The Rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire: From Refugee Crisis to Renaissance in the 17th Century

The book explores how mass migration and a refugee crisis transformed Armenian culture in the 17th-century Ottoman Empire, providing the first English book on Armenian cultural history in the early modern Ottoman Empire. It utilizes original research on Armenian manuscripts and Ottoman Turkish archives and resonates with contemporary concerns about climate change, migration, and refugees.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 15 November 2023
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

The Rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire explores how mass migration and a refugee crisis transformed Armenian culture in the 17th-century Ottoman Empire. It provides the first English book on Armenian cultural history in the early modern Ottoman Empire, utilizing original research on Armenian manuscripts and Ottoman Turkish archives. The book resonates with contemporary concerns about climate change, migration, and refugees. It includes 20 black and white photographs of Armenian ruins, documents, and historical sites.

The book traces how Armenian migrants changed the demographic and cultural landscape of Istanbul and Western Anatolia in the course of the 17th century. During the centuries that followed, Ottoman Armenian merchants, financiers, authors, musicians, translators, printers, and bureaucrats would play key roles in Ottoman trade, art, and even governance. This book shows how that cosmopolitan world came into being.

Part I of the book documents the Great Armenian Flight, showing how the global crisis of the 17th century (war, climate change, famine) impacted the historical Armenian population centers of the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia and led to mass migrations and resettlement in Western Anatolia, Istanbul, and Thrace. In Part II, Shapiro links this history of migration and the refugee crisis with the development of intellectual and cultural life in Istanbul and Western Anatolia: the rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora.

The book is a valuable resource for scholars and students of Armenian history, Ottoman history, and cultural history more broadly. It sheds light on the complex and multifaceted relationship between migration, culture, and power in the early modern world and provides a new perspective on the history of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474479615