Armenians and Diasporas: A Breakthrough Book

The variety of historical situations discussed as "diasporas" is very great. If we find some common features of, say, the Jewish and Armenian diasporas, we may find fewer between them and the Chinese, the Indians, the Lebanese, and even fewer with the case many would say is the most important in world history, the completely involuntary diaspora of millions of Africans sent to the Americas. Complications multiply if we ask diaspora-studies questions about the great nineteenth-century migrations to the Americas, Australia, and so on, noticing the Irish fleeing famine, encountering prejudice in the US, and staying involved in the violent politics of their homeland; go on to the great flows in so many directions after 1945; or just ask a taxi driver in London, Toronto, or Washington, DC, about the politics of his homeland.

The story of the Armenians after the terrors of 1915 is part of every general discussion of diaspora, and is important to many of us in our urban lives; in Pasadena, California, I probably still can find a "Boycott Turkish products" sign on someone's front lawn, and I know of five or six Armenian churches and benevolent societies that do not always get along well with each other. However, the singular story of the Armenian early modern diaspora gets much less attention. Philip Curtin's Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, which raised the ante for a comprehensive view of diasporas by starting with what he knew best, the inland trading routes of west Africa, included a whole chapter on the Armenians (Curtin 1984, 179-206); Robin Cohen's survey, although it drew on Curtin, missed entirely the crucial change occasioned by the forcible resettlement of the Julfa Armenians in 1605 (Cohen 1997, 31-3, 42-55).

Around 1500 the real opportunities for enterprise were in Istanbul. The Armenian heartland east of the Black Sea was a battleground between the Ottomans and the Safavids. In 1605 the Safavids occupied part of that core and forcibly transferred most of its Armenian population to areas more firmly under Safavid control. The peasants were settled in Gilan Province south of the Caspian, where they contributed to its rise as a major center of silk production. The merchants were settled on the outskirts of Isfahan. Rarely in world history has a forced relocation opened up such opportunities for the forcibly moved. The great Shah Abbas (reigned 1588-1629) already was making astute use of Georgians and Armenians who had converted to Islam in building up an effective central bureaucracy. The new forced settlers were not required to convert. Aslanian points out (2) that as non-Muslims they would be conveniently neutral in moving back and forth between the Sunni Ottoman Empire and militantly Shi'a Safavid Persia. They soon took on key roles in the management of main lines of trade, especially the silk trade, where the rural Armenians of Gilan were among the key producers. At New Julfa on the outskirts of Isfahan, they had churches, the headquarters of great merchant houses, and schools that taught their own heritage as one of the first peoples to convert to Christianity and a great deal of sophisticated bookkeeping and commercial management. The great Armenian merchant houses were very helpful to the Safavid shahs in managing key lines of trade and collecting taxes. Merchants connected to the great houses spread out on the trade routes from Lisbon to Manila, sending detailed reports to the home house.

Sebouh Aslanian's new book represents a quantum leap in knowledge of the New Julfa-centered diasporic network. In addition to drawing very carefully on all the Western-language scholarship, some of it pretty obscurely published, and the scholarship in modern Armenian, he has assembled more than 10,000 documents from thirty-one different archives in eleven countries. This clearly is a project that would have taken several lifetimes before the age of the digital...