User:Yerevantsi/sandbox/WesternersOnArm

major figures
"Thus the Jews in Europe, and the Armenians in the east, have a peculiar character; and the former are as much noted for fraud, as the latter for probity."
 * David Hume

"Among another Christian people, the Armenians, a certain commercial spirit of a special kind prevails: they wander on foot from the borders of China all the way to Cape Corso on the coast of Guinea to carry on commerce. This indicates a separate origin of this reasonable and industrious people who, in a line from North-East to South-West, they travel through almost whole extent of the ancient continent and know how to secure a peaceful reception by all the peoples they encounter. And it proves that their character is superior to the fickle and grovelling character of the modern Greek."
 * Immanuel Kant

"To serve Armenia is to serve civilization."
 * William Ewart Gladstone

travellers
THE IMAGE OF ARMENIA IN EUROPEAN TRAVEL ACCOUNTS OF THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY. VARTOOGIAN, JACK LEWIS. Columbia University ProQuest Dissertations Publishing,  1974. 7505264. https://archive.org/details/jlv1974_travellers

https://archive.org/details/ia_armenia_travellers Travellers to Armenia at Internet Archive by Robert Bedrosian

mainstream
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm
 * Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Since the age of Constantine, the Armenians had signalized their attachment to the religion and empire of the Christians. 1391 The disorders of their country, and their ignorance of the Greek tongue, prevented their clergy from assisting at the synod of Chalcedon, and they floated eighty-four years 140 in a state of indifference or suspense, till their vacant faith was finally occupied by the missionaries of Julian of Halicarnassus, 141 who in Egypt, their common exile, had been vanquished by the arguments or the influence of his rival Severus, the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch. The Armenians alone are the pure disciples of Eutyches, an unfortunate parent, who has been renounced by the greater part of his spiritual progeny. They alone persevere in the opinion, that the manhood of Christ was created, or existed without creation, of a divine and incorruptible substance. Their adversaries reproach them with the adoration of a phantom; and they retort the accusation, by deriding or execrating the blasphemy of the Jacobites, who impute to the Godhead the vile infirmities of the flesh, even the natural effects of nutrition and digestion. The religion of Armenia could not derive much glory from the learning or the power of its inhabitants. The royalty expired with the origin of their schism; and their Christian kings, who arose and fell in the thirteenth century on the confines of Cilicia, were the clients of the Latins and the vassals of the Turkish sultan of Iconium. The helpless nation has seldom been permitted to enjoy the tranquillity of servitude. From the earliest period to the present hour, Armenia has been the theatre of perpetual war: the lands between Tauris and Erivan were dispeopled by the cruel policy of the Sophis; and myriads of Christian families were transplanted, to perish or to propagate in the distant provinces of Persia. Under the rod of oppression, the zeal of the Armenians is fervent and intrepid; they have often preferred the crown of martyrdom to the white turban of Mahomet; they devoutly hate the error and idolatry of the Greeks; and their transient union with the Latins is not less devoid of truth, than the thousand bishops, whom their patriarch offered at the feet of the Roman pontiff. 142 The catholic, or patriarch, of the Armenians resides in the monastery of Ekmiasin, three leagues from Erivan. Forty-seven archbishops, each of whom may claim the obedience of four or five suffragans, are consecrated by his hand; but the far greater part are only titular prelates, who dignify with their presence and service the simplicity of his court. As soon as they have performed the liturgy, they cultivate the garden; and our bishops will hear with surprise, that the austerity of their life increases in just proportion to the elevation of their rank.

"In the astuteness of their monetary dealings the Greeks proverbially surpass the Jews, but fall short of the Armenians."
 * James David Bourchier


 * James Bryce

"The Armenians are an extraordinary people, with a tenacity of natural life scarcely inferior to that of the Jews, and perhaps, even more remarkable, since it has not been forced upon them by such unremitting persecution."

"The Armenians are essentially an Oriental people, possessing, like the Jews, whom they resemble in their exclusiveness and widespread dispersion, a remarkable tenacity of race and faculty of adaptation to circumstances. They are frugal, sober, industrious and intelligent, and their sturdiness of character has enabled them to preserve their nationality and religion under the sorest trials. They are strongly attached to old manners and customs, but have also a real desire for progress which is full of promise. On the other hand they are greedy of gain, quarrelsome in small matters, self-seeking and wanting in stability; and they are gifted with a tendency to exaggeration and a love of intrigue which has had an unfortunate influence on their history. They are deeply separated by religious differences, and their mutual jealousies, their inordinate vanity their versatility and their cosmopolitan character must always be an obstacle to the realization of the dreams of the nationalists. The want of courage and self-reliance, the deficiency in truth and honesty sometimes noticed in connexion with them, are doubtless due to long servitude under an unsympathetic government."
 * Charles William Wilson

"A learned author, in a work published about the beginning of the last century, entitled 6 The Light of the Gospel, rising on all nations," observes, * that the Armenian Christians will be most eminently qualified for the office of extending the knowledge of Christ- unity throughout the nations of Asia." This is undoubt- edly true. Next to the Jews the Armenians will form the most generally useful body of Christian Missionsries. They are to be found in every principal city of. Asia ; they are the general merchants of the East, and are in a state of constant motion from Canton to Con- stantinople. Their general character is that of a wealthy, industrious, and enterprising people."
 * Claudius Buchanan, 1812, The Works of the Rev. Claudius Buchanan

p. 214... https://archive.org/details/cu31924028377475/page/n306/mode/1up
 * John Foster Fraser


 * John Buchan Telfer

https://books.google.am/books?id=8zEOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA255 I may here appropriately observe, that during my intercourse with the Armenians in the Caucasus I found them at all times courteous and obliging, intelligent, and invariably good linguists ; they are a laborious people whom nothing daunts, and their singular success in trade and commercial pursuits would appear to excite the envy of the populations among which they happen to live. They are more especially unpopular among the Turks and Tatars, who have a saying that it takes two Greeks to outwit a Jew, and three Jews to outwit an Armenian, while the Russians assimilate them to the Jews because of their penuriousness and love of money. An Armenian nobleman observed to me one day:

The Armenians are a good-looking people, of fair complexion, with dark eyes and an abundance of black hair; they are in general of short stature, and disposed to obesity at a comparatively early age, the result in all probability of their inactive habits ; it is said, however, that the mountaineers are a tall and robust race.

https://books.google.am/books?id=8zEOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA257 No people are more deeply attached to their National Church than the Armenians, whose 'zeal under the rod of oppression is fervent and intrepid, and who have often preferred the crown of martyrdom to the white turban of Mahomet'; but this remarkable race has never succeeded in attaining a prominent position among nations in consequence of the warlike incursions and foreign occupations by which it has been troubled. It is the tenacity with which the Armenians have clung to their ancient traditions that has enabled them to preserve their nationality and language through centuries of terrible persecution and suffering without a parallel in history.

567 "an intelligent race of Asiatic Christians" 576 DESCRIPTION 583 being eminently an agricultural and trading race, intelligent and law- abiding, the new state would become a source, first of wealth, then of strength, to the suzerainty

Mrs. Bishop, a discriminating member of the Anglican Church, who travelled extensively through Armenia, says : "They are the most capable, energetic, enterprising and pushing race in Western Asia; physically superior, and intellectually acute, and above all, they are a race which can be raised, in all respects, to our own level, neither religion, colour, customs, nor inferiority in intellectual force constitute any barrier between us. Their shrewdness and aptitude for business are remarkable, and whatever exists of commercial enterprise in Eastern Asia Minor is almost altogether in their hands. They have singular elasticity, as their survival as a Church and nation shows. And I cannot but think it likely that they may have some share in determining the course of events in the East, both politically and religiously." 
 * Isabella Bird

141

At present they are found in all the large emporiums of trade from London to Singapore and Shanghae, everywhere distinguished by their commercial enter- prise. They have often been compared with the Jews, whom they certainly equal in religious tenacity, spirit of fellowship, mercantile instincts, and commercial skill. But they are less adventurous, and whereas individual Jews have penetrated to the ends of the earth, sustaining alone the struggle for existence, the Armenians seldom advance except in compact groups. The majority of the nation have also remained in their original homes, where they are far from showing the same aversion as do the Jews to agricultural pursuits. In several districts of Trans- caucasia all the peasantry are of Armenian stock, and in some of their villages in the Karabagh district they are occupied temporarily as masons or carpenters, pursuits which the Jews are never found engaged in.

https://twitter.com/maratkaryan/status/1615822081689804801 Interesting (and sometimes racist) excerpts from Elisee Reclus' 1876 "The Earth and its Inhabitants" Vol VI, on the Caucasus:

https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/armenian-genocide/ Churchill

Harold Buxton

https://archive.org/details/travelpoliticsin00noel/page/30/mode/1up?view=theater

Karl Schnaase. For the Armenians, Schnaase offers an extended character profile: "The residents of this region appear related to the Persian ethnic group, although their fate was quite different. They were chivalrous and freedom-loving, given to weapon practice, to adventure, and to hunting, …They were pugnacious, but without energy, and too little suited to spiritual culture."

Influence on Georgia
Robert Gordon Latham The Armenians are a pre-eminently Christian nation, with a native alphabet, a canon containing several hooks which the Western Church considers apocryphal, a ritual more Greek than Latin, and a system of monasteries that reminds us of the Buddhism of Tibet. The influence of Armenia upon the world’s history has been inconsiderable; limited, very nearly, to the neighbouring country of Georgia.

572 If we except the few Byzantine sacred edifices still existing in the west of Transcaucasia, chiefly the work of Justinian when introducing Christianity in those parts, ecclesiastical architecture, as seen in Georgia, owes its origin to Armenia, and is remarkable for solidity and grandeur of style, the chief feature, apart from the peculiar stunted spires, being that churches, one and all, and of whatsoever epoch, are constructed, within and without, even in the least accessible places, entirely of wrought stone. They are usually in the form of a cross, the dome in the centre being supported by columns or pilasters at the angles.

fringe
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1917/12/31.htm The sons of Armenia—heroic defenders of their country, but by no means far-sighted politicians, who have allowed themselves time and again to be deceived by the sharks of imperialist diplomacy

Lothrop Stoddard, white supremacist; 1) Stakes of the War: Summary of the Various Problems, Claims; Lothrop Stoddard, ‎Glenn Frank - 1918

"The Armenians are found mostly in eastern Asia Minor, although scattered through many interior towns. On account of the persecution and massacres, reliable statistics concern- ing the Armenians are unavailable. They are peasants in the northeast and southeast, also workmen and artisans in the eastern towns. They are traders over a still wider area. They have a strong aptitude for commerce and industry. They have been depressed and decimated by the persecutions of the last twenty years."

p. 277 "The outstanding characteristic of the Armenians is their extreme tenacity. The days of their national greatness were over before the beginning of the Christian era, the ancient Armenian kingdom having been destroyed by the Romans in the first century b. c. and ever since then they have been sub- jected to various foreign masters. But despite every variety of misfortune the Armenians have clung doggedly to their language, religion, and customs, and have thus preserved their race identity. In fact, taught adaptability by misfortune, the Armenians have learned to make the most of very slender opportunities, and whenever conditions have become at all bearable, they have enjoyed relative prosperity."

p. 280 "They are industrious, intelli- gent, and with strong commercial aptitude. They are sftMH^ what UJ.A \^ in tBOPal UanHiia, but with stubborn endurance. To-day they are apparently greatly reduced in numbers and economically almost ruined. The number of Armenians is

"There were Armenians indistinguishable from Armenians whom I had viewed by thousands in refugee camps throughout the Near East. There were negroes just like Georgia cotton-pickers, and there was a Jew who might have stepped in off Broadway." 

The third  is  the  Alpine  subspecies  occupying all  central  and  eastern  Europe  and  extending through  Asia  Minor  to  the  Hindu  Kush  and  the Pamirs. The Armenoids  constitute  an  Alpine  sub- division and  may  possibly  represent  the  ancestral type  of  this  race  which  remained  in  the  mouutains  and  high  plateaux  of  Anatolia  and  western Asia.
 * Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race

The Armenians,  too,  have  re- sisted stoutly  the  pressure  of  Islam  to  force  them away  from  their  ancient  Christian  faith. This people really  represents  the  last  outpost  of  Eu- rope toward  the  Mohammedan  East  and  consti- tutes the  best  remaining  medium  through  which Western  ideals  and  culture  can  be  introduced  into Asia.

The Alpine  race  is  clearly  of  Eastern  and  Asiatic origin. It forms  the  westernmost  extension  of  a widespread  subspecies  which,  outside  of  Europe, occupies  Asia  Minor,  Iran,  the  Pamirs  and  the Hindu  Kush. In fact  the  western  Himalayas  were probably  its  original  centre  of  evolution  and  radia- tion and  among  its  Asiatic  members  is  a  distinct subdivision,  the  Armenoids.

The Armenians  themselves,  like  all  the  other natives  of  the  plateaux  and  highlands  as  far  east as  the  Hindu  Kush  Mountains,  while  of  Aryan speech,  are  of  the  Armenoid  subdivision,  in  sharp contrast  to  the  predominant  types  south  of  the mountains  in  Persia,  Afghanistan  and  Hindustan, all  of  which  are  dolichocephalic  and  of  Mediter- ranean affinity  but  generally  betraying  traces  of admixture  with  still  more  ancient  races  of  Negroid origin,  especially  in  India.

https://archive.org/details/anillustratedde00seargoog/page/294/mode/1up?view=theater The inhabitants are chiefly of the genuine Armenian stock ; but besides them, in consequence of the repeated subjjgation of the country, various other races have obtained a footing. Of these the principal are the Turkomans, who still maintain their nomadic habits, and from whom the country has received the name of Turkomania. Of the Armenians, but about one half are in Armenia. The remainder, like the Jews, are scattered over various countries ; and, being strongly addicted to commerce, play an important part as merchants. They are found all over western Asia ; about two hundred thousand are in Constantinople and its vicinity ; numbers are in vai-ious parts of the Russia empire, Hungary, and Italy ; some in Africa and America ; and a large number in India, chiefly in the great marts of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. Everywhere they are engaged in banking and trading. In physical structure, they belong to the Caucasian race, and, in general, are well made. Their eyes and hair are black, their look lively, noses aquiline, and their complexion somewhat swarthy. The women are remarkable for the delicacy and regularity of their features. Like the Jews, whom in many respects they resemble, their ruling passion appears to be an inordinate love of gain, but they are generally esteemed honest. Their mental capacity is good, and those who are educated are distinguished by superior cultivation and refined manners ; but the mass of the people inhabiting their native country, in consequence of centuries of neglect, are grossly ignorant and superstitious.

modern
"Trust a snake before a Jew and a Jew before a Greek, but don't trust an Armenian"
 * George Orwell

"This must have been in the 1970s. It was still during the cooler parts of the Cold War—not the coldest parts, but it was pretty unusual. We had a lot of fun. The first point was of course we had to go to Moscow to get there. Then we had to go to Samarkand, if I’m not mistaken, and then to Byurakan. Now, I might be wrong about that. I think it must be wrong because the interesting thing about Armenia was that the Armenians, generally being great enterprisers, were not too suited for the Socialist economy. They were ideally suited to make money when there was available, rapid, inexpensive (in any currency you might want to measure) air trip between Armenia and Moscow. In Moscow were people with a lot of money, but nothing good to eat, and Yerevan was just the opposite—not much money, but everything was good to eat."
 * Philip Morrison

William H. McNeill (historian): On the other hand, when we bought some fruit at Garni, the sellers gouged the silly tourists without mercy. Thus the traits that make Armenians so suc- cessful in trade are by no means lacking here, though socialism of course inhibits their full development. But as I was repeatedly informed, socialism does not prevent Armenians from running their own country while also occupying a disproportionate share of professional and managerial positions in the U.S.S.R. as a whole.

Colin Thubron: This once-pitiful city is now a centre of industrial skills: electronics, machine tools, precision instruments. A feeling of human possibility is about. In their diaspora the Armenians seem gentler than others, but here, as in Israel, many of the familiar qualities of a people appeared lost or overlaid. Compared to Russians, the figures which crowded the pavements looked physically and sensually precocious. Their expres- sions were more varied, more explosive, more beautiful, more any- thing-the faces of brigands and concert pianists and millionaires. Their slender-boned features-some of the women's appeared fragile as birds'-could burn with a tragic intensity. The young men flaunted flared trousers and platform shoes. The air on street corners was raked by the cross-fire of their inquisition and the sight of a foreigner drew a barrage of inquiry. Yet they were shorter, darker than the Georgians, and in place of that brittle mountain dash they looked subtly older, as if beneath their exuberance there lingered, even in the young, some collective memory of horror.

other
https://www.nytimes.com/1915/01/24/archives/how-turkish-empire-should-be-made-over-after-the-war.html Written for The New York Times by a student of Turkish affairs HOW TURKISH EMPIRE SHOULD BE MADE OVER AFTER THE WAR "The Greek and the Armenian, who combined about five millions, in equal number, are admittedly superior to the Turk morally and intellectually. They are consummate merchants and financiers, industrious and progressive. The Jew and the Christian Arab, known to us as the Syrian, are the peers of the Greek and the Armenian. The Greek and the Armenian represent about 25 per cent of the population of Turkey. They control about 70 per cent of its commerce."

Non-westerners
Faiz Muhammad Kateb https://twitter.com/afgmeh/status/1736246013575279072 / https://archive.ph/9ns3M It is a characteristic of Armenians that they go to any country where, with the eye of calculation and avarice, they see that there is a good opportunity to make money. They work hard to achieve their personal ambitions and desires, using every means at their disposal. In the beginning there (was) a (small) number of them in Afghanistan-two families in Peshawar, three in Kabul, and eight choosing to live in Harät. [Later on], at the order of Amir Abd al-Rahmän Khän, the one remaining family in Kabul was expelled to Peshawar. In Harät, through natural increase, there are now more than thirty families. They are Christians, they read the Old Testament and the Gospels in Greek, and they do not know Hebrew or English.