Early Modernity and Mobility: Port Cities and Printers across the Armenian Diaspora, 1512-1800 9780300271218

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Preface
Introduction: An Early Modern Armenian Printing Revolution?
1. Armenians on the Move
2. “Paper Instruments,” Social Networking, and Mobility across the Early Modern Armenian Diaspora
3. The Early Arrival of Print in Safavid Iran
4. The Amsterdam Connection
5. Print and Port-to-Port Mobility
6. Reader Response and the Circulation of Mkhit‘arist Books across the Armenian Communities of the Early Modern Indian Ocean
7. “There Is No One in Bengal Who Is Interested in Ancient Writings Such as Psalters, Breviaries, and So On”
8. From London and Saint Petersburg to Astrakhan and Madras
9. Print, Patronage, and the Rise of the Confessional Nation
Conclusion: Coda, or Books across Borders
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Early Modernity and Mobility

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Early Modernity and Mobility port cities and printers across the armenian diaspora, 1512–1800

Sebouh David Aslanian

New Haven & London

 Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College. Copyright © 2023 by Sebouh David Aslanian. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in ­whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please email sales​.­press@yale​.­edu (U.S. office) or sales@yaleup​.­co​.­uk (U.K. office). Set in Adobe Garamond type by Westchester Publishing Ser­vices. Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022944693 ISBN 978-0-300-24753-4 (hardcover: alk. paper) A cata­logue rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 Dedicated to my m ­ other, Rita, and ­sister, Seza, and to the memory of my father, Bedros, grandparents, Astride and Georges Djerrahian, my cousin Haig Erzingatzian, and to Maro Berberian

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Contents

Acknowl­edgments, ix A Note on Transliteration, xvii Preface, xix Introduction: An Early Modern Armenian Printing Revolution?, 1 1 Armenians on the Move: The Celali Uprisings, the Shah ‘Abbas I Deportations, and the Making of Armenian Early Modernity, 42 2 “Paper Instruments,” Social Networking, and Mobility across the Early Modern Armenian Diaspora, 76 3 The Early Arrival of Print in Safavid Iran: New Light on the First Armenian Printing Press in New Julfa, Isfahan (1636–1650, 1686–1693), 115 4 The Amsterdam Connection: Port Armenians and Printers at the Center of the World-­System, 1658–1717, 148 5 Print and Port-­to-­Port Mobility: Censorship and Letters of Excommunication in the Work of Oscan’s Press in Livorno and Marseille, 1672–1685, 190

viii C o n t e n t s

6 Reader Response and the Circulation of Mkhit‘arist Books across the Armenian Communities of the Early Modern Indian Ocean, 226 7 “­There Is No One in Bengal Who Is Interested in Ancient Writings Such as Psalters, Breviaries, and So On”: Quantitative History and the Desacralization of Print among Early Modern Armenians?, 249 8 From London and Saint Petersburg to Astrakhan and Madras: Print, Diaspora, and Transimperial Social Networking, 288 9 Print, Patronage, and the Rise of the Confessional Nation, 330 Conclusion: Coda, or Books across Borders, 370 Notes, 379 Bibliography, 469 Index, 529

Acknowl­edgments

This book has been in gestation since I wrote a statement of purpose to conduct doctoral work at Columbia University in 1997, proposing to investigate “novel ways of conceptualizing the origin and spread” of Armenian nationalism and national identity by highlighting “the idea of a diaspora merchant class playing the role of a surrogate state” and serving as a “vehicle for a ‘national revival’ movement.” Like so many gradu­ate student ambitions, this proposal to write a thesis on the “nexus between merchant capital and print culture” was eventually shelved as I turned to writing a dissertation on economic history, focusing on the business and contractual culture of merchants ­behind the print culture examined in this book. The idea of returning to print culture, mercantile support, and “proto” ­nationalism ­after a long hiatus came to me in 2012, during the quincentenary of the printing of the first Armenian book in Venice. Twenty-­four years ­later, I feel more prepared than ever to publish what was slated as the seed of a dissertation idea. During the last ten years, while I have been busy conducting research and writing this book, I have incurred many debts to friends, colleagues, and ­family, for which I would like to express my deep gratitude. I cannot think of a better way to thank all my well-­wishers, friends, and supporters than in the spirit of the following aphorism from Blaise Pascal: Certains auteurs, parlant de leurs ouvrages, disent: Mon livre, mon commentaire, mon histoire, e­ tc. Ils sentent leur bourgeois, qui ont ix

x A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

pignon sur rue et toujours un chez moi à la bouche. Ils feraient mieux de dire: Notre livre, notre commentaire, notre histoire, ­etc., vu que d’ordinaire il y a plus en cela de bien d’autrui que du leur. (Blaise Pascal, Pensées Choisies de Blaise Pascal, 64) Certain authors, speaking of their work, say: My book, my commentary, my history, ­etc. They resemble middle-­class ­people who have a ­house of their own, and always have my ­house on their tongue. They would do better to say: Our book, our commentary, our history, ­etc., ­because ­there is in them usually more of other p ­ eople’s than their own. Pascal’s words strike at the essence of most if not all authorial work, which, although usually done by individual authors in isolation from the world, is undoubtedly always something of a very worldly and collaborative endeavor. I have had the good fortune of and have benefited from associating with intelligent and well-­read scholars, friends, colleagues, and gradu­ate students, without whose help this book would not have been written the way it is. Like the printed codex at the heart of this study, this book did not materialize fully formed from my head. Like all other books, this one has a bit of every­one in it with whom I have collaborated in one form or another. It is in a sense the creative sum total of all the conversations and friendships, encounters and interactions from which I have profited over many years. As a m ­ atter of princi­ple, I have thanked individually in the notes of this study ­people whose ideas or insights I have used, and I hope I have not omitted anyone inadvertently. It is now my plea­sure (and duty) to offer more general thanks to t­hose who have helped ­either by offering advice, reading chapters, giving me valuable reference information, planting seeds of ideas that have blossomed in my mind, or offering encouragement and support at dif­fer­ent stages of writing this book. Of all the debts I have incurred, none is more profound than the one to Houri Berberian. Houri read and offered comments on the entire manuscript and believed in me and the value of my work, especially at moments when I no longer did. She was a constant source of intellectual and moral support, and I can say that without her, I might not have finished this work. I am also grateful to my friend and colleague Merujan Karapetyan for countless tips and references to Armenian-­language scholarship that I might have other­wise forgotten. Not only was he an indispensable companion, an endless font of knowledge and insight, and a general guide into the territory I have explored in this book, but he also embodied a trait that is rare among scholars and friends alike: unstinting generosity with archival materials. I am

Acknowledgments

xi

profoundly grateful to him for generously sharing with me reproductions of countless documents from the De Propaganda Fide archives in Rome as well as other archival materials. To Merujan I owe my felicitous introduction to the archives of De Propaganda Fide. I made summer trips to Rome from 2013 to 2018 largely to chase up leads to documents I became aware of thanks to him. He was also a perennial interlocutor whom I bounced ideas off, learned to agree and disagree with, and occasionally consulted on technical ­matters relating to philology. Readers who take time to read the endnotes w ­ ill have a better sense of my debt to Merujan as well as ­others. My good friend Olivier Raveux of Aix-­en-­Provence is also another generous soul and exemplary scholar who deserves special mention. His friendship, good w ­ ill, and bonhomie have meant much to me. Olivier shared vital notes and summaries of documents he had painstakingly read at the municipal archives of Bouche-­du-­Rhône in Southern France. With his generous permission, I have relied on some of his notes in chapter 5. My gradu­ate student Daniel Ohanian has been an intellectual companion and research assistant ever since I had the good fortune of welcoming him to UCLA in 2016. Daniel is a fine thinker and meticulous scholar who is now working on a dissertation that no doubt ­will prove to be impor­tant and necessary. He read many of my chapters, volunteered as a critical sounding board, and served as a gradu­ate student researcher. To Daniel I owe the statistical findings that undergird my analy­sis in chapter  7. He generated them with his characteristic skill and care based on the methodological guidelines I had provided. Daniel also compiled the bibliography of this book and made it conform to the stylistic requirements of Yale University Press. My other talented gradu­ate student, Sona Tajiryan, was also an intellectual companion for many years, as was Michael O’­Sullivan, with whom I discussed the importance of mobility as a topic for world historians as early as 2014, when Michael (along with Sona) was a participant in my gradu­ate seminar on that topic. Other students with whom I had the plea­sure of sharing some of the ideas in this book are the exemplary Jesse Arlen (who also read parts of the manuscript and offered precious comments), Jennifer Manoukian, Herman Kaleb Adney, Ayal Amer, Madonna Aoun, Martin Adamian, and Pauline Pechakjian. Henry Shapiro, on whose Prince­ton dissertation committee I served, introduced me to the scholarship on the celali uprisings and l­ater to the lit­er­a­ture on confessionalism. I am also grateful to colleagues, friends, and fellow travelers for offering insightful comments or solidarity. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (a prince among

xii A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

world historians and a reliable source of inspiration, insight, and example) deserves a special mention, as does my gradu­ate school mentor and lodestar in ­matters of economic and business history, Francesca Trivellato. Both read chapters and proffered masterful advice. Nile Green’s friendship and scholarship on print have been very meaningful as well. For as long as I remember, Khachig Tölölyan has been a role model and scholar extraordinaire in diaspora studies. Khachig’s more than twenty-­year friendship and sagacious advice have punctuated the firmament of my imagination with flashes of bright light and inspiration. Ron Suny and Gerard Libaridian, each in his own way, have been part inspiration, part fellow traveler, and part source of critical self-­reflection. Bedross Der Matossian has been in a league of his own as a steadfast and candid friend and intellectual interlocutor. My gratitude to him is disproportionate to this short sentence. Marc Mamigonian, Marc Nichanian (who thankfully persuaded me to drop my 1997 dissertation proposal at Columbia), Christopher Sheklian, Hagop Gulludjian, Haig Utidjian, Hratch Tchilingirian, Matthieu Grenet, Igor Dorfman Lazarev, Baki Tezcan, and Choon Hwee Koh all read parts of this work and offered many useful correctives or perspectives. Mamigonian not only was helpful by supplying many PDFs during the long year of COVID-19 but also patiently read several long chapters and offered sage advice. Levon Abrahamian casually dropped a seed in my mind during a conversation over coffee in Yerevan for which I am grateful. Kathryn Babayan, who has been a friend and colleague for over a de­cade, pushed me to rethink my initial ideas on nationalism or early modern nationhood. I am especially grateful to her for reading ­earlier iterations of this manuscript. Stimulating conversations with the talented Nir Shafir guided me in reorienting my project more than halfway through. Vahe Sahakyan read the full manuscript at a very early stage and offered valuable comments. Mana Kia, with whom I have disagreed as much as agreed, also read some chapters and offered detailed and critical advice. My friends Margaret (Peg) Jacob and Lynn Hunt have always been paragons of mentorship and supportive collegiality, as have my esteemed friends and colleagues, David N. Myers and Caroline Ford. Peg is especially impor­ tant ­because she introduced me to the scholarship of Robert Darnton and Roger Chartier in an in­de­pen­dent reading course I took with her at the New School in New York City in the mid-1990s, when she was among my first mentors, along with Talal Asad. Richard Von Glahn was generous with insightful feedback, as ­were especially Talar Chahinian, Satenig Batwagan-­

Acknowledgments

xiii

Toufanian, Salim Der Markar, and particularly Sato Moughalian, who came into my life as this book was in its final stages but helped in profound ways. My gratitude to her is immense. ­Others who in one way or another ­were part of the meaningful background while I was working on this book w ­ ere my cousin Ara Erzingatzian and his sons, Armen and Raffi, my other Montreal cousins, Dr. Gabriella Djerrahian, Giro and Adi Djerrahian/Israelian, and Christine Djerrahian. Gabriel and Nirva Aslanian w ­ ere also t­ here as steadfast relatives and friends. The following friends offered their support, advice, and friendship while I was busy laboring on this book: Kaya Șahin and his wonderful partner, Rita, Cornel Fleischer, who offered valuable and cautionary advice, Nikolay Antov, Orit Baskin, and Holly Shissler (all companions from my one quarter of teaching at Chicago in 2010), E. Natalie Rothman, Shushan Karapetian, Audrey Kalajian, Sossie Kasparian, Liz Chater, Danny Beylerian, Zaid Omran, Mimi El Zein, Lola Koundakjian, Marlyn Israelian, Arash Khazeni (who gave me my first break in the world of teaching), Aslı Bâli, Fahad Bishara, Afshin Matin-­Asgeri, Jasamine Rostam-­Kolayi, Sanan Barbar, Talinn Grigor, Anna Ohanjanyan, Razmik Panossian, Vazken Davidian, Mary Momdjian, Mihran Minasian, Ara Sanjian, and Rachel Goshgarian. Asiroh Cham, Verna Abe, Mary Johnson, and Tam Lee of UCLA deserve a mention for helping to create conditions propitious for my work growth as a faculty member and scholar ­there. Stefania Tutino, of UCLA, and Tijana Krstić, of Central Eu­ro­pean University, ­were generous with feedback on Catholicism and confessionalism, respectively. My friend Cesare Santus has been a wellspring of knowledge, support, and generous insight and information over the last few years. Only he knows how many email queries he had to respond to in an effort to reduce the number of errors or faulty interpretations on ­matters of confessionalism. Raymond Kévorkian, Bernard Heyberger, and Kéram Kévonian of Paris ­were also path blazers who facilitated the birthing of this book. Guillaume Calafat in Paris and Minas Lourian in Venice ­were supportive in their own ways. Jaya Chatterjee, my editor at Yale University Press, has been a patient and sustaining pillar. I also extend my thanks to Brian Ostrander of Westchester Publishing Services for his expert stewardship in guiding this manuscript to completion. David Di Francesco and Ethel Daniels of Long Beach kept me sane and healthy, the first physically and the second spiritually and mentally. To Gerry Krieg go my hearty thanks for preparing the maps and other artwork for this book.

xiv A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

Archivists or custodians of historical documents on several continents have assisted my seasonal visits to consult, photo­graph, or examine their documents. ­Here I would like to thank Amanda Bevan and Randolph Cocks at the National Archives in Kew (London), Margaret Makepeace and ­others at the British Library, the most reverend ­Fathers Boghos Kojanian and Simon Bayan of the Vienna branch of the Mkhit‘arists, former Abbot Yeghia Kilaghbian and Vahan Ohanian of the Venice branch, and Aram Ter Ghevontyan, Gevorg Ter-­Vardanian, and Shushanik Khachikian of the Matenadaran in Yerevan for invaluable help in facilitating access to archival reproductions. Boris Adjemian, a gifted historian and the director of the Bibliothèque Nubar in Paris, was helpful in friendship and for indispensable assistance in placing impor­tant documents at my disposal. I am most grateful to their eminences Gabriel Mouradian and Mikael Mouradian for facilitating my research trip to Bzommar in the mountains north of Beirut in the summer of 2019, and to Vanda Asadourian for help in making archival materials accessible to me. My special thanks also extend to Cynthia Cazanjian Hajjar and Madonna Aoun for their generosity in making my memorable trip to Beirut pos­si­ble. Robert Post and Hannah Rich ­were helpful in providing translations from early modern Dutch and Latin, which w ­ ere useful for writing chapter 4 on Armenian print in Holland. Catia Antunes and Tsolin Nalbantian w ­ ere generous contacts in Holland. In India, my friends Vache Tadevosian and Mike Stephen, His Holiness Movses Sargisyan, and the Armenian Church Committees of Calcutta (Kolkata) and Madras (Chennai) ­were exemplary in helping me gain access to precious documents. I am also grateful to the Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA (established by the Armenian Educational Foundation) and the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute (particularly to Dr. Ann Karagozian) for support while writing this book. Last but certainly not least, I wish to express my profound gratitude and love to my late grand­mother and grand­father, Astride and George Djerrahian, and to my ­mother and ­sister, Rita and Seza, for their confidence in me and for the love and support that have sustained this enterprise. This book is dedicated to them and to the memory of my sorely missed grand­mother Astride, my grand­father George, and my f­ ather, Bedros. Both my maternal grand­father and my f­ather ­were impor­tant printing moguls and cultural patrons in the country of our birth, Ethiopia, and it is difficult to imagine that I would have been interested in the history of Armenian print culture and patronage without their spectral presence in my life.

Acknowledgments

xv

I also wish to remember ­here several individuals who passed on while this book was being written. ­These include my cousin and childhood friend the late and too-­soon-­departed Haig Erzingatzian, whose passing in Montreal occurred while I was composing the tail end of this book; and another dear relative, the late Renata Basso Israelian, whose life across her native Italy and Ethiopia and in Montreal exemplified what was best in the diverse Ethio-­ Armenian community. Finally, I wish to remember my late mother-in-law, Maro Berberian, whom I admired and loved in life and remember and celebrate in death. Maro passed away all too soon, leaving everyone who admired and loved her disconsolate and grieving. May her memory as a powerful and loving matriarch always shine a light on the path forward. As is often the case with most authors, I have found that writing (sometimes even in its scholarly guise) is the literary and intellectual expression of childhood memories; in my case, ­these memories include the smell of fresh printing ink in my nostrils while growing up in diasporic sites like Addis Ababa, Dubai, and Montreal. I hope this book brings honor to ­those memories. No m ­ atter what one may make of Pascal’s thoughts on the topic, this work with what­ever virtues it may contain along with its persisting deficiencies remains mine alone. In the manner of early modern Armenian scribes, printers, and publishers writing their colophons, I only hope that readers who notice such deficiencies ­will forgive the author for his shortcomings and endeavor to surpass and improve on his work.

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A Note on Transliteration

I have utilized the transliteration scheme for Armenian used by the American Library Association and the Library of Congress. This scheme relies on the pronunciation of Classical Armenian and Standard Eastern Armenian and unlike the Hübschmann-­Meillet system used by some philologists has the virtue of being less esoteric and more easily understood by the uninitiated. Ա ա Բ բ Գ գ Դ դ Ե ե

Զ զ Է է Ը ը Թ թ Ժ ժ Ի ի Լ լ

Aa Bb Gg Dd E e/y (Y is used in the initial position when followed by a vowel, ­unless for commonly accepted proper names, e.g., Yerevants‘i.) Zz Ēē Ĕĕ T‘ t‘ Zh zh Ii Ll

Խ խ Ծ ծ Կ կ Հ հ Ձ ձ Ղ ղ Ճ ճ Մ մ Յ յ

Ն ն Շ շ Ո ո

xvii

Kh kh Ts ts Kk Hh Ds ds Gh gh Ch ch Mm Y y/h (H rather than y is used in the initial position of the word, e.g., Hisus and not Yisus. Y is used at the end of a word when preceded by a vowel.) Nn Sh sh Oo

xviii

Չ չ Պ պ Ջ ջ Ռ ռ Ս ս Վ վ Տ տ Րր

A N ot e o n T r a n s l i t e r at i o n Ch‘ ch‘ Pp Jj Ṙṙ Ss Vv Tt Rr

Ց ց Ւ ւ Փ փ Ք ք Եւ եւ Օ օ

Ts‘ ts‘ Ww P‘ p‘ K‘ k‘ Ew ew Ōō

Ֆ ֆ F f

For the most part, Armenian proper names have been transliterated according to the above scheme except in cases where common usage differs (e.g., Sebouh Aslanian as opposed to Sepuh Aslanean, and Yerevants‘i as opposed to Erewants‘i). Reformed Eastern Armenian orthography has been transliterated in accordance with the same scheme (e.g., Patmut‘yun as opposed to Patmut‘iwn for works published in Soviet and post-­Soviet Armenia). Most Armenian terms and excerpted passages in the body of this book as well as in the endnotes have been both transliterated and provided in the original script when convention has called for it. A note on abbreviations used: