Sebouh David Aslanian – Författare

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 was the “driving engine” of Armenian book history, Aslanian makes a revisionist contribution to the early modern origins of Armenian nationalism.

The legacy of Caucasian Albania, an otherwise obscure and enigmatic Christian kingdom that disappeared in the ninth century CE but remerged in the Soviet-era South Caucasus, has played a perhaps surprisingly significant role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.Comprising eight chapters and an introduction and conclusion, this book gathers some of the world’s leading authorities on Soviet nationalities policy and South Caucasian history to examine the role of historians and Soviet-era nation-building policies in fanning the flames of ethnic/territorial conflicts across the troubled landscape of the South Caucasus. Its initial section contains conceptual and historiographic contributions on Soviet nationality policy and how it shaped and birthed nations in part through the creation of national history textbooks. It then examines the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh/Artsakh and the uses of the Caucasian Albanian past in fanning the flames of hatred and cultural vandalism in the region. It will be essential reading for scholars specialising on post-Soviet history, nationalism and the South Caucasus.