Early Modernity and Mobility: Port Cities and Printers in the Armenian Diaspora 1512 - 1800

“This beautifully written, extraordinarily original work is a major contribution, not only to Armenian history but to the history of the book and to understanding the origins of both early modern commercial capitalism and the confessional identities that previsioned the modern nation.”-Ronald Grigor Suny, author of “They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide.
A history of the continent-spanning Armenian print tradition in the early modern period, Early Modernity and Mobility explores the disparate yet connected histories of Armenian printing establishments in early modern Europe and Asia. From 1512, when the first Armenian printed codex appeared in Venice, to the end of the early modern period in 1800, Armenian presses operated in nineteen locations across the Armenian diaspora. Linking far-flung locations in Amsterdam, Livorno, Marseille, Saint Petersburg, and Astrakhan to New Julfa, Madras, and Calcutta, Armenian presses published a thousand editions with more than half a million printed volumes in Armenian script.
Drawing on extensive archival research, Sebouh David Aslanian explores why certain books were published at certain times, how books were sold across the diaspora, who read them, and how the printed word helped fashion a new collective identity for early modern Armenians. In examining the Armenian print tradition Aslanian tells a larger story about the making of the diaspora itself. Arguing that “confessionalism” and the hardening of boundaries between the Armenian and Roman churches were the “driving engine” of Armenian book history, Aslanian makes a revisionist contribution to the early modern origins of Armenian nationalism.
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