Armenian diaspora

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File:Map of the Armenian Diaspora in the World.svg
Map of the Armenian diaspora in the world (includes people with Armenian ancestry or citizenship). For detailed statistics, see Armenian population by country.
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The Armenian diaspora refers to the communities of Armenians outside Armenia and other locations where Armenians are considered to be indigenous. Since antiquity, Armenians have established communities in many regions throughout the world. The Armenian diaspora is one of the oldest and largest diasporas in the world,<ref name="Aditya Anshu">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Marcello Mollica, Arsen Hakobyan">Template:Cite book</ref> with the oldest community being the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem.

The modern Armenian diaspora was largely formed as a result of World War I, when the genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire forced Armenians in Western Armenia to flee.<ref name="RHansen" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Another wave of emigration from Eastern Armenia occurred in the 1990s amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union,<ref name=":8">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Astghik Chaloyan">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Jerry L. Johnson">Template:Cite book</ref> the Turkish-Azeri blockade of Armenia, and an energy crisis. The High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs established in 2019 is in charge of coordinating and developing Armenia's relations with the diaspora. The vast majority of ethnic Armenians worldwide do not live in the Republic of Armenia, Template:Citation needed and has led to repatriation campaigns.

Terminology

In Armenian, the diaspora is referred to as spyurk (Template:IPA), spelled սփիւռք in classical orthography and սփյուռք in reformed orthography.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In the past, the word gaghut (գաղութ Template:IPA) was used mostly to refer to the Armenian communities outside the Armenian homeland. It is borrowed from the Aramaic (Classical Syriac) cognate<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> of Hebrew galut (גלות).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

History

The Armenian diaspora has been present for over 1,700 years.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The Armenian diaspora is divided into two communities – the communities from Anatolia (or Western Armenia) and the communities from the Caucasus or Eastern Armenia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and other communities from the former Soviet Union). Some Armenians in Crimea and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth switched to Turkic Armeno-Kipchak language.

The modern Armenian diaspora was largely formed after World War I as a result of the Armenian genocide. According to Randall Hansen, "Both in the past and today, the Armenian communities around the world have developed in significantly different ways within the constraints and opportunities found in varied host cultures and countries."<ref name="RHansen">Template:Cite book</ref>

In the fourth century, Armenian communities already existed outside Greater Armenia. Diasporic Armenian communities emerged in the Achaemenid and Sassanid empires, and they also defended the eastern and northern borders of the Byzantine Empire.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Diasporas"/> In order to populate the less populated areas of Byzantium, Armenians were relocated to those regions. Some Armenians converted to Greek Orthodoxy while retaining Armenian as their primary language, whereas others remained in the Armenian Apostolic Church despite pressure from official authorities. A growing number of Armenians migrated to Cilicia during the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a result of the Seljuk Turk invasions. After the fall of the kingdom to the Mamelukes and loss of Armenian statehood in 1375, up to 150,000 went to Cyprus, the Balkans, and Italy.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Diasporas">Template:Cite book</ref> The Armenian diaspora is also notable for its historical mercantile communities throughout Asia in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Period, in countries such as China, India, and Iran, many of whom rose to high positions within the various Asian royal courts.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Although an Armenian diaspora existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, it grew in size due to emigration from the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Russia, and the Caucasus.

Armenians in Turkey, such as Hrant Dink, do not consider themselves a part of the Armenian Diaspora, since they have been living in their historical homeland for more than four thousand years.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> They are not considered part of the diaspora either by the Ministry of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan: "Diaspora represents all the Armenians who live beyond the Armenian Highland. In this context, we have singled out the Armenians of Istanbul and those living on the territory of Western Armenia. Those people have inhabited the lands for thousands of years, and they are not considered Diaspora."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Before 1870, 60 Armenian immigrants settled in New England.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> Armenian immigration rose to 1,500 by the end of the 1880s, and rose to 2,500 in the mid-1890s due to massacres caused by the Ottoman Empire. Armenians who immigrated to the United States before WWI were primarily from Asia Minor and settled on the East Coast.<ref name=":0" />

File:Arm refugees.png
Routes of Armenian refugees during the 1920s and 1930s, including the exodus from the Hatay province.

The Armenian diaspora grew considerably both during and after the First World War due to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref> In the year 1910, over 5,500 Armenians immigrated to the United States, and by 1913, 9,355 more Armenians entered the North American borders.<ref name=":0" /> As World War I approached, the rate of Armenian immigration rose to about 60,000. In 1920 and until the Immigration Act of 1924, 30,771 Armenians came to the United States; the immigrants were predominantly widowed women, children, and orphans.<ref name=":0" /> Although many Armenians perished during the Armenian genocide, some of the Armenians who managed to escape, established themselves in various parts of the world.

By 1966, around 40 years after the start of the Armenian genocide, 2 million Armenians still lived in Armenia, while 330,000 Armenians lived in Russia, and 450,000 Armenians lived in the United States and Canada.<ref name="Cohen 2010 48–63">Template:Cite book</ref>

In the United States, the rate of immigration increased after the Immigration Act was passed in 1965.<ref name=":0" /> The outbreak of the civil War in Lebanon in 1975 and the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran during 1978 were factors which pushed Armenians to immigrate. The 1980 U.S. Census reported that 90 percent of the immigration to the United States was undertaken by Iranian-Armenians during the years from 1975 and 1980.<ref name=":0" />

The energy crisis in Armenia in the early 1990s also resulted in the emigration of 676,000-800,000 Armenians from the Caucasus.<ref name=":8"/><ref name="Jerry L. Johnson2">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":5">Template:Citation</ref>

Distribution

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Less than one third of the world's Armenian population lives in Armenia.Template:Citation needed Their pre-World War I population area was six times larger than that of present-day Armenia, including the eastern regions of Turkey, northern part of Iran, and the southern part of Georgia.<ref name="Encyclopedia of diasporas">Template:Cite book</ref>

Template:As of 2000, there were 7,580,000 Armenians living abroad in total.<ref name="Cohen 2010 48–63"/>

See also

Sources

References

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