Armenia

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devastating losses.”

The first empires and kingdoms that were part of, or all of today’s Armenia were
the Urartu, the Persian Achaemenian, Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Empire, the
Seleucid, the Roman and the Byzantine. The Persian’s tried to impose the Zoroastrian
religion in 451. They triggered a revolt which eventually won the Armenian people a
degree of political and religious freedom. In 7th century AD, Muslim Arabs ventured north
and Ashot Bagratuni the Carnivorous came to power and launched a period of prestige for
his line. In the 11th century the Byzantines expanded into the area again, and before the
end of the 12th century came Egyptian Mamluks and European crusaders. Baliozian
(1980 p. 33) states “they did not rule but managed to bring in a few western style reforms
and leave some French words.” Next to come were the Persians and the Ottoman Turks.
The Ottomans managed to hold on to most of Armenia for most of 400 years. Since the
18th century Armenians within various empires fought for reform and political and cultural
self determination. Armenian literature, art, religion, and education quickly rose under the
Ottoman and the Russian Empires, which, as Baliozian (1980 p. 41) states, “led to the
formation of Armenian political movements. During the early 19th century Russia gained
control of Yerevan and an area that encompassed parts of present day Turkey, eventually
leading to the Russo- Turkish War of the 1870s. Armenians in Turkey were massacred as

(Armenia’s History, Culture, and People, 3)

local nationalist movements grew, and hundreds of thousands had been killed by the
1890s. Ironically, Baliozian (1980 p. 45) states “the 1905 Russian revolution and the
Young Turk revolution of 1908 raised Armenian hopes for the chance to build a nation in
their historical homeland. Those hopes were dashed as the Ottoman and Russian Empires
came to blows during Wor...