Armenia has been populated since prehistoric times, and has been proposed as the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden. Armenia lies in the highlands surrounding the Biblical mountains of Ararat, upon which, as Judeo-Christian theology states, Noah's Ark came to rest after the flood. (Gen. 8:4). Archaeologists continue to uncover evidence that Armenia and the Armenian Highlands were among the earliest sites of human civilization. From 6000 BCE to 1000 BCE, tools such as spears and axes and trinkets of copper, bronze, and iron were commonly produced in Armenia and traded in neighbouring lands where those metals were less abundant.[7] The territory of Armenia is also one of the candidates for the legendary Aratta, mentioned in Sumerian records.
In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Hittite Empire (at the height of its power), Mitanni (South-Western historic Armenia), and Hayasa-Azzi (fifteenth to twelfth centuries BCE). In the Iron Age, the Indo-European Phrygians and Mushkis arrived in the Near East, and toppled the Mitanni Kingdom.[8] Then, the Nairi people (twelfth to ninth centuries BCE) and the Kingdom of Urartu (ninth to sixth centuries BCE) successively established their sovereignty over the Armenian Highland. Each of the aforementioned nations and tribes participated in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people.[9] Yerevan, the modern capital of Armenia, was founded in 782 BCE by the Urartian king Argishti I.
Around 600 BCE, the Kingdom of Armenia was established under the Orontid Dynasty, which existed under several local dynasties till 428 CE. The kingdom reached its height between 95 - 66 BCE under Tigranes the Great, becoming one of the most powerful kingdoms of its time within the region. Throughout its history, the kingdom of Armenia enjoyed periods of independence intermitted with periods of autonomy subject to contemporary empires. Armenia's strategic location between two continents has subjected it to invasions by many peoples, including the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Mongols, Persians, Ottoman Turks and Russians.
In 301, Armenia became the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its official state religion, while a number of Christian communities have been established in Armenia since 40 CE. There had been various pagan communities before Christianity, but they were converted by an influx of Christian missionaries. Tiridates III (238-314 CE) was the first ruler to officially Christianise his people, his conversion ten years before the Roman Empire granted Christianity official toleration under Galerius, and 36 years before Constantine was baptised.
After the fall of the Armenian kingdom in 428 CE, most of Armenia was incorporated as a marzpanate within the Sassanid Empire, ruled by a marzpan. Following an Armenian rebellion in 451 CE, Christian Armenians maintained their religious freedom, while Armenia gained autonomy and the right to be ruled by an Armenian marzpan, whereas other imperial territories were ruled exclusively by Persians. The Marzpanate of Armenia lasted until the 630s, when Sassanid Persia was destroyed by the Arab Caliphate.
Medieval Armenia
After the Marzpanate period (428-636), Armenia emerged as an autonomous principality within the Arabic Empire, reuniting Armenian lands previously taken by the Byzantine Empire as well. The principality was ruled by the Prince of Armenia, recognised by the Caliph and the Byzantine Emperor. It was part of the administrative division/emirate Arminiyya created by the Arabs, which also included parts of Georgia and Caucasian Albania, and had its center in the Armenian city Dvin. The Principality of Armenia lasted till 884, when it regained its independence from the weakened Arabic Empire.
The reemergent Armenian kingdom was ruled by the Bagratuni dynasty, and lasted till 1045. In time, several areas of the Bagratid Armenia separated as independent kingdoms and principalities such as the Kingdom of Vaspurakan ruled by the House of Artsruni, while still recognizing the supremacy of the Bagratid kings.
In 1045, the Byzantine Empire conquered Bagratid Armenia. Soon, the other Armenian states fell under Byzantine control as well. The Byzantine rule was short lived, as in 1071 Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines and conquered Armenia at the Battle of Manzikert, establishing the Seljuk Empire. To escape death or servitude at the hands of those who had assassinated his relative, Gagik II, King of Ani, an Armenian named Roupen with some of his countrymen went into the gorges of the Taurus Mountains and then into Tarsus of Cilicia. The Byzantine governor of the palace gave them shelter where the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia was eventually established.
The Seljuk Empire soon started to collapse. In the early 1100s, Armenian princes of the Zakarid noble family established a semi-independent Armenian principality in Northern and Eastern Armenia, known as Zakarid Armenia. The noble family of Orbelians shared control with the Zakarids in various parts of the country, especially in Syunik and Vayots Dzor.
Foreign rule
During the 1230s, the Mongol Ilkhanate conquered the Zakaryan Principality, as well as the rest of Armenia. The Mongolian invasions were soon followed by those of other Central Asian tribes, which continued from the 1200s until the 1400s. After incessant invasions, each bringing destruction to the country, Armenia in time became weakened. During the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia divided Armenia among themselves. The Russian Empire later incorporated Eastern Armenia (consisting of the Erivan and Karabakh khanates within Persia) in 1813 and 1828.
Under Ottoman rule, the Armenians were granted considerable autonomy within their own enclaves and lived in relative harmony with other groups in the empire (including the ruling Turks). However, as Christians under a strict Muslim social system, Armenians faced pervasive discrimination. When they began pushing for more rights within the Ottoman Empire, Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Hamid II, in response, organised state-sponsored massacres against the Armenians between 1894 and 1896, resulting in an estimated death toll of 80,000 to 300,000 people. The Hamidian massacres, as they came to be known, gave Hamid international infamy as the "Red Sultan" or "Bloody Sultan."
World War I and the Armenian Genocide
As the Ottoman Empire began to collapse, the Young Turks overthrew the government of Sultan Hamid. Armenians living in the empire hoped that the Young Turk revolution would change their second-class status. However, with onslaught of World War I and the Ottoman Empire's assault on the Russian Empire, the new government began to look on the Armenians with distrust and suspicion. This was due to the fact that the Russian army contained a contingent of Armenian volunteers. On April 24, 1915, Armenian intellectuals were arrested by Ottoman authorities, and with the Tehcir Law, eventually a large proportion of Armenians living in Anatolia perished in what has become known as the Armenian Genocide. There was local Armenian resistance in the region, developed against the activities of the Ottoman Empire. The events of 1915 to 1917 are regarded by Armenians and the vast majority of Western historians to have been state-sponsored mass killings, or genocide. Despite overwhelming evidence of genocidal intent, Turkish authorities maintain that the deaths were the result of a civil war coupled with disease and famine, with casualties incurred by both sides. Most estimates for the number of Armenians killed range from 650,000 to 1.5 million. Armenia and the Armenian diaspora have been campaigning for official recognition of the events as genocide for over 30 years. These events are traditionally commemorated yearly on April 24, the Armenian Martyr Day, or the Day of the Armenian Genocide.
Although the Russian army succeeded in gaining most of Ottoman Armenia during World War I, their gains were lost with the Russian Revolution of 1917. At the time, Russian-controlled Eastern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan attempted to bound together in the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. This federation, however, only lasted from February to May 1918, when all three parties decided to dissolve it. As a result, Eastern Armenia became independent as the Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) on May 28. Unfortunately, the DRA's short-lived independence was fraught with war, territorial disputes, a mass influx of refugees from Ottoman Armenia, spreading disease, and starvation. Still, the Entente Powers, appalled by the actions of the Ottoman government, sought to help the newly-found Armenian state through relief funds and other forms of support.
At the end of the war, the victorious Entente powers sought to divide up the Ottoman Empire. Signed between the Allied and Associated Powers and Ottoman Empire at Sèvres on August 10, 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres promised to maintain the existence of the DRA and to attach the former territories of Ottoman Armenia to it. Because the new borders of Armenia were to be drawn by United States President Woodrow Wilson, Ottoman Armenia is also referred to as "Wilsonian Armenia." There was even consideration of possibly making Armenia a mandate under the protection of the United States. The treaty, however, was rejected by the Turkish National Movement, and never came into effect. The movement, under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, used the treaty as the occasion to declare itself the rightful government of Turkey, replacing the monarchy based in Istanbul with a republic based in Ankara.
Soviet Armenia
In 1920, Armenia and Turkey engaged in the Turkish-Armenian War, a violent conflict that ended with the Treaty of Alexandropol. Signed on December 2, the Alexandropol treaty forced Armenia to disarm most of its military forces, cede more than 50% of its pre-war territory, and to give up all the territories granted to it at the Sèvres treaty. Simultaneously, the Soviet Eleventh Army under the command of Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze, invaded Armenia at Karavansarai (present-day Ijevan) on November 29. By December 4, Ordzhonikidze's forces entered Yerevan and the short-lived Armenian republic collapsed. It was annexed by Bolshevist Russia and in 1922 was incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of the Transcaucasian SFSR along with Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Treaty of Alexandropol was then superseded by the Treaty of Kars, between Turkey and the Soviet Union. In it, Turkey allowed the Soviet Union to assume control over Ajara with the port city of Batumi in return for sovereignty over the cities of Kars, Ardahan, and Iğdır, all of which were part of Russian Armenia.
The TSFR existed from 1922 to 1936, when it was divided up into three separate entities (Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, and Georgian SSR). Armenians enjoyed a period of relative stability under Soviet rule. They received medicine, food, and other provisions from Moscow, and communist rule proved to be a soothing balm in contrast to the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire. The situation was difficult for the church, which struggled under Soviet rule. After the death of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin took the reins of power and began an era of renewed fear and terror for Armenians. As with various other ethnic minorities who lived in the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge, tens of thousands of Armenians were either executed or deported.
Fears decreased when Stalin died in 1953 and Nikita Khruschev emerged as the Soviet Union's new leader. Soon, life in Soviet Armenia began to seen rapid improvement. The church which suffered greatly under Stalin was revived when Catholicos Vazgen I assumed the duties of his office in 1955. In 1967, a memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide was built at the Tsitsernakaberd hill above the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan after mass demonstrations took place the tragic event's fiftieth anniversary in 1965. During the Gorbachev era of the 1980s with the reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika, Armenians began to demand better environmental care for their country, opposing the pollution that Soviet-built factories brought. Tensions also developed between the Armenian and Azerbaijani republics over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. At the same time, Soviet Armenia suffered the devastating 1988 Spitak earthquake. Gorbachev's inability to solve Armenia's problems (especially Karabakh) led many Armenians to become disillusioned with the Soviet leader. Instead, it created a growing hunger for independence.
Independence
In 1991, the Soviet Union broke apart and Armenia re-established its independence. The initial post-Soviet years were marred by the continued confrontation with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. A Russian-brokered cease-fire was put in place in 1994. Since then, Armenia and her neighbor have held peace talks, mediated by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The status over Karabakh has yet to be determined and the economies of both countries have been hurt in the absence of a complete resolution.
As it enters the twenty-first century, Armenia faces many hardships. Still, despite high unemployment, it has managed to make some economic improvements. It has made a full switch to a market economy and as of 2007, remains the 32nd most economically free nation in the world. Its relations with Europe, the Middle East, and the Commonwealth of Independent States have allowed Armenia to increase trade. Gas, oil, and other supplies come through two vital routes: Iran and Georgia. Armenia maintains cordial relations with both countries.
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