Antiquity
Armenia lies in the highlands surrounding the Biblical mountains of
Ararat, upon whichNoah's Ark is said to have come to rest after the flood.(Bible,
Gen. 8:4). There is evidence of an early civilization in Armenia in the Bronze
Age, dating to about 4000 BC. Archaeological surveys in 2010 and 2011 at the
Areni-1 cave complex have resulted in the discovery of the world's earliest
known leather shoe, skirt, and wine-producing facility.
Middle Ages
After the Marzpanate period (428–636), Armenia emerged as the
Emirate of Armenia, an autonomous principality within the Arabic Empire,
reuniting Armenian lands previously taken by the Byzantine Empire as well. The
principality was ruled by the Prince of Armenia, recognised by the Caliph and
the Byzantine Emperor. It was part of the administrative division/emirate
Arminiyyacreated by the Arabs, which also included parts of Georgia and Caucasian
Albania, and had its center in the Armenian city Dvin. The Principality of
Armenia lasted until 884, when it regained its independence from the weakened
Arabic Empire.
Early Modern era
During the 1230s, the Mongol Empire conquered the Zakaryan
Principality, as well as the rest of Armenia. The Mongolian invasions were soon
followed by those of other Central Asian tribes (Kara Koyunlu, Timurid and Ak
Koyunlu), which continued from the 13th century until the 15th century. After
incessant invasions, each bringing destruction to the country, with time
Armenia became weakened. In the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire andSafavid
Persia divided Armenia. From 1604 Abbas I of Persia implemented a "scorched
earth" policy in the region to protect his north-western frontier against
any invading Ottoman forces, a policy which involved a forced resettlement of
many Armenians outside of their homelands. In 1813 and 1828 the Russian Empire
annexed Eastern Armenia from Persia (consisting of the Erivan and Karabakh
khanates ).
World War I and the Armenian Genocide
When World War I broke out leading to confrontation of the Ottoman
Empire and the Russian Empire in the Caucasus and Persian Campaigns, the new
government in Istanbul began to look on the Armenians with distrust and
suspicion. This was because the Russian army contained a contingent of Armenian
volunteers. On 24 April 1915, Armenian intellectuals were arrested by Ottoman
authorities and, with the Tehcir Law (29 May 1915), eventually a large
proportion of Armenians living in Anatolia perished in what has become known as
the Armenian Genocide.
Democratic Republic of Armenia
Although the Russian army succeeded in gaining most of Ottoman
Armenia during World War I, their gains were lost with the Bolshevik Revolution
of 1917.At the time, Russian-controlled Eastern Armenia, Georgia, and
Azerbaijan attempted to bond together in the Transcaucasian Democratic
Federative Republic. This federation, however, lasted from only February to May
1918, when all three parties decided to dissolve it. As a result, Eastern
Armenia became independent as the Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) on 28
May.
Soviet Armenia
Armenia was annexed by Bolshevist Russia and along with Georgia and
Azerbaijan, it was incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of the
Transcaucasian SFSR (TSFSR) on 4 March 1922. With this annexation, the Treaty
of Alexandropol was superseded by the Turkish-Soviet Treaty of Kars. In the
agreement, Turkey allowed the Soviet Union to assume control over Adjara with
the port city of Batumi in return for sovereignty over the cities of Kars,
Ardahan, and Iğdır, all of which were part of Russian Armenia.
Restoration of independence
On 23 August 1990,
Armenia declared independence, becoming the first non-Baltic republic to secede
from the Soviet Union. When, in 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved, Armenia's
independence was officially recognized. However, the initial post-Soviet years
were marred by economic difficulties as well as the break-out of a full-scale
armed confrontation between the Karabakh Armenians and Azerbaijan
(Nagorno-Karabakh War). The economic problems had their roots early in the
Karabakh conflict when the Azerbaijani Popular Front managed to pressure the
Azerbaijan SSR to instigate a railway and air blockade against Armenia. This
move effectively crippled Armenia's economy as 85% of its cargo and goods
arrived through rail traffic. In 1993, Turkey joined the blockade against
Armenia in support of Azerbaijan.
Reference:
After the Marzpanate period (428–636), Armenia emerged as the
Emirate of Armenia, an autonomous principality within the Arabic Empire,
reuniting Armenian lands previously taken by the Byzantine Empire as well. The
principality was ruled by the Prince of Armenia, recognised by the Caliph and
the Byzantine Emperor. It was part of the administrative division/emirate
Arminiyyacreated by the Arabs, which also included parts of Georgia and Caucasian
Albania, and had its center in the Armenian city Dvin. The Principality of
Armenia lasted until 884, when it regained its independence from the weakened
Arabic Empire.
The re-emergent Armenian kingdom was ruled by the Bagratuni
dynasty, and lasted until 1045. In time, several areas of the Bagratid Armenia
separated as independent kingdoms and principalities such as the Kingdom of
Vaspurakan ruled by the House of Artsruni in the south, Kingdom of Syunik in
the east, or Kingdom of Artsakh on the territory of modern Nagorno Karabakh,
while still recognizing the supremacy of the Bagratid kings.
In 1045, the Byzantine Empire conquered Bagratid Armenia. Soon, the
other Armenian states fell under Byzantine control as well. The Byzantine rule
was short lived, as in 1071 Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines and conquered
Armenia at the Battle of Manzikert, establishing the Seljuk Empire. To escape
death or servitude at the hands of those who had assassinated his relative,
Gagik II, King of Ani, an Armenian named Roupenwent with some of his countrymen
into the gorges of the Taurus Mountains and then into Tarsus of Cilicia. The
Byzantine governor of the palace gave them shelter where the Armenian Kingdom
of Cilicia was eventually established.
Cilicia was a strong ally of the European Crusaders, and saw itself
as a bastion of Christendom in the East. Cilicia's significance in Armenian
history and statehood is also attested by the transfer of the seat of the
Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, spiritual leader of the Armenian
people, to the region.
The Seljuk Empire soon started to collapse. In the early 12th
century, Armenian princes of the Zakarid noble family drove out the Seljuk
Turks and established a semi-independent Armenian principality in Northern and
Eastern Armenia, known as Zakarid Armenia, which lasted under the patronage of
the Georgian Kingdom. The noble family of Orbelians shared control with the
Zakarids in various parts of the country, especially in Syunik and Vayots Dzor,
while the Armenian family of Hasan-Jalalians controlled provinces of Artsakh
and Utik as the Kingdom of Artsakh.
During the 1230s, the Mongol Empire conquered the Zakaryan
Principality, as well as the rest of Armenia. The Mongolian invasions were soon
followed by those of other Central Asian tribes (Kara Koyunlu, Timurid and Ak
Koyunlu), which continued from the 13th century until the 15th century. After
incessant invasions, each bringing destruction to the country, with time
Armenia became weakened. In the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire andSafavid
Persia divided Armenia. From 1604 Abbas I of Persia implemented a "scorched
earth" policy in the region to protect his north-western frontier against
any invading Ottoman forces, a policy which involved a forced resettlement of
many Armenians outside of their homelands. In 1813 and 1828 the Russian Empire
annexed Eastern Armenia from Persia (consisting of the Erivan and Karabakh
khanates ).
Under Ottoman rule, the Armenians were granted considerable
autonomy within their own enclaves and lived in relative harmony with other
groups in the empire (including the ruling Turks). However, as Christians under
a strict Muslim social system, Armenians faced pervasive discrimination. When
they began pushing for more rights within the Ottoman Empire, Sultan
‘Abdu’l-Hamid II, in response, organised state-sponsored massacres against the Armenians
between 1894 and 1896, resulting in an estimated death toll of 80,000 to
300,000 people. The Hamidian massacres, as they came to be known, gave Hamid
international infamy as the "Red Sultan" or "Bloody
Sultan".
The Ottoman Empire began to collapse and in 1908, the Young Turk
Revolution overthrew the government of Sultan Hamid. Armenians living in the
empire hoped that the Committee of Union and Progress would change their
second-class status. Armenian reform package (1914) was presented as a solution
by appointing an inspector general over Armenian issues.
When World War I broke out leading to confrontation of the Ottoman
Empire and the Russian Empire in the Caucasus and Persian Campaigns, the new
government in Istanbul began to look on the Armenians with distrust and
suspicion. This was because the Russian army contained a contingent of Armenian
volunteers. On 24 April 1915, Armenian intellectuals were arrested by Ottoman
authorities and, with the Tehcir Law (29 May 1915), eventually a large
proportion of Armenians living in Anatolia perished in what has become known as
the Armenian Genocide.
There was local Armenian resistance in the region, developed
against the activities of the Ottoman Empire. The events of 1915 to 1917 are
regarded by Armenians and the vast majority of Western historians to have been
state-sponsored mass killings, or genocide. Turkish authorities, however,
maintain that the deaths were the result of a civil war coupled with disease
and famine, with casualties incurred by both sides. According to the research
conducted by Arnold J. Toynbee, an estimated 600,000 Armenians died during the
Armenian Genocide in 1915–16.
According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars,
the death toll was "more than a million". Armenia and the Armenian
diaspora have been campaigning for official recognition of the events as
genocide for over 30 years. These events are traditionally commemorated yearly
on 24 April, the Armenian Martyr Day, or the Day of the Armenian Genocide.
Although the Russian army succeeded in gaining most of Ottoman
Armenia during World War I, their gains were lost with the Bolshevik Revolution
of 1917.At the time, Russian-controlled Eastern Armenia, Georgia, and
Azerbaijan attempted to bond together in the Transcaucasian Democratic
Federative Republic. This federation, however, lasted from only February to May
1918, when all three parties decided to dissolve it. As a result, Eastern
Armenia became independent as the Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) on 28
May.
The DRA's short-lived independence was fraught with war,
territorial disputes, and a mass influx of refugees from Ottoman Armenia,
bringing with them disease and starvation. The Entente Powers, appalled by the
actions of the Ottoman government, sought to help the newly founded Armenian
state through relief funds and other forms of support.
At the end of the war, the victorious powers sought to divide up
the Ottoman Empire. Signed between the Allied and Associated Powers and Ottoman
Empire at Sèvres on 10 August 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres promised to maintain
the existence of the Armenian republic and to attach the former territories of
Ottoman Armenia to it. Because the new borders of Armenia were to be drawn by
United States President Woodrow Wilson, Ottoman Armenia is also referred to as
"Wilsonian Armenia." In addition, just days prior, on 5 August 1920,
Mihran Damadian of the Armenian National Union, the de facto Armenian administration
in Cilicia declared the independence of Cilicia as an Armenian autonomous
republic under French protectorate.
There was even consideration of possibly making Armenia a mandate
under the protection of the United States. The treaty, however, was rejected by
the Turkish National Movement, and never came into effect. The movement, under
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, used the treaty as the occasion to declare itself the
rightful government of Turkey, replacing the monarchy based in Istanbul with a
republic based in Ankara.
The treaty forced Armenia to disarm most of its military forces,
cede all former Ottoman territory granted to it by the Treaty of Sèvres, and to
give up all the "Wilsonian Armenia" granted to it at the Sèvres
treaty. Simultaneously, the Soviet Eleventh Army, under the command of Grigoriy
Ordzhonikidze, invaded Armenia at Karavansarai (present-day Ijevan) on 29
November. By 4 December, Ordzhonikidze's forces entered Yerevan and the
short-lived Armenian republic collapsed.In 1920, Turkish nationalist forces
invaded the fledgling Armenian republic from the east and the Turkish-Armenian
War began. Turkish forces under the command of Kazım Karabekir captured
Armenian territories that Russia had annexed in the aftermath of the 1877–1878
Russo-Turkish War and occupied the old city of Alexandropol (present-day
Gyumri). The violent conflict finally concluded with the Treaty of Alexandropol
on 2 December 1920.
Armenia was annexed by Bolshevist Russia and along with Georgia and
Azerbaijan, it was incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of the
Transcaucasian SFSR (TSFSR) on 4 March 1922. With this annexation, the Treaty
of Alexandropol was superseded by the Turkish-Soviet Treaty of Kars. In the
agreement, Turkey allowed the Soviet Union to assume control over Adjara with
the port city of Batumi in return for sovereignty over the cities of Kars,
Ardahan, and Iğdır, all of which were part of Russian Armenia.
The TSFSR existed from 1922 to 1936, when it was divided up into
three separate entities (Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, and Georgian SSR).
Armenians enjoyed a period of relative stability under Soviet rule. They
received medicine, food, and other provisions from Moscow, and communist rule
proved to be a soothing balm in contrast to the turbulent final years of the
Ottoman Empire. The situation was difficult for the church, which struggled
under Soviet rule. After the death of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin took the
reins of power and began an era of renewed fear and terror for Armenians.As
with various other ethnic groups who lived in the Soviet Union during Stalin's
Great Purge, tens of thousands of Armenians were either executed or deported.
Armenia was spared the devastation and destruction that wrought
most of the western Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War of World War
II. TheNazis never reached the South Caucasus, which they intended to do in
order to capture the oil fields in Azerbaijan. Still, Armenia played a valuable
role in aiding the allies both through industry and agriculture. An estimated
500,000 Armenians, out of a population of 1.4 million, were mobilised. 175,000
of these men died in the war.
Fears decreased when Stalin died in 1953 and Nikita Khruschev
emerged as the Soviet Union's new leader. Soon, life in Soviet Armenia began to
see rapid improvement. The church which suffered greatly under Stalin was
revived when Catholicos Vazgen I assumed the duties of his office in 1955. In
1967, a memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide was built at the
Tsitsernakaberd hill above the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan. This occurred after
mass demonstrations took place on the tragic event's fiftieth anniversary in
1965.
Gorbachev's inability to alleviate any of Armenia's problems
created disillusionment among the Armenians and fed a growing hunger for
independence. In May 1990, the New Armenian Army (NAA) was established, serving
as a defence force separate from the Soviet Red Army. Clashes soon broke out
between the NAA and Soviet Internal Security Forces (MVD) troops based in
Yerevan when Armenians decided to commemorate the establishment of the 1918
Democratic Republic of Armenia. The violence resulted in the deaths of five
Armenians killed in a shootout with the MVD at the railway station. Witnesses
there claimed that the MVD used excessive force and that they had instigated
the fighting.During the Gorbachev era of the 1980s with the reforms of Glasnost
and Perestroika, Armenians began to demand better environmental care for their
country, opposing the pollution that Soviet-built factories brought. Tensions
also developed between Soviet Azerbaijan and its autonomous district of
Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian region separated by Stalin from Armenia
in 1923. About 484,000 Armenians lived in Azerbaijan in 1970.The Armenians of
Karabakh demanded unification with Soviet Armenia. Peaceful protests in Yerevan
supporting the Karabakh Armenians were met with anti-Armenian pogroms in the
Azerbaijani city of Sumgait. Compounding Armenia's problems was a devastating
earthquake in 1988 with a moment magnitude of 7.2.
Further firefights between Armenian militiamen and Soviet troops
occurred in Sovetashen, near the capital and resulted in the deaths of over 26
people, mostly Armenians. The pogrom of Armenians in Baku in January 1990
forced almost all of the 200,000 Armenians in the Azerbaijani capital Baku to
flee to Armenia. On 17 March 1991, Armenia, along with the Baltic states,
Georgia and Moldova, boycotted a nationwide referendum in which 78% of all
voters voted for the retention of the Soviet Union in a reformed form.
On 23 August 1990,
Armenia declared independence, becoming the first non-Baltic republic to secede
from the Soviet Union. When, in 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved, Armenia's
independence was officially recognized. However, the initial post-Soviet years
were marred by economic difficulties as well as the break-out of a full-scale
armed confrontation between the Karabakh Armenians and Azerbaijan
(Nagorno-Karabakh War). The economic problems had their roots early in the
Karabakh conflict when the Azerbaijani Popular Front managed to pressure the
Azerbaijan SSR to instigate a railway and air blockade against Armenia. This
move effectively crippled Armenia's economy as 85% of its cargo and goods
arrived through rail traffic. In 1993, Turkey joined the blockade against
Armenia in support of Azerbaijan.
The Karabakh war
ended after a Russian-brokered cease-fire was put in place in 1994. The war was
a success for the Karabakh Armenian forces who managed to capture 16% of
Azerbaijan's internationally recognised territory including Nagorno-Karabakh
itself. Since then, Armenia and Azerbaijan have held peace talks, mediated by
the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The status of
Karabakh has yet to be determined. The economies of both countries have been
hurt in the absence of a complete resolution and Armenia's borders with Turkey
and Azerbaijan remain closed. By the time both Azerbaijan and Armenia had
finally agreed to a ceasefire in 1994, an estimated 30,000 people had been
killed and over a million had been displaced.
As it enters the
21st century, Armenia faces many hardships. It has made a full switch to a
market economy and as of 2012, is the 39th most economically free nation in the
world. Its relations with Europe, the Middle East, and the Commonwealth of
Independent States have allowed Armenia to increase trade. Gas, oil, and other
supplies come through two vital routes: Iran and Georgia. Armenia maintains
cordial relations with both countries.
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