Two Empires, One Nation?: Violence, Humanitarianism, and the Making of Russo-Ottoman Armenian Church Relations at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

• In Event: Religion, Nation and Empire in the Caucasus

Abstract

In the first half of the nineteenth century the fortunes of the Armenian Apostolic Church sharply came to be defined by the policies of Romanov Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the two emerging imperial powers in Eurasia and the Middle East. As a burgeoning transnational organization with its seat based in the Russian Empire, the Armenian Church counted millions of adherents in its flock, with close to two-thirds of them living on the opposite of the border, in the eastern provinces of Ottoman Anatolia. As the conditions of Ottoman Armenians gradually began to worsen in the late nineteenth century as a result of state-sanctioned violence and persecution, dioceses in both empires began to mobilize to come to their aid. This paper will discuss the different strategies the Russian and Ottoman dioceses employed - from holding fundraisers sponsoring construction of schools, striking up alliances with foreign monarchs and confessional leaders - to help improve Armenian lives at the turn of the twentieth century.

Author

• Armen Manuk-Khaloyan, Georgetown U