879-1908; 1909-1923; 1924-1965; and 1966 onwards. This thesis will mostly follow Torossian's schema but with the addition of two further periods. First of all, Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985 should be considered as the starting point of the most recent period of modern Armenian nationalism. Secondly, it seems more appropriate to mark the beginning of modern Armenian nationalism with the Treaty of Turkmenchai of 1828.

The Treaty of Turkmenchai was signed at the end of the Russo-Persian War. It handed over a large portion of Persian Armenia to Russia. At the same time, largely through the efforts of Bishop Nerses of Ashtarak, a "militant, intellectual and . . . nationalist priest" who eventually became Catholicos in 1843, the existing Russian Armenian minority assisted the Russian army in its victory over Persia, proving that the Armenians could be relied on as supporters of the Russian Empire. Nerses was able to convince Russian commander Paskevitch to include in the treaty of Turkmenchai an article (Article 15) which opened the Russo-Persian border for Armenian emigration from Persia for a limited period of time. During the following year, 25,000 Armenians emigrated from northern Persia and another 20,000 from eastern Turkey, thus swelling the Armenian population of Russian-occupied Erevan province and, for the first time in 600 years, giving the Armenians a solid majority in a part of their own homeland.

It would be no exaggeration to say that, in encouraging these migrations, Nerses singlehandedly changed the course of modern Armenian history. The outcome of all of this was the establishment of an embryonic population base in a concentrated area which was later to provide the basis for Armenian statehood throughout twentieth century as similar migrations later took place in the 1860s, in 1877-78, and during the Genocide of 1915-23. Thus 1828 marks the beginning of the modern imagination of Armenian territorial nationalism, at least among Eastern Armenians.

In the short term, however, the Armenians' hopes for autonomy within the Russian Empire were quickly dashed, as the Apostolic Church was rapidly brought under the control of the Tsar according to the Polojenye (Regulation) of 1836. Furthermore, the significance of the migrations was significantly reduced when, in 1840, the Armenian province (Armianskaia oblast') was divided between two existing administrative units, once again reducing the Armenians to a minority in their own provinces. The reason for this move was no doubt to quell the rising tide of Armenian territorial nationalism. However in the long run this policy had the opposite effect of strengthening the aspiration for 'territorial restoration' among the Eastern Armenian intelligentsia.

Though the Apostolic Church lost much of its autonomy, there took place a number of other developments which facilitated the imagination of a "non-territorial nationalism" among Armenians throughout the Russian Empire. The Church was given control over the affairs of the Armenian community not only in Erevan province, but also throughout the entire Russian Empire. For example, all Armenian schools in the Empire were brought under the control of Echmiadzin. This national education system strengthened the communication between various Armenian communities, and facilitated the imagination of an Armenian 'nation' that crossed parochial boundaries. At the same time, imposition of a uniform system of taxes for all Armenians throughout the Empire had a similar effect. Finally, the Armenians were beginning to experience the fruits of modern 'social communication' within the Russian Empire, through the general increase in communication and transport which were the result of modernity. This process facilitated the imagination of a 'nation' beyond the local parish, and provided a greater possibility for the distribution of works of literature among a wider sector of the population.

Thus the abolition of the Armenian oblast' in 1840 effectively ended the Armenians' immediate hopes for territorial autonomy within the Russian Empire. However, in the meantime, there emerged

"new forms of non-territorial Armenian nationalism [which] grew up around substitute cultural and political institutions in order to reinforce the separate identity of the Armenian minority, partly in face of a perceived threat of Russification."

This development confirmed the central role of the Armenian diaspora, political and cultural institutions, and diasporan literature as the carriers of the national heritage and the activists of the national agenda, as the space where a 'visual' homeland could be imagined. It also strengthened the sense of dispossession and, hence, the longing for the homeland. In the long run, this radicalised the nationalist movement, and contributed to the strengthening of the longing for territorial 'restoration'.

Eastern Armenian Literature

The annexation of large parts of Eastern Armenia meant that "the Armenians were now physically in Europe again", giving them a new window onto Europe thus providing a source of ferment in Russian Armenia. Many Eastern Armenian scholars were eventually to go abroad to Germany, France and Russia to study, bringing back with them romantic and other enlightenment ideas. Though Armenians of the East had been exposed to Europe in earlier times, the explosive combination of European romantic nationalism, Russian populism, and the growing national awareness among Armenians in the Russian Empire provided the Armenians with an historically unique moment.

The beginning of modern Armenian nationalist literature (both Eastern and Western) is marked by Khachatur Abovian's Verk Hayastani (Woes of Armenia), published in 1858. Abovian was born in the first decade of the nineteenth century, in the village of Kanaker in Erevan province, and had experienced first hand the annexation of Armenia by the Russians. In Verk Hayastani, he describes the ravages of the war, and the disappointment that followed as the Armenians' expectation were not fulfilled. Abovian was the first author to write in the Eastern Armenian vernacular (ashkharapar), posing a direct challenge to the Church's monopoly on literature through the use of classical Armenian (grapar) which was incomprehensible to most of the population. In this regard, Shmavonian points out the significance of language as a space for the imagination of Armenian nationalism:

"For Abovian, the survival of the Armenian language had become part of a desperate political crisis surrounding the suppression of the [Armenian] oblast' [in 1840]. . . . After the suppression of an active territorial-political life for Russian Armenians, literature, along with the Church and Church politics, became a vital substitute for it in Armenian communities."

Furthermore, Abovian built on peasant notions of the soil, viewing the land not only as sustainer of life, but also as 'national' heritage. Though he did not imagine a political-territorial nationalism in the modern sense, his emphasis on the land provided the seed for such an imagining. Finally, Abovian was also radical for his time in that he called on his 'fellow Armenians' to engage in revolution.

Abovian's successor in the imagination of modern Armenian nationalism was Mikayel Nalbandian, who was born in Nakhichevan near Erevan in 1829. He was involved in the establishment of the first Armenian secular journal in Russia, Hiususapayl (Northern Light), which was published in the vernacular (askharapar). He spent several years in Europe from where he called for the secularisation and 'nationalisation' of Armenian schools and for education to be conducted in askharapar. In his 'A General Discourse Concerning the Nation', Nalbandian decried the absence of a 'national consciousness' among the Armenian masses. Under the influence of Ogarev and Bakunin, he called for the formation of cadres consisting of priests, schoolteachers and women, who would go "to the people" (v narod) in both Russian and Turkish Armenia, and bring enlightenment. Upon his return to Russia in 1862, Nalbandian was immediately arrested, and he died in exile in 1866.

By offering a primitive radical-populist program for national enlightenment, Nalbandian was among the first to speak openly of a new, non-ecclesiastical Armenian community inspired by secular notions of self-determination and a radical, revolutionary agenda, advocating armed uprising against Armenia's rulers. In Liberty, Nalbandian writes:

"The first name on my childish lips
Was thy great name, O Liberty!

'Freedom!'
. . . I will be true to thee till death;
Yea, even upon the gallows tree
The last breath of death and shame
Shall shout thy name, O Liberty!"

In Days of Childhood, he writes:

"When to full consciousness I woke,
My country's woes weighed down on my heart."

There never could be joy for me,
While speechless, sad, in alien hands,
My country languished to be free."

Once again, though his nationalism was not specifically territorial, it was a powerful catalyst for the imagination of an Armenian nation that cut across social classes and geographical distances.

Kamar Katiba was born in Nor Nakhichevan, Russia, in 1830, the son of poet-priest Gabriel Patkanian. Perhaps his most famous poem is The Tears of Arax, in which he personifies the river 'Mother' Arax as singing the praises of Armenia and predicting its glorious rebirth. Kamar Katiba openly advocated the independence of the Armenian homeland. For example, during the Russo-Turkish War and the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878, when hopes were raised about the possible 'liberation' of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Katiba wrote several patriotic poems focusing on the dream of a free homeland. These expectations were later dashed when the Treaty of San Stefano was superseded by the Treaty of Berlin, a document much less favourable to the Armenians, and Patkanian penned his Complaint to Europe, complaining of betrayal by the European powers.

The final literary figure from this period is Raffi (1835-1888 - né Hagop Melik Hagopian). He is without doubt ". . . the most celebrated Armenian novelist of modern times." Born in Salmast, Persia, Raffi became an ardent admirer of Khrimian Hairig. His travels throughout Russian, Ottoman and Persian Armenia gave him a solid first-hand knowledge of the plight of the Armenians, and in this sense Raffi was unique. Raffi is perhaps best remembered for his historical epics David Bek and Samuel, and the political novel Khente (The Fool). Most of his works shared several common themes, namely the oppression of Armenians and their courageous struggle to survive in the face of all odds. Raffi exalted heroes such as St. Vartan, and called for similar armed struggle against Armenia's rulers without relying on foreign powers for help. In Khente, Raffi's hero looked forward to a 'Golden Age' of a free, independent and united Armenian homeland, where Armenians could once again thrive intellectually and culturally, and live peacefully and in prosperity.

Two later poets are also worthy of mention. Hovhannes Toumanian (1869-1923) and Avedik Issahakian (1875-1957) borrowed from ancient Armenian legends and folk tales and brought them to life in the romantic style. Toumanian is most famous for his epic David of Sassoun, and for his passionate descriptions of the lives of Armenian peasants, while Issahakian's works have become the basis of popular Armenian nationalist songs. They, along with Abovian, Patkanian and Raffi, formed the nucleus of the literary imagining of territorial nationalism among Eastern Armenians.

The Imagination of Territorial Nationalism Among Western Armenians

Political Reform and the Imagination of Ottoman Armenian Nationhood

By the nineteenth century, Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire was centred around the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the urban amira class. Since the fifteenth century, the Patriarch had been invested with full administrative responsibility for the Ermeni Millet (Armenian 'Nation'), exercising control over the educational, religious and social life of that community. However, over time, real power was gradually shifted to the amira class of Armenian financiers, traders and officials in the Ottoman government.

The monopoly of the conservative elements and the Church was challenged in the early part of the nineteenth century, with the emergence of a new intellectual and professional class, the esnafs. Educated mainly in European cities such as Venice and Paris, the esnafs laid the groundwork for the gradual transition from an ecclesiastical to a political community. To compensate for their isolation from establishment, they sought trade and other forms of contact with Western countries. Theirs was essentially a conservative, 'liberal' social agenda, focusing on intellectual enlightenment and seeing little need to extend this enlightenment to the rural masses. However, through their support for limited constitutional reform, they were to become the early catalysts for the imagination of a modern, non-ecclesiastical nation among Western Armenians, and some esnafs later became the pillars of the revolutionary movements in the Ottoman Empire.

In 1838, the esnafs challenged the conservatives' monopoly on the funding of Armenian schools, by forming their own Union for fundraising purposes. The actions of the esnafs seemed to receive support from the proponents of the first phase of the pan-ethnic Ottoman Reform Movement (Tanzimat) which began in 1839. In 1841, the Patriarch established a new National Committee which consisted entirely of members of the esnaf class and representatives of the laity. His successor re-structured the Committee and appointed a National Assembly of sixteen amiras and fourteen esnafs. Finally, in 1847, the Assembly was split in two: the Spiritual Assembly, composed of fourteen clergymen; and the Supreme Assembly of twenty, composed of amiras, esnafs and lay people.

In 1848, undoubtedly inspired by the revolutions throughout Europe, hundreds of Armenians demonstrated in front of the meeting place of the two Assemblies, calling for a more rapid democratisation of the representative process. Louise Nalbandian writes that these events "indicated that the Armenians were ready to resort to revolutionary methods in order to achieve political freedom". This statement may be attributing to the demonstrators a greater intentionality than may in fact have existed; however the demonstrations did set a precedent for further acts of defiance against both the Ottoman Government and the Armenian conservative elements.

These events were significant in that they eroded the hegemony of the Patriarchate and its associates over Armenian national life, and for the first time incorporated lay people into the administration of the Ermeni Millet. Furthermore, the concept of a National Assembly was to provide a forerunner to the National Constitution, which was implemented in 1860 as a result of pressure from the West. Though not legally enforceable, the Constitution for the first time canonised liberal-democratic concepts, and as such represented a victory of the esnafs over the Patriarchate and amiras of Constantinople. The Constitution codified the mutual obligations of the "individual" and the "nation", referring both to the "rights" and "duties" of the individual. It formed a General Assembly which would act as the peak legislative body for all Armenians, including Catholics and Protestants.

The impact of the Constitution was felt in several ways. Firstly, by incorporating the non-Apostolic elements, and by drawing from most of the urban social classes and a few rural representatives, the Constitution accelerated the administrative unification of all Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the imagination of a mass nationalism. Secondly, the Assembly was vested with the task of establishing and overseeing a national system of schools, which had the same effect as the centralisation of the Armenian education system under the Catholicos in Russian Armenia. Not only did it create greater uniformity of input across the Millet, but also, being established under the authority of a primarily secular body, it provided a base for the propagation of secular nationalist ideas. Thirdly, the Constitution provided an ongoing basis for the administration of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, and continued to operate in parts of the Middle Eastern diaspora after The Genocide of World War One.

However, being a primarily liberal document, the Constitution did not adequately encapsulate the aspirations of the rural Armenians who lived in the Armenian homeland. On this point, Libaridian distinguishes between two types of Armenian nationalism that emerged throughout the nineteenth century, and which were to increasingly grow apart. The nationalism (azgasirutiun) of the urban merchants, professionals and clergy viewed the nation as "an abstract and timeless" entity, a concept that was devoid of a direct relationship with the land and its people. This stood in contrast to the thinking of reform-minded rural intellectuals and clergy such as Garegin Srvantsiants, whose concept of nationalism was characterised by a mixture of volkism and love of the land (hayrenasirutiun). Referring to the urban (diasporan) elite who made their home wherever they could acquire wealth and security, Srvantsiants wrote that one's fatherland is not "where he was born". Rather,

"Our fatherland is where our history, our heroes and saints are. It is the people there that make our fatherland real with their sufferings. It is they who need and are worthy of assistance. Had it not been for the hayastantsi [inhabitant of Armenia], Armenia would have been turned by now to a thing of the imagination."

In writing this way, Srvantsiants was also exalting the common man and woman who was viewed as the repository of the uncorrupted heritage of the Armenians, undefiled by pragmatic, materialistic Western influences. The provincial Armenian had an organic link with the land which could not be separated from its spiritual, cultural and political identity. Though the Millet system was the medium through which administrative affairs were conducted, the more powerful force in the provinces was the "simple attachment to a land invested with historical and spiritual significance". Srvantsiants' contemporary, Mkrtich Khrimian (Khrimian Hairig), was also of the same school of thought. Khrimian was later responsible for bringing the rural-populist notion of nationhood to the attention of the Constantinople establishment.

Nevertheless, even the limited goals of the Constitution faced obstacles in their implementation. Suny points out three of these: opposition from many Turks on the basis that the 'natural order' was being disturbed by the infiltration of Western notions of 'equality'; the tendency for the reform movement among the minorities to look to Europe for its inspiration and support; and the apparent disinterest by the Ottoman regime in seriously applying the reforms, which were in the first place introduced under foreign pressure. To this list can be added a question mark about the sincerity of the European Powers in imposing reforms on the Ottoman Empire, which meant that they did not show much interest in pursuing the reforms to the very end. As Momsen points out,

"The preservation of the Ottoman empire in the face of constant Russian encroachments was to remain one of the fundamental principles of British foreign policy until 1915 . . . Consequently, reforms were forced on the Ottoman government only in so far as they did not endanger the delicate fabric of this decaying political system."

The ultimate failure of the reform movement proved a great disappointment for the Armenians. However, its achievement was that it set in motion the imagination of a non-ecclesiastical nationalism among Western Armenians, laying the foundation for the radicalisation of the Armenian nationalist movement and the emergence of a territorial nationalism among Western Armenians.

Western Armenian Literature

As in Eastern Armenia, so too in Western Armenia, it was the work of the Mekhitarists that provided the raw material for the literary and educational renaissance and the imagination of a modern Armenian nationalism. However, in the Ottoman Empire, American Protestant missionaries provided the initial catalyst for the dissemination of the Armenian vernacular and the opening of non-Apostolic schools. In 1853, Dr Elias Riggs directed the translation of the Bible into the Armenian vernacular, as well as of dozens of Protestant hymns and devotional books. This broke the hold of the Armenian Apostolic clergy on access to the Bible and facilitated the development of a 'laity' mindset both in religious and secular matters.

The first non-ecclesiastical Armenian school had already been founded in 1790 in Constantinople, with several more being established thereafter. The first Protestant elementary school was established in 1831, and by the First World War the Protestants had established dozens of Armenian elementary schools and colleges throughout the Ottoman Empire, as well as sponsoring the formation of several indigenous Armenian Protestant schools. The Protestant schools were unique in that they emphasised equal education for men and women, physical development, and a more liberal approach to curriculum. In this sense, they pushed the Armenians into modernity. At the same time, several semi-private schools were funded by the United Societies and similar Armenian organisations.

These Protestant schools, along with the various secular and Mekhitarist Colleges founded in places like Venice, Paris and Vienna, provided the context for the Western Armenian literary revival and the cultural homogenisation of the Turkish Armenian population. Indeed, the first Western Armenian popular nationalist writer was Father Ghevont Alishan (1820-1901), a Mekhitarist priest. Alishan penned numerous works of poetry, prose and drama, in which the main theme was the plight of the Armenians. His successors, the poets Bedros Tourian (1851-1872) and Krikor Odian (1834-1887), and Mgrditch Beshigtashlian (1828-1868) who wrote three poems dedicated to the heroes of Zeitoun, more easily fit the classic mould of the melancholic, earthy romantic, and in the space of two decades "created an Armenian version of the romantic genre". The poet himself epitomised the suffering of the Armenian nation, and as Oshagan writes:

"This image of the poet as a gifted, virtuous, tragic, but immortal victim sacrificing himself for the nation has haunted and inspired Armenians to this day."

The romantic period was followed by a brief encounter with realism in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The significance of this literature is that it realistically portrayed the cleavages and conflicts within Ottoman Armenian society, particularly that between the social classes. However, many of the elements of the romantic genre continued to colour the Armenian literature even beyond the turn of the century. Realism only became firmly entrenched in the 1930s, with the realisation that the diaspora was to all appearances a permanent phenomenon.

East and West: Unity, Cleavages, and the Role of the Diaspora

To summarise the period of reform culminating in 1860, the first phase of the emergence of modern Armenian nationalism was characterised by the transition from a church-centred preservation of the Armenian heritage to the politicisation of Armenian nationalism by a secular, urban intelligentsia. This roughly parallels Phase B of Hroch's three stages of the development of modern nationalist movements.

If the Mekhitarists provided the raw material for the nationalist imagining, it was the intelligentsia of the mid-nineteenth century who first undertook the "systematic editing and reconstruction" of the oral and written traditions that had been preserved by the Church. Theirs was an attempt to create a single, uniform version of the past and present 'struggles' and possibilities of the Armenian 'nation'. They were responsible for the creation of a systematic national mythology which would later be perfected by the revolutionary political parties.

These men (and later women) were inspired by the French Revolution and the rapid dissemination of nationalist ideas throughout Europe which accompanied the creation of new nation-states such as Germany and Italy. The Armenian literati, most of whom were educated abroad, dreamed of national self-determination and the 'dignity' of the homeland and, over time, began to develop loose notions of territorial restoration. In general, these writers broke with the Church and were virulently anti-clerical and secular, ushering in a more secular-political notion of nationhood to displace the ecclesiastical nation. The influence of romanticism elevated the writer to the level of prophet, since he/she also 'suffers' along with the subject of his/her work. The romantic poet or author becomes "the new authority" - indeed, the new cleric - the representative of the common man (in German, Volk), and the lover of the land.

At the same time, the emerging nationalism introduced the possibility of new cleavages. As a democratic and individualist concept, mass nationalism opened up the possibility of new and varied ways of defining 'Armenianness' and of differing programs for achieving self-determination. Nationalism carried within it the seed for the future privatisation of ethnicity and for the emergence of the kind of 'symbolic' ethnicity that has characterised ethnicity in pluralistic societies in the latter part of this century.

Furthermore, the nature and pace of the nationalist imagining was quite different in the East and the West. Firstly, the development of a national consciousness in Turkish Armenia took place over a longer period of time. Until the middle of the century, the Armenians essentially remained the 'Loyal Millet', even while other Christian subjects had already begun to revolt. However, once this loyalty was broken, and fanned by revolutionary propaganda from Russian Armenians, the drift was irreversible.

Secondly, even as late as 1860, the imagination of a metropolis-interior commonality in the Ottoman Empire was close to absent. Technically, this was a diaspora-homeland disparity as much as an urban-rural one. This was in contrast to Russian Armenia where the links between the urban intelligentsia and the rural poor were much stronger from the start. The imagination of a trans-parochial Armenian nationhood with the Ottoman Empire was only to occur in the second half of the century, with the literary revival among Ottoman Armenians, the dynamic personality of Khrimian Hairig, and the arrival of Armenian revolutionary ideas and cadres from the Russian Empire.

Thirdly, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were introduced to romanticism through southern and Western Europe, particularly Venice and Paris. The Russian Armenian intelligentsia, on the other hand, who were primarily educated in Dorpat, Moscow and St Petersburg, ultimately adopted a much more revolutionary strategy, primarily due to the strong influence of populism, Marxism, and other variants of socialism in northern Europe at the time. The different sources of inspiration go a long way in explaining the different ideological and strategic emphases characteristic of the two sectors of the emerging Armenian nation which has been the source of so much conflict throughout the twentieth century.

A common imagining of Armenian nationalism between East and West was perhaps more evident in the literature. For example, writers both in the East and the West personified the land or the 'homeland', and in some way longed for 'its' liberation from the yoke of foreign rule. By the end of the century many writers, particularly in the East, were advocating armed struggle against Armenia's oppressors. This was initially aimed only at the Ottoman Empire. However with the Tsarist government's increasing Russian chauvinism the Eastern Armenian literati and revolutionary movements began to target the Russian government as well. By the 1890s there had emerged a primitive form of transnational Armenian nationalism, spanning the Russian and Ottoman Empires and increasingly drawing in the Armenians of Persia. The writer Raffi epitomised the imagining of a common voice for all Armenians living in all three countries, and his works form a significant phase in the imagination of an Armenian nation with common woes and common hopes.

Furthermore, the nationalist literati were increasingly secular and, in many cases, virulently anti-clerical. The use of the ashkharapar instead of the classic grapar as the literary language was symbolic of their attempt to break from the Church and to establish of a new secular-political sense of nationhood. At the same time, the use of the language of the common folk represented an attempt at 'authentication' of the nationalist ideology or ideologies, since nationalism is viewed as a mass phenomenon. The 'mother tongue' is seen by nationalists as "a part of the soul, if not the soul [of the nation] made manifest". In this way, language is used to create a link with the past - not the immediate past, but rather the 'Golden Age' of centuries earlier. Language, and in particular printed language, is the medium through which this link with the past can be imagined and propagated among the masses. Thus it is primarily the function of language, rather than the language itself, which stimulates the national consciousness, because until the language is transformed into a literary tool with a political agenda, it simply remains a means of daily communication, and nothing more. As Anderson writes:

"Much the most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities . . . Print language is what invents nationalism, not a particular language."

The adoption of the vernacular as the literary language, along with the growth of modern communications and transport, greatly contributed to the imagination of an Armenian nation by facilitating the emergence of trans-parochial loyalties.

It is interesting to note that many though not all of the literati of the nineteenth century were diasporans. Even those who were born in the Russian or Ottoman Armenian provinces received their education in diasporan or non-Armenian schools and colleges. Later in the century, most of the revolutionary movements and parties were either formed in the diaspora or received impetus from diasporan sources. Certainly, much of the nationalist activity took place in the two key epicentres (communities or gaghouts) of the diaspora, Constantinople and Tiflis, as well as a number of other urban centres in the Russian and Ottoman empires and throughout Europe. Under both Russian and Ottoman rule, the mass of the Armenian population who lived in the homeland were peasants in the backwaters of their respective Empires, mostly without contact with the outside world. Thus, it was primarily the Armenian intellectual elites of the diasporan urban centres, being in contact with European ideas, who were to lead the way in the Armenian political and literary renaissance.

Furthermore, the diasporan nature of much of the nationalist literature meant that the longing for the homeland carried a greater intensity and nostalgia. Notions of nostalgia, romanticism, and victimisation/dispossession - which had permeated the Armenian consciousness for many centuries - carried greater weight among those who were deprived of their land:

"It is more the suffering of not being able to love that drives a man to write love songs. Similarly, a diasporan can write about the homeland better than the homelander, because he is writing about something imagined, unattainable."

The Revolutionary Movements and the Reimagination of the Nation, 1860-1915

The Revolutionary Awakening

The period 1860-1915 can be described as a period of radicalisation of opposing nationalisms within the Ottoman Empire due to a number of factors. Firstly, "the failure of reform in the Ottoman Empire eliminated the possibility of internal, non-revolutionary solutions to the plight of the Armenians. Frustration with legal alternatives led to the formation of revolutionary parties". Secondly, Armenian revolutionary activities brought about equivalent responses from the Ottoman government, creating a "cycle of violence". Thirdly, in the absence of political order in the Eastern villayets, competition for scarce resources, primarily land, between Armenians, Kurds and Turks led to an increasingly violent cycle of rebellion, repression and massacre. These factors, compounded by the pan-Turkish dream and strategic considerations during World War One, were the catalysts that led to the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

The first major step towards the adoption of a radical territorial-nationalist platform came with the activities of Khrimian Hairig (Hairig is an affectionate term for 'father'), who was born in Van in 1820 and established the first Armenian press in Asia Minor outside Constantinople. He was, relatively speaking, a progressive. Louise Nalbandian describes him as "representative of the new fighting spirit of the age". In the journals Ardzvi Vaspurakan (Eagle of Vaspurakan), which he established in 1855, and Ardzvig Tarono (The Eaglet of Taron) founded a few years later, he often wrote about the struggle of provincial Armenians and their political oppression. He also published articles written by people who advocated armed struggle against the Ottoman regime. In 1869, he was elected Patriarch and moved to Constantinople. From 1893 until his death on 1907, he served as Catholicos of all Armenians in Echmiadzin.

Perhaps Khrimian Hairig's greatest achievement was to provide a link between the metropolis and the interior, between the urban and provincial classes, contributing to the imagination of a Western Armenian nation that cut across the cleavages of the Ermeni Millet. Even as Patriarch, he remained much more of a populist than most of his predecessors, and constantly sought to raise awareness among the Armenians of Constantinople of the situation in the provinces. He encouraged provincial representatives to report to the National Assembly on the situation of the provincial Armenians. However a modified report submitted to the Ottoman government bore no fruit. Nor was Khrimian successful in his attempts to increase the representation of provincial Armenians, and to politicise the Assembly by stirring its interest in matters of Millet-Government relations. By the time of his resignation in 1873, Khrimian Hairig had earned himself the reputation of a reckless democrat, seen as having "endangered the nation" - that is, "the urban elite".

Khrimian Hairig is also remembered for his role in presenting an Armenian voice at the Treaty of San Stefano which was signed at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War. Upon his request, the Armenian case was discussed by the victorious powers, and the final Treaty contained a clause whereby a large portion of the Ottoman Armenian provinces would be handed over to Russian rule. However, through the intervention of the Western powers, the Russian and Ottoman delegates were invited to Berlin in June 1878 to negotiate a revised Treaty, which made only passing mention to Armenia. It merely stated that the Ottoman government guaranteed to ensure the security of life and property of Armenians living in the provinces.

Obviously, the Treaty of Berlin was disappointing to the Armenians, heightening their sense of betrayal and abandonment at the hands of the Western powers and of vulnerability within the Ottoman Empire. The European Powers sent several notes to the Sultan requesting that he carry out his promised reforms, but to no avail. Instead, the provincial Armenians found themselves once again at the mercy of Kurdish bandits and arbitrary attacks by Ottoman forces. Ottoman troops returning from the Russian front pillaged the Armenian landscape and brought terror to the provincial population. Furthermore, the Sultan introduced strict censorship laws which were primarily aimed at quelling the nationalist ferment among the Christian minorities.

These events were indicative of the gradual radicalisation of nationalism among both the Turkish majority and non-Turkish minorities of the Ottoman Empire. On an official level Ottomanism - the idea that various ethnie could co-exist in an unequal but harmonious relationship - was increasingly being displaced by Islamism and, ultimately, Turkism. At the same time, an increasing number of Armenians began to take the advice of Khrimian Hairig who, upon his return from Berlin, had called for armed struggle. The Armenians, he argued, could no longer rely on Russia or Europe for the furtherance of their political cause. Thus a small number of Ottoman Armenian urban intellectuals began to develop an interest in cultivating the revolutionary potential of the rural masses. In the 1880s, their interests merged with Russian Armenian cadres who began to cross the border. The radicalisation of Armenian and Turkish nationalism heightened intercommunal tensions sparking a wave of officially sponsored massacres against the Armenians throughout the 1890s. These were a prelude to the World War One Genocide by the Young Turks. This process will be discussed in greater depth later.

The first expressions of irredentist revolutionary activity took place in the Armenian enclave of Zeitoun. Located within the boundaries of the ancient Cilician Kingdom, Zeitoun had enjoyed limited autonomy within the Ottoman Empire as a result of the edict by Sultan Murad IV (1618). Since then, several times the Armenians of Zeitoun had fought against Ottoman armies to retain their independence. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the semi-independent status of Zeitoun became a model for Armenian nationalist agitators in Constantinople and Russian Armenia. Beginning in 1856 with the Ottoman government's attempt to settle Crimean Tatar refugees in Zeitoun, several uprisings took place which dragged the government into what amounted to "full-scale warfare". In 1862, the Ottoman government launched a 'punitive' military campaign against Zeitoun, however after some initial victories the Ottoman forces suffered a humiliating defeat. Further plans by the government to attack Zeitoun were only averted by appeals made by Constantinople amiras and the French Emperor on behalf of the province.

The Zeitoun incident brought the plight of the provincial Armenians to the attention of the Constantinople intelligentsia. This interest was given momentum through the influence of Russian-Armenian populist revolutionaries. Kamar Katiba and Mikayel Nalbandian, for example, advocated the migration of Armenians to Zeitoun to strengthen the Armenians' population base there and to facilitate the emergence of an independent Cilicia. At the same time, the Zeitoun uprising prompted the formation of a number of Armenian nationalistic societies throughout the Ottoman Empire which emerged largely through the influence of Russian-Armenian populist revolutionaries such as Mikayel Nalbandian. Nalbandian visited Constantinople in 1860-61 and contributed to the formation of the Benevolent Union. This Union was primarily socio-cultural in nature, and consisted of several prominent poets, scholars and professionals. Nevertheless, some of its members were also involved in revolutionary activity, including the planning of the Zeitoun revolt. It was around this time, too, that the first Armenian Masonic Lodges were established in Constantinople. These were ostensibly apolitical in nature but nevertheless had close links with Nalbandian and a clear political agenda including designs for Armenian independence and the unity of Armenians of all classes and denominations throughout the Ottoman Empire.

As the revolts and self-defence measures spread to other Armenian provinces, the idea of independence began to be applied to the broader Armenian region. Between 1863 and 1867, the Armenians of Erzerum made several appeals to the Ottoman government for protection against Kurdish bandits, but to no avail. In 1872, the Armenians of Van founded the Union of Salvation (Miutiun I Perkuthiun). The Union pledged to win "freedom" at any cost, and seemed to have drawn members from a cross section of the Van Armenian population. Interestingly, its Russophilia was evidenced by the immediate establishment of diplomatic ties with the Russian government, the Union's appeal for assistance made to the Russian government in 1872, and the request that they be accepted as Russian subjects. In 1878 the Black Cross Society (Sev Khatch Kazmakerputhiun) was formed, also in Van, which aimed to protect the unarmed Armenians from looting, pillaging and the extraction of tribute. Two years later, the Protectors of the Fatherland (Pashtpan Haireniats) was organised in Erzerum. Most of these organisations did not last long, however, as the Ottoman government was becoming increasingly aware of the underground activities in the Armenian provinces.

Similar groups began to emerge in Russia in the late 1860s. From the start, Armenian revolutionary rhetoric in Russia was distinctly anti-Turkish. These sentiments were usually only thinly veiled. For example, at the height of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the radical newspaper Mshak (Tiflis) carried an editorial by Grigor Ardzruni that called on the liberation of the Ottoman Armenians with the help of the Russians. This no doubt strengthened Ottoman suspicions of Armenian disloyalty, contributing to the wave of massacres and persecutions that followed. Other journals also served to disseminate revolutionary ideas. The monthly journal Arevelian Mamul, for example, was founded in early 1871 and introduced many Enlightenment ideas to the Ottoman Armenian elite. The budding revolutionary movements began to appeal to an increasingly desperate populace. Dozens of Russian-Armenian cadres began to make their way into the Armenian villages, stirring the people's passions with revolutionary rhetoric.
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The Goodwill Society (Barenepatak Enkeruthiun) was formed in the city of Alexandrapol in Erevan Province in 1868. The Society was registered as a cultural, educational and benevolent organisation, but in reality sought political solidarity with the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. Like the Union of Salvation, the Goodwill Society sought to arm the Ottoman Armenians. The group was dispersed by the Tsarist authorities in 1876, two years after the establishment of another revolutionary society, the Devotion to the Fatherland Bureau (Kontora Hairenats Siro). Its aims were similar to the Goodwill Society, but it only lasted for a year.

These societies were the first of many such circles to be formed in Russian Armenian circles in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century. The Dastakian circle, established in Tiflis in 1881-82, published secret papers calling for the liberation of Ottoman Armenia, and sent observers into Ottoman Armenia to prepare the groundwork for revolution. A number of other secret societies were also formed in the early 1980s. In Karabagh a secret society called Uzh (Strength) provided arms, money and education to Ottoman Armenians. A number of revolutionary societies sprung up in St. Petersburg and Moscow, which for example published accounts of the Balkan uprisings. The Union of Patriots (Hairenaserneri Mioutiun), founded in Moscow in 1882 and disbanded in 1886, called for the organising of the youth of Transcaucasia for the task of leading the insurgencies in Ottoman Armenia. Their newspaper, The Herald of Freedom (Azaduthian Avetaber), carried articles by former members of the Dastakian circle, and emphasised the importance of economic as well as political freedom and equality for all Armenians.

It is interesting to note that the emphasis of these groups on the liberation of Ottoman Armenia meant that their goals were often at odds with the populist and Marxist movements among other nationalities, namely the Georgians and Russians. Furthermore, their willingness to appeal to a broader spectrum of social classes in the interests of the national cause meant that socialism was ultimately dispensable. Certainly the rhetoric of socialism would always be maintained, particularly later on the part of the Hunchaks and, to a lesser extent, the Dashnaks. However, in substance the socialist element seemed to be secondary to the nationalist program and the imagination of a nation that transcended existing political boundaries. In this context, too, it is understandable that the ideas of Russian populism had a greater long-term impact on the Armenian revolutionaries than pure Marxism. Suny argues that populism's "reliance on the peasantry" provided a more realistic option for the mainly rural Armenian population; it appealed to the "romantic urges of young Armenians"; and finally it offered a greater hope for the unity of the Armenians nation, as opposed to Marxism which emphasised class distinctions.

However, the Armenians' Russophilia was not to last. The Tsarist government's Russification policies of the mid-1880s incited some degree of anti-Tsarist feeling among the Armenians, further radicalising the Armenian nationalist movement in Transcaucasia. Kristapor Mikayelian, who later co-founded the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, responded to the government's closing of Armenian schools by publishing a leaflet. The Mikayelian circle in Tiflis was the first to produce propaganda specifically targeting the Tsarist government. Nevertheless, the primary emphasis of the Transcaucasian revolutionary societies remained the liberation of Ottoman Armenia. Even Mikayelian's Young Armenia organisation (Yeritassard Hayastan) continued the emphasis on arming Transcaucasian Armenians to engage in armed resistance in Ottoman Armenia.

What is interesting about the Yeritassard Hayastan organisation was that cell groups were organised throughout Transcaucasia, the Ottoman Empire, and even Persia. A small arms factory was formed in Tabriz in Persia. By 1890 the dream of Armenian self-determination had begun to shift from shifted from Cilicia to other parts of both Western and Eastern Armenia, and had enlisted help from Armenians living in all parts of the historical lands. The Armenian revolutionary movement acted as a catalyst for the 'cross-pollination' between Ottoman and Russian Armenians, facilitating the imagination of a common identity. This was encouraged by the increasing disappointment with Russia and the break with the multiethnic Transcaucasian parties. The failure of reform within the Empires, particularly in the Ottoman Empire, also radicalised both the methods and goals of these movements.

The Revolutionary Parties

The early revolutionary movements had offered what the Church could not - a practical, radical plan for the liberation of the homeland, a this-wordly strategy and hope. They also set the foundation for the imagination of a political-territorial Armenian community. In the words of Grigor Ardzruni writing in the journal Mshak in 1872: "Yesterday we were an ecclesiastical community, today we are patriots, tomorrow we will be a nation of workers and thinkers." Significantly, this understanding of the national community was accompanied by a nationhood that increasingly defined its members according to their political consciousness, as opposed to any universal, 'objective' ethnic or religious characteristics.

Following the limited success of the revolutionary movements and societies, it became increasingly clear that what was needed was a more organised, co-ordinated and comprehensive revolutionary effort, drawing on the resources of the entire Armenian population scattered throughout the three occupying powers. The emergence of the revolutionary parties parallels the transitional phase between Hroch's 'Phase B' - agitation by a 'vanguard' in an attempt to win the broader population over to a program of self-emancipation" - and 'Phase C' - "mass nationalist activity". To an extent, this phase was a response to the ongoing state-building and the increasingly chauvinistic nationalisms taking hold within the two empires.

The first Armenian revolutionary party, the Armenakan Party, was formed in the Western Armenian province of Van in 1885, inspired by educator Mkrtich Portugalian (1848-1921). Portugalian, who was born in Constantinople, was consistently critical of the conservative elements of Ottoman Armenian society, writing extensively for a number of radical Armenian journals. Portugalian's revolutionary ideas made the most impact in Van, which he used as his base and where he established two schools. In 1885, Portugalian moved to Marseille, where he founded the journal Armenia. Portugalian advocated the establishment of a General Congress incorporating the various revolutionary and patriotic groups.

Although Portugalian's attempts at establishing such a Congress failed, it inspired a group of his former students to form the Armenakan Party in Van. Its program was similar to that of the various societies that were being formed at the time. However, it was different to these in that it carried out strategic terrorist acts, and engaged in offensive, pre-emptive actions against Ottoman and Kurdish militia. In this way, the Armenakans broadened the agenda from the defence of the 'parish' to an 'offensive' strike against the government on behalf of all Armenians. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Armenakans was their spearheading of the defence of Van against the threat of massacres by the Ottoman government in 1896. The Armenakans, it seems, had succeeded in broadening the notion of national resistance and awakening some degree of a trans-parochial patriotism among rural Armenians.

However, by this time the Armenakans were already being superseded by the establishment of two new parties, the Hunchaks and Dashnaks. The Social Democrat Hunchak Party (SDHP or Hunchakian for short) was in many ways inspired by the work of Portugalian, though it went further in its revolutionary strategy. Following the failure of the General Congress, a trio of socialist-minded Caucasian Armenians - Avetis Nazarbekian, Maro Vardanian and Gevork Gharajian - began meeting in Geneva. In late 1886, they officially broke from Portugalian's group and began drafting a program for a new party. The party's "immediate objective" was to be the self-determination for Ottoman Armenia, with the long-term goal being the establishment of a socialistic society. These goals were to be achieved through revolutionary propaganda, agitation, and terror, a clear replica of well-known Russian populist tactics. A year later, the Geneva circle established their own newspaper Hunchak , and this was adopted as the name of the new party.

Unlike Portugalian's Patriotic Union and even the Armenakan Party, the Hunchaks

"had in mind designs for a large, powerful, active revolutionary party that would encompass the whole territory of Turkish Armenia and would have branches in the Armenian communities abroad."

The Hunchaks established cell groups in Constantinople and throughout Ottoman Armenia. Despite opposition to their socialist emphasis from many elements within the Armenian bourgeoisie, and the failure of cooperation with other ethnic minorities, the Hunchaks successfully staged a number of demonstrations and revolts. The key events were the demonstration at Kum Kapu in Constantinople (1890); the Sassoun rebellion over taxes which led to brutal massacres (1894); the demonstration of Bab Ali (September 1895); and the Zeitoun rebellion (October 1895-96). Each activity resulted in bloodshed and arrests, and the Sassoun and Zeitoun revolts were used as an excuse for wholescale massacres by the Ottoman government. Nevertheless, the Hunchaks did succeed in attracting the (albeit short-lived) intervention of the European Powers who demanded that the Sultan carry out reforms, which was one of the major goals of the party. However, as in the past, once again the reforms promised by the Ottoman government were never delivered.

In 1896 the Hunchak party experienced a split over tactical and ideological lines. Interestingly, the class nature of the split is evidenced by the fact that it was Constantinople and Egyptian Hunchaks who called for the abandonment of the party's socialist platform. A further split took place in 1907-8 which was the catalyst to the formation of the conservative Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (ADLP, or Ramgavar Party). These splits weakened the party and by the end of World War One the Hunchaks had been greatly reduced in size and impact.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, or Dashnaktsutiun) was formed in Tiflis, Georgia, in 1890, by a group of Eastern Armenians including Kristapor Mikayelian, Simon Zavarian, and a few of their colleagues from Yeritassard Hayastan. The ARF brought together the Droshak cell groups, various liberal socialist and non-socialist revolutionary groups, and, at first, the Hunchak Party, under an umbrella organisation that attempted to embrace the wide range of ideological persuasions that existed at the time. The eclectic nature of the early organisation was evidenced by the language of the Manifesto, which used the phrase "economic and political freedom of Turkish Armenia" as a substitute for "socialism", and other unclear phrases such as "peoples' war", and the notion of defence "with his own hands". As Suny argues:

"The Dashnaks did not see themselves as the representatives of any single group or class among Armenians but rather as the revolutionary vanguard of the whole nation".

However, the rift between the socialist Hunchaks and the ideologically pragmatic ARF became increasingly irreconcilable, and the Hunchaks finally split from the Federation in 1891. Throughout the decade, the unwillingness of the ARF to take a firm stand on the socialist program led to the formation of several other socialist and social-democratic workers' organisations throughout Transcaucasia, many of which were multi-ethnic in nature. The point here is that the main surviving nationalist party sought to imagine a nation that crossed class boundaries, and the success of that party can at least partly be attributed to this very policy.

What remained of this broad coalition of Armenian revolutionaries experienced rapid growth in membership. This growth coincided with the gradual radicalisation of the Armenian revolutionary movement in the 1890s, in both Russia and the Ottoman Empire. In 1890, a group of 125 armed men on horse and foot embarked on a mission to liberate Ottoman Armenia in what subsequently became known as the Googoonian Expedition. They were arrested at the Russo-Turkish border by Russian Cossacks, bringing an abrupt end to months of preparation which had enlisted the financial and moral support of many Russian Armenians. Despite the failure of this expedition, however, many historians and observers have commented on the significance of the incident for Armenian nationalism, namely the solidarity it engendered between Russian and Ottoman Armenians, and the sanctioning of armed force. Many other such romantic projects were devised throughout the 1890s, and the attack on Bank Ottoman in Constantinople in 1896 by the ARF was one of the slightly more successful of these plans.

The Googoonian expedition fuelled Russian fears that Armenian revolutionary fervour might ultimately turn Russian Armenians against its own government. Their fears seemed justified when, in 1892, the funeral procession for Grigor Ardzruni in Tiflis turned into a political demonstration. Many revolutionary leaders and intellectuals were arrested as a result. The shift in Armenian sentiment was in no small way due to the Tsar's move away from pan-Slavism to a policy of rapprochement with the Ottoman Empire. The spiral of mutual radicalisation was accelerated by the Russification policies of the Tsarist government in the mid-1890s. In 1896 most Armenian church schools were closed, and in 1899 all private charitable organisations were dissolved. In 1900, the Armenian Printing Society was closed down, and three years later all Armenian Church properties were seized by the authorities, turning Armenian clergy into state employees. The Dashnaks, in cooperation with Catholicos Khrimian, organised a Committee of Self-Defence, and demonstrations broke out throughout the Caucasus, leading to a spiral of repression and assassination of Tsarist officials by Dashnak terrorists. By 1905, writes Suny, "Transcaucasia was rapidly becoming ungovernable".

Even so, the situation in Ottoman Armenia continued to remain far more desperate than in Russian Armenia. In 1891 Sultan Hamid established a personal bodyguard force called the hamidye. It consisted entirely of Kurds and acted as a counter-force to Armenian revolutionary activities in the provinces. They brought terror to the Armenian population and were directly involved in the massacres of 1895-96. The formation of the Hamidye forced a permanent wedge between the Armenians and Kurds, and gave force to the Sultan's pan-Islamic agenda, further radicalising the nationalism of the Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish provincials.

Consequently, the ARF continued to concentrate its efforts on opposing the Ottoman regime. Using northeastern Persia as their base, where an arms factory was also set up, the ARF sent field workers into the Ottoman Armenian provinces to organise local cell groups. By 1896, the ARF was strong enough in the Ottoman Empire to be able to organise the Bank Ottoman Demonstration in Constantinople that year. Like the Bab Ali demonstration a year earlier, the aim of the Bank Ottoman demonstration tried to attract the attention of the European powers. Also, like the Bab Ali demonstration, no reforms were to follow, and over 6,000 Armenians and other Christians were massacred in Constantinople.

At this point the Hunchak and Dashnak ideas of the homeland can be compared. From the start, the Hunchaks had proposed a united, independent socialist Armenia, incorporating the Ottoman, Russian and Persian territories. In contrast, the ARF Program adopted in 1892 declared that: "The purpose of the A R Federation is to achieve political and economic freedom in Turkish Armenia." Exactly what was meant by this was quite vague from the start, and the Program "did not even mention the word independence", but instead called for reforms for the Ermeni Millet and proposed a somewhat vague notion of a "free Armenia" which envisaged administrative autonomy. The details of this plan were later outlined in the Program of 1911, which called for the formation of a Transcaucasian Federation which would form a republic within a larger Russian democratic federation. ARF historian M. Varandian confirms that:

"The pioneers of the Dashnaktsutiune not only did not utter the word 'independence' in their public speeches, but they did not have 'independence' as their demand."

Indeed, in 1893, the party's organ, Droshak, featured a cautious editorial matched only by Western scholars unsympathetic to nationalism:

"We are opposed to those views according to which the independence of a people is an absolute condition for the amelioration of its lot."

Nevertheless, over the next two decades there was a clear though gradual shift in the attitude of the ARF towards the idea of an independent, united Armenia. This was no doubt prompted by the increasingly chauvinistic policies of the Russian government. In 1903 Droshak published the following statement written by one of the party's founders, Kristapor Mikayelian, in response to the massacres in the Ottoman Empire and the increasingly antagonistic policies of the Tsarist government:

"It is time to adopt as our general motto the indomitable will to struggle and fuse as one. It is necessary to erase those borders on maps drawn by this or that chief bandit. . . . No oppression, no persecution and no border can separate a people, if that people, inspired by a consciousness of common interests, manifests an unwavering determination to fight as well."

Here Mikayelian is not directly calling for a united Armenia, but his reference to the mutability of borders does indicate a shift in that direction. His statement is also interesting from the point of view of an analysis of the imagination of modern Armenian nationalism. The Armenian 'nation' is evidently defined by a "consciousness" of being a nation, of being "oppressed", albeit by two different "oppressors". The ARF only explicitly adopted the platform of an independent and united Armenia in 1919, when a delegation was sent to the Paris Peace Conference with demands for the unification of the Ottoman and Russian Armenian territories.

Though differing from each other in some respects, both the ARF and Hunchaks saw territorial-political freedom as their ultimate goal. The notion of territorial restoration was a modern adaptation of the traditional Armenian attachment to the soil as sustainer. Territory was given a new political significance in a world where statelessness would mark the death sentence of an ethnie. By the turn of the century, the political unity of that territory was gradually being emphasised as the salvation of the Armenian people, culminating in 1919 with its formal adoption into the ARF Program.

The Church: Challenge and Response

Throughout the nineteenth century, the most important development regarding the Church was undoubtedly the challenge to its hegemony over Armenian civil and religious affairs from various quarters: Catholicism, Protestantism, and finally secular, romantic nationalism. These forces brought about the radical reimagination of Armenian nationhood by challenging and redefining the role of the Church and opening up the possibility for alternative discourses of nationalism. The nineteenth century saw the creation of a stronger sense of political nationhood which superseded the notion of an ecclesiastical nation.

I have already discussed the radicalisation of the secular-nationalist movements and their impact on the Church. The concept of revolution stood in direct opposition to reformism, which was traditionally the position of the Church. At the same time, many secular nationalists viewed the Church as a useful political tool for the achievement of their revolutionary goals. Once again, the Apostolic Church became an important arena for the playing out of political rivalries, a reality that continues to the present day.

However, a much earlier challenge to the monolithic ecclesiastical community came from Catholic and Protestant missionary activity among the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. With the slow but steady growth of the number of Catholics among Ottoman Armenians beginning in the eighteenth century, these converts came to be viewed as a threat to the unity of the Armenian Church and community. By 1820, the chasm had become so wide that a large number of Catholic Armenians migrated to the Crimea in Russia, where a significant Armenian Catholic minority already existed. Ultimately, Armenian Catholic representatives appealed to the Sultan to recognise the Armenian Catholic community as a community distinct from the Ermeni Millet. In January 1831, on the insistence of the French ambassador in Constantinople, the Catholic Millet was established which did not come under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch.

In the same year that the Catholic Millet was established, the first Protestant missionary arrived in Constantinople. Ten years earlier, the first Protestants had arrived in Beirut and found a handful of interested clergymen. The first Protestant school was opened in 1834, and in 1836 the Evangelical Union of Armenia was formed in Constantinople. The Union saw itself as a reform movement within the Apostolic Church, with apparently no intention of creating a separate church. However, over time, partly due to the actions and statements of the foreign missionaries and ambassadors in Constantinople, the Union became increasingly viewed with suspicion, and in 1846 the Armenian Patriarch declared Protestantism heretical. Those who continued to hold to Protestant beliefs were excommunicated from the Church. In 1850, the estimated one thousand Protestants were granted Millet status.

Regarding the impact of these events on the Ottoman Armenian community in particular, Tololyan argues that "these conversions created proto-Diasporas of internal exile within the Empire" . In other words, the status quo which had for so long been centred around the 'Mother Church' had now been challenged. The implications of these developments were profound, for divisions within the religious realm threw into disarray the traditional ecclesiastical notion of what constituted the Armenian 'nation'. The establishment of two new Millets was a crucial step in imagination of a political definition of the Armenian nation, a definition that would eventually encompass all three religious Millets. Divisions had long existed within the Armenian community and within the Church, but now divisions were emerging between the Apostolic Church and rival centres of power.

The growth of secular nationalism among the Armenian elite compounded the fragmentation of the ecclesiastical community and further fostered the imagination of a territorial-political Armenian nationhood:

"The Apostolic Church which had come to stress its Armenian nature as much as its Christian faith found that the post-Enlightenment European definition of nationhood had opened the gates for an alternative formulation of Armenianness, in which neither religion nor the Church were automatically dominant."

In other words, the Church, which had come to define its role as a political one, even at the expense of its spiritual mission, was now having even this role usurped by secular forces:

"Newly emerging secular intelligentsia and political parties competed with the church for the soul of the nation. At stake was the claim to the authentic voice for national aspirations."

The relationship between the Apostolic Church and the nationalist movement underwent several stages. In the first stage, the clergy manifested some degree of 'awakening', viewing their role as that of protectorate of Armenian people. Nerses of Ashtarak, the man responsible for the migration clause in the Treaty of Turkmenchai and who later became Catholicos, epitomised this role. This was more apparent in Russian Armenia, since the Holy See was located in Erevan Province, than in the Ottoman Empire, where the Patriarch in Constantinople was largely out of touch with the situation of the interior.

The next stage was the exposure of many clergymen to Enlightenment ideas and their involvement in nationalistic education, the establishment of journals, and other forms of radical nationalist activity. This stage was epitomised by clerics such as Father Khrimian. Though still a reformist on the whole, Khrimian's trip to the Congress of Berlin in 1888, and the subsequent involvement of the church in the nationalist struggle, showed him to be of a different genre to his previous generation.

The final stage was the chasm between the Church (including many reformist clergymen) and the revolutionary movements, and the attempts by some to bridge this gap. In this stage, the Church's response was on the whole clearly guided by its desire to hold onto its monopoly of power which it had enjoyed for over 1,000 years. In other words, as the Church began to accept the political definition of the nation, it sought to bring this notion under its control. Even so, the Church's nationalism was too conservative for the revolutionary intelligentsia, who by this time had largely adopted a strong anti-clerical agenda. Socialist revolutionary propaganda also biased people against any form of religion, for example the much quoted Marxian assessment of religion as the "opiate of the masses". Ultimately, for the revolutionary nationalists the Church was subservient to the nation, and this was at cross purposes with the Church's view of itself. Interestingly, though, neither the Apostolic Church nor the Protestants or Catholics ever established an official position regarding the revolutionary parties. Nevertheless, there was clearly a lower level of enthusiasm among Catholic and Protestant Armenians, while many individual Apostolic clergymen did participate in revolutionary activity.

In the end, what in fact resulted was a synthesis of the secular and religious notions of the nation. Certainly the focus of dedication was shifted from the Church to the nation, with the two being viewed as distinct for the first time, and Suny and others are correct in pointing to the shift from an ecclesiastical to a political notion of Armenianness. However, this did not occur in the classic Western sense of the separation of church and state and the separation of religious community from national community. Scholars such as Haas and Gellner seem to view religion and secular nationalism as essentially irreconcilable rivals. Haas writes that pockets of religiosity that continue to exist do so despite the secular-nationalist hegemony, and are considered to be a challenge to the latter. The implication here is that religion provides an 'irrational' alternative to the 'rational(ist)' discourse of nationalism.

Such a simplistic analysis may be relevant to some societies, but as Guroian points out it certainly cannot be applied to the Armenian situation. One needs to take into account the historical circumstances and complexities that characterise not only the Armenian case, but also that of many Orthodox nations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The pre-modern Armenian ethnie was defined primarily as an ecclesiastical community. The unity of this community was only challenged in the nineteenth century, and since then the transition to a politically imagined nation has never been all that clear cut. Rather, there has progressively taken place a synthesis, what Hayes describes as a "religious syncretism, or admixture". Religion has come to play a double role: on the one hand, it is subsumed by the nationalist discourse and utilised for the furtherance of that discourse, and on the other hand, it has the potential of acting as a moderating influence on the excesses of nationalism and of helping the nation view itself in the global context. Thus, it has been possible for an entire nation to continue nominal allegiance to a religion whilst also re-focussing much of their religious worship and discipline towards the nation

In the Armenian case, the subordination of the Church and religion to the nationalist discourse has been more evident than has the moderating influence of the Church on that discourse. In this regard, scholars such as Guroian and Tololyan have noted that the role of the Armenian Church has been, and continues to be, defined by the secular nationalists. The criticism brought against the Church by these writers is that, in seeking to fulfil its political mission, it has done so at the expense of its spiritual mission and has thus forfeited, on the whole, the opportunity to bring a Christian contribution to the nationalist discourse. Guroian writes that secular nationalists increasingly began to see the value of the Church as "preserver of ethnic consciousness and legitimizer of nationalism". In response, the Armenian clergy "accepted this call and put faith to the service of nationalism", allowing its "purpose and role within the nation [to be] defined by these secular forces". This willingness to submissively accept externally imposed definitions of itself, argues Tololyan, is the ongoing problem facing the Church, along with the fact that the Church continues to be the arena in which political struggles are carried out.

Consequently, rather than providing a religious alternative to the nationalist discourse, the Church shared in the "religo-national myth" which "projected modern ideas of nationhood and popular sovereignty back into the origins of Armenian peoplehood and Christianity". Thus, events with religious significance, such as the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, Armenia's adoption of Christianity in 301 AD, and the Battle of Avarair in 451 AD, were all reimagined and re-told as landmarks in the development of nationhood. Although the Armenian Church took its time in becoming an advocate for the national struggle, once it entered the struggle it did so with full devotion.

Even Protestantism and Catholicism did not emerge as a counter-weight against secular nationalism in the way that Haas describes. Certainly the Armenian Evangelicals and Catholics have sought to moderate the nationalist agenda, and have also been less likely to be involved in nationalist activities and practices which are perceived to be in conflict with Christian practice. Thus the non-Apostolic minorities have certainly been perceived as being less nationalistic than the Apostolic community, since Catholic and Protestant Armenians are stereotypically viewed as giving their first loyalty to their religious identity and faith rather than to national identity. They are also viewed by many as being 'foreign' religions, despite the fact that Apostolic Christianity itself was initially introduced to Armenia through foreign missionaries. In any case, the perception of 'foreignness' was exacerbated by the fact that there is a higher degree of intermarriage, and of non-Armenian speakers, among these groups than among Apostolic Armenians.

However, the perceived difference is in many ways greater than the reality. In particular, Armenian Protestantism was highly influenced by Enlightenment notions of individualism and freedom of conscience and personal choice of faith, and as such has a fair bit in common with the secular Enlightenment nationalist discourse and the increasing move towards symbolic, personalised identity that it has spawned. Also, despite the official separation from the Apostolic Church, many Armenian Protestants and Catholics alike continue to view the Apostolic Church as the 'Mother Church', and there is a great degree of cross-over between the various churches with many Armenians attending services at both. Thus, Protestantism and Catholicism as potential 'pockets of resistance' are in fact much more mainstream than they first appear.

If the Church was the space where the Armenian heritage was to be preserved, it was not the space where this heritage was allowed to be (exclusively) reimagined. Nevertheless, its continuing presence and the persistence of its high profile within the Armenian nation are a testimony of the Church's pragmatism and flexibility in adapting to the nationalist agenda, though often at the expense of its own unique spiritual mission. Thus the Church has largely been integrated into the political-territorial nationalist paradigm, endowing that paradigm with a spiritual legitimacy.

The Imagination of Armenian Territorial Identity

This analysis has taken us through the nineteenth century, tracing the evolution of secular, territorial Armenian nationalism from the early literary renaissance through to the revolutionary struggle. On the eve of the first World War, the Armenian nationalist movement had finally arrived at a point where to varying degrees it had begun to view the various separated parts of the Armenian people - in particular the politically conscious Armenian masses - as an 'imagined community' that transcended existing political boundaries. To achieve this goal, the thinkers and parties attempted to deal with the divisions that existed within the Armenian ethnie. In imagining a 'national' identity and political strategy, they increasingly saw the need to identify some of the common factors - the 'constants' - of Armenian identity that would transcend the cleavages of East and West (both dialect and historical experience), metropolis and interior, diaspora and homeland, poor and rich. The result was that on the eve of the First World War, although still politically divided,

"Armenians in both empires were seeking similar solutions for their separate and combined concerns and aspiring for a whole solution to their dilemmas. The Armenian people had progressed in their development to a stage which presented a challenge to two governments, themselves representing states in mutual conflict."

However, in the absence of a homeland, the parties and other non-state institutions became the carriers of the nationalist agenda, as did the language and literature of the time. These structures undertook the role normally carried out by the state. Thus the study of Armenian nationalism is, for much of this period, a study of the literature and institutions of the diaspora.

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