Armenian

“ The flames of war illuminate the structure of the building as well as the destruction of it, and the testimony extorted under this fiery ordeal gives an extraordinarily vivid impression of Armenian life—the life of plain and mountain, town and village, intelligenzia and bourgeoisie and peasantry—at the moment when it was overwhelmed by the European catastrophe. ”

“ He is the joy of his mother, the protector of his sister, the lover of his wife, the server of his church and the martyr of his fatherland, so full of charming scenery and sacred memories.
The ideal and the highest ambition of the Armenian is, and always has been, and always will be, Liberty in his home-land. The accumulation of wealth is not their highest desire, though they have rare chances and natural ability for that. The luxuries of life are not the greatest attraction for them, though they have the worst example before their eyes. ”

“ Each year, we pause to remember the 1.5 million Armenians who were subsequently massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. The Meds Yeghern must live on in our memories, just as it lives on in the hearts of the Armenian people. ”

“ Modern research, however, places the inhabitants of the plateau of Anatolia and of the Armenian mountain land in the same racial type.
Planted squarely on the scene of the secular conflict between the civilization of Europe and Asia, Armenia became the prey of the victor of the moment. But the united influence of site and configuration was more than once during this long struggle strong enough to confer independence on the Armenian. As a buffer between eastern and western empires the country enjoyed three distinct periods of native rule prior to the Ottoman conquest. ”

“ He calls himself the cavalier of the streets, but when he is up to any of his tricks he disguises himself as an Armenian—the disguise consisting merely of his saying he is an Armenian. It's so simple, he says, for the mugs believe him at once, on the ground that no one would say he was an Armenian if he wasn't. ”

“ A number of Armenian young men have married American women; I believe ninety per cent. are happy. After forty or fifty years, there will be a large class of American citizens of Armenian blood, and many millionaires among them. They are gifted in business, and they are a sober, honest, and faithful people. I do not think that there is a single criminal among the 10,000 Armenians in this country. ”

“ Thus the Armenian race became scattered over the face of the earth, whilst only a remnant still lives in the land of its ancestors. The Armenians are to be met with all over the East. There are large numbers of them at Constantinople and a few other towns, such as Adrianople, Gallipoli, and Rodosto. In the towns of the interior, however, their number is small. ”

“ They have made researches into Armenian history and have given to the world the results of those researches. They have taught the Armenians European languages, and have imparted to a race that had become ignorant and backward, because separated from Europe, the spirit of Occidental civilization. ”

“ Europeans will flock in, and a new era dawn. Who are the commercial class? The Armenian Christians or Europeans; not a Turk or a Kurd among them. Commerce means, then, the increase of the Christian population; wealth, greatness, security for the Armenians; finally freedom from the Ottoman power. Therefore that power forbids any improvement of the backward conditions. [39]
1 The word “Armenian” is not altogether indicative of race, it refers more particularly to those who are Christians. Any who have forsaken the faith and become Mohammedans are no longer regarded as Armenians, but are Turks. ”

“ All the machinery of whatever civilisation the land may possess is furnished by Armenians. The language which you most often hear is the somewhat harsh Armenian tongue; the legends and historical memories which attach to the great works of Nature have for the most part an Armenian origin. Over the area of the Armenian tableland, as it is delimited in the present work, these people are found in nearly double the numbers of any other race. In the preceding chapter I have established the natural frontiers of the country within Russian territory ”

“ Over the plains towers Mount Ararat, on which, as we read in the Bible, the Ark rested after the Flood. Here also is the traditional site of the Garden of Eden, and the four rivers mentioned in Genesis as rising in the Garden still flow through the Armenian land.
The origin of the Armenian people is enveloped in mystery, but it is an established fact that Armenia has had a civilisation of its own from a very early date, and that the Armenians are one of the most ancient races in the world. ”

“ From the Turk and Persian, the Armenian must ever remain separate, as he has through centuries, though living in the midst of them, remained separate. The gulf that divides the one nation from the other [40] two, the wall of iron that rises between them is the position of woman. ”

“ The Armenians of the present day are the direct descendants of the people who inhabited the country 3,000 years ago. Their origin is so ancient that it is lost in fable and mystery. There are still undeciphered cuneiform inscriptions on the rocky hills of Van, the largest Armenian city, that have led certain scholars—though not many, I must admit—to identify the Armenian race with the Hittites of the Bible. What is definitely known about the Armenians, however, is that for ages they have constituted the most civilized and most industrious race in the Eastern section of the Ottoman Empire. ”

“ Who are the Armenians? The average American knows very little about them, while few even of the educated classes have much knowledge of the race or its history. Many people regard them as barbarians, partially Christianized. Some think them of Chinese type; most often they are considered as Turks because the chief portion of Armenia is part of the Turkish Empire; every Armenian feels justly indignant at the latter classification. ”

“ Now the Armenians, though an ill-used, were a very far-away people; not one out of a thousand Englishmen had ever seen an Armenian, or even framed any clear picture of the nature or geographical disposition of an Armenian. ”

“ According to the above statements the Armenian Kingdom began at twenty-fourth century B.C. and ended at fourteenth century A.D., thus embracing a period of nearly 3,800 years with about 600 years' intervals of subjection, during which time they were governed by provincial system, which can not be called total subjection with the present meaning of the word. During the last centuries Armenia became gradually divided between Turkey, Russia and Persia. ”

“ Religious more than racial differences have kept them apart. This fact should be borne in mind when we consider the Armenian problem. Armenia is no longer a geographical term in any national sense; it represents a persecuted people, almost living as outlaws both in their own original land and in many other places, chiefly Turkish, Russian, and Persian. ”

“ Indeed the Armenian is ubiquitous in the Nearer Asia, from [428] the northern province of Persia to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Yet this people as a whole can scarcely amount to more than 3,000,000 souls, a round figure of which the principal components are as follows:—
Two sets of causes are responsible for the recent outbreaks of Armenian sentiment in regions where this people are an insignificant minority, separated from the natural and historical seats of their race. ”

“ As just and accurate an estimate of the Armenian character as any I have read is that written by Sir Charles William Wilson, perhaps the foremost authority on the subject, for the Encyclopædia Britannica: "The Armenians are essentially an Oriental people, possessing, like the Jews, whom they resemble in their exclusiveness and widespread dispersion, a remarkable tenacity of race and faculty of adaptation to circumstances. They are frugal, sober, industrious and intelligent and their sturdiness of character has enabled them to preserve their nationality and religion under the sorest trials. ”

“ The other opinion lately brought forward is that the Armenian nation, belonging to the Aryan race, came from the north, from Caucasia, and did not occupy the country before the seventh century B.C. They followed the track of the Medes, owing to the gradual decline of the Assyrian Empire. The arguments in favor of this theory are the facts that the Armenians in their physiognomy and natural construction and in their traditions and language have close connection and resemblance with other Aryan nations, which would be the contrary if they had an Assyrian or Chaldean origin. ”

“ The real spirit and aim of the Armenian race, as a whole, is unfortunately obscured, in the mind of the public, by utterances and acts of a few irresponsible Armenian hot-heads, who have imbibed nihilistic views in Europe, and are trying, in a very bungling way, to apply them. ”

“ Rising above the general level of this Armenian tableland are barren and forbidding ranges, broken by many gloomy gorges, which culminate, on the extreme northeast, in the mighty peak of Ararat, the traditional resting-place of the Ark. Armenia is completely hemmed in by alien and potentially hostile races. ”

“ Russia having in the last century wrested from Persia and Turkey a large portion of Armenia, there are over a million of Armenians in the Armenian provinces of Russia, besides those who reside in the commercial cities of the same empire. Their financial and intellectual condition is far better than that of those living in Persia, or in the interior of the Turkish provinces of Armenia. ”

“ To answer the Armenian question in the way I have done here, one does not necessarily need to have the slightest liking or the least sympathy for them as a race. (I have, however, intimated that they deserve at least that much from their high intellectual and social abilities.) ”

“ I found Armenian conductors on the Egyptian railways, and when I went over the transcontinental railroad to Paris the guards on the train and the men who took up my tickets were Armenians who spoke English and French. There are hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Europe. There are a large number in Persia, and in different parts of Turkey there are said to be about one million. There are a great many in Constantinople where they manage most of the banking business and own large mercantile establishments. ”

“ They have tended to solidify and unify the national character, and it is just this process of solidification that gives significance to the whole fabric of beliefs, legends, and festivals of the people. [8]
As a nation, the Armenian people are exclusive, but this is an entirely different matter. For three years I have had occasion to observe groups of students belonging to different nations, chiefly Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, Jews, Persians, Turks, and Armenians, and the latter always showed a most persistent determination to confine their friendships and social intercourse to themselves. ”

“ And meanwhile the Armenian population itself was here steadily increasing in numbers, while in almost every other part of Turkey it had been receding under the continuous repression to which it had been subjected since 1878. ”

“ It is at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the straits. ”

“ In these Armenian provinces of Russia the machinery of administration is conducted by a handful of Russian officials through Armenians, who are employed even in the higher grades. The Armenian is a man of ancient culture and high natural capacity ”

“ The fact goes far towards explaining the isolation of Armenia, the remoteness throughout history of the great grain-growing plains of the interior from the coast towns of the Black Sea. While the Greek cities of the seaboard, sheltered behind the barrier of the range, found a natural and almost uninterrupted connection with the main currents of Western history and Western life, the Armenian country and people, full exposed to the revolutions of Asia, belonged essentially to the East. ”

“ The reverse side of the picture is the uprooting of the nation from its native soil. The immigrant tribes from Central Asia did not make a permanent lodgment in the Armenian homelands. Some of them drifted back into Azerbaijan and the steppe country along the coast of the Caspian and the lower courses of the Aras and the Kur; others were carried on towards the north-west, along the ancient Royal Road, and imposed the Moslem faith and the Turkish language upon the population of Central Anatolia. ”

“ He seemed, because of his intimate personal relationship to Armenian life, to be peculiarly qualified to study and interpret a cross-section of that country’s life. It is particularly urgent that we as Americans have authentic studies of Armenia and Armenian social life. ”

“ Fortunately for the cause, many men of irreproachable character, and of undoubted sincerity from the Armenian nation have been associated with it, and its success has not been endangered, like that of so many other movements of the same kind, by interested, or hasty conversions. ”