Claiming the Caucasus: Russia's Imperial Encounter with Armenians, 1801-1894
Journal: Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Year: 2019

My dissertation questions the relationship between the Russian empire and the Armenian diaspora that populated Russia’s territorial fringes and navigated the tsarist state’s metropolitan centers. I argue that Russia harnessed the stateless and dispersed Armenian diaspora to build its empire in the Caucasus and beyond. Russia relied on the stature of the two most influential institutions of that diaspora, the merchantry and the clergy, to project diplomatic power from Constantinople to Copenhagen