Peasants, migrant workers, survivors and perpetual exiles: Ottoman Armenians

This lecture will discuss the pivotal Ottoman era of Tanzimat not just through use of the Ottoman Archives, but also a far less known but just as important source, that of the Armenian Patriarchate. It will argue how unlike Tanzimat’s reputation for reform and the promotion of rights, it actually set into motion a process from the first half of the 19th century which disenfranchised Armenians in every respect and set the foundation for the policies of governance throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. These archival sources show how the Armenian peasants of the provinces became migrant workers, were subjected to forced labour, abusive and oppressive taxation, the kidnapping of their wives and forced deportations, practices that were in fact encouraged by the Tanzimat's policies. The reservoir of knowledge accumulated throughout the 19th century established the new regime of temporality and territoriality that became the reference point for imperial governance during and throughout the 20th century.

This seminar is supported by funding from the European Research Council Consolidator Grant, Moving Stories: Sectarianisms in the Global Middle East (2021-2026), under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant number 101001717).