Christianity in the Middle East after 1800

Hendryk

Banned
Oh the irony! :D
Indeed, between the rump Turkey and the huge Israel, he has created the perfect conditions for widespread anti-Christian sentiment throughout the Middle East. Not that his TL doesn't have serious other issues.
 

Keenir

Banned
Saying the Entente "reneged" on Sevres is kinda like saying Hitler "reneged" on Lebensraum.

there should be an award for those members who accomplish the seeming impossible....like summoning Godwin in the 1800s.

(that was a compliment)

However, I think the Armenians would have preferred Russian rule to Ottoman one. No religion-based discrimination, no having to pay a special religious tax, etc.


somehow I can't picture Tsarist Russia having a light hand on people they see as heretics.

You're right about the pragmatism of the WWI situation, but there was also the very strong, very deep-rooted, very real feelings of Christian solidarity and anti-Turkism that existed between the Russians and Armenians.

really? wasn't the Chalcedonian matter the reason why the Orthodox broke from the Middle East for the most part? (or would the Copts be the only non-Chalcedonians with bad blood with the Orthodox?)
 

Keenir

Banned
True...

Ottomans need so much more love.

very very true.

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[/SIZE][/FONT]Somehow I can't picture Tsarist Russia having a light hand on people they see as heretics.


It's awfully inconvenient that it, in fact, did, isn't it? Armenians if anything were pretty privileged even before WW1.

Likewise, the Russian governement relaxed religious pressure on other faiths if it was convenient - all those Buddhist mongols come to mind. They weren't good guys, but they certainly weren't religiously fanatical unless there was some political reason for it (Panslavism or such).

The only people who really got in trouble consistently were heretics from orthodoxy (Like Skoptsy or Imyaslavtsy) and such (old Believers excepted), and, in the very last decades leading up to WW1, Jews.
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
It's awfully inconvenient that it, in fact, did, isn't it? Armenians if anything were pretty privileged even before WW1.

Likewise, the Russian governement relaxed religious pressure on other faiths if it was convenient - all those boddhist mongols come to mind. They weren't good guys, but they certainly weren't religiously fanatical unless there was some political reason for it (Panslavism or such).

The only people who really got in trouble consistently were heretics from orthodoxy (Like Skoptsy or Imyaslavtsy) and such (old Believers excepted), and, in the very last decades leading up to WW1, Jews.

Exactly. Protestantism in the Baltics, Finland, and amongst the Volga Germans was left largely unmolested, and the same goes for Catholicism (though there were some issues in the Ukraine, but that was by and large perpetrated by locals, not sanctioned by the Tsar and the Okhrana.)

To Russians, Christians were Christians (for the most part) and again I have trouble seeing them making things tough for the Armenians.
 

Keenir

Banned
It's awfully inconvenient that it, in fact, did, isn't it? Armenians if anything were pretty privileged even before WW1.

and the same was true in the Ottoman Empire. heck, there were Armenians who were part of the Ottoman Royal Family - I'm unaware of any Armenians in the Russian Royalty.


for the most part, all I know of this era in Russia was that this was when my family was forced to leave.

...and that Armenians aren't part of the Orthodox.
 
and the same was true in the Ottoman Empire. heck, there were Armenians who were part of the Ottoman Royal Family - I'm unaware of any Armenians in the Russian Royalty.

There were hardly any Russians among Russian Royalty, you know? European Royalty of the time was a curious beast all to itself.

...and that Armenians aren't part of the Orthodox.

Sure, but it doesn't mean they will get repressed.
 
Exactly. Protestantism in the Baltics, Finland, and amongst the Volga Germans was left largely unmolested, and the same goes for Catholicism (though there were some issues in the Ukraine, but that was by and large perpetrated by locals, not sanctioned by the Tsar and the Okhrana.)

To Russians, Christians were Christians (for the most part) and again I have trouble seeing them making things tough for the Armenians.

Russia's religious policy was largely pragmatic. As has been noted, protestant settlers and Buddhists didn't run into any trouble, and with Muslims it varied a lot over time and place. About Catholicism: it wasn't exactly priveleged in Poland after 1863, but the reasons for that weren't religious. They did promote the unity of all their eastern Orthodox subjects under the Synod at the expnese of the Georgians.
 
...Buddhists didn't run into any trouble

To be perfectly fair, there were attempts to keep them from building more monasteries and datsans, mostle because monasticism and a pacifistic religion were demed counter to what the Russian government really valued the Kalmycks/Buryats for - they were very good soldiers.

However, things got a lot better for them in the later 19th c.

As previously said, it varied from time to time and palce to place. Pragmatic would be exactly the right word for it.
 
The Greeks may be a bit iffy (they always saw Russia as an upstart Orthodox power, not the Byzantine successor Russia always claimed to be) but the Armenians would probably have welcomed the Russians.

After they all die in Siberia. :rolleyes:

Seriously, I would think that Armenians would've have preferred Ottoman rule to Russian rule. If you think about it, the Russification campaign probably made Russian Armenians a bit queasy. Amplify it a bit (say having the Cossacks burn down Armenian churches and/or do pogroms in Armenian areas or forced conversions) and the Armenians could settle in the Ottoman Empire in droves.
 
Exactly. Protestantism in the Baltics, Finland, and amongst the Volga Germans was left largely unmolested, and the same goes for Catholicism (though there were some issues in the Ukraine, but that was by and large perpetrated by locals, not sanctioned by the Tsar and the Okhrana.)


In Finland, that was until the Russification campaign made the Finns anti-Russia.

To Russians, Christians were Christians (for the most part) and again I have trouble seeing them making things tough for the Armenians.

Have Tsarist Russia treat the Armenians like how it treated the Jews (which is what it came close to being - it did happen with the Russian Catholics, which were severely persecuted by the Okhrana), and things would be different.
 
After they all die in Siberia. :rolleyes:

Because that happened incredibly often. In fact, there's more than one example of ALL of an ethnic minority dying in "Siberia".

Amplify it a bit (say having the Cossacks burn down Armenian churches and/or do pogroms in Armenian areas or forced conversions)

Again, becasue Cossacks totally did that to other Christians all the time because everyone really cared about Chalcedonian Christianity.

...and the Armenians could settle in the Ottoman Empire in droves.

...where nothing resembling a pogrom could ever happen, of course. Oh wait.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Because that happened incredibly often. In fact, there's more than one example of ALL of an ethnic minority dying in "Siberia".



Again, becasue Cossacks totally did that to other Christians all the time because everyone really cared about Chalcedonian Christianity.



...where nothing resembling a pogrom could ever happen, of course. Oh wait.

:D Tee-hee. Nice.
 
Thanks, RGB. Not bad for being tired after a long week of work finally done. :D

Basically, what I was trying to say was that the Russians basically used the Armenians as pawns in their own game - as such, it was only an alliance of convenience. If the Tsar decided to turn on them - which could easily happen, especially since some of the later monarchs (such as Nicholas II) were a bit batty, IMO - that could probably force the Armenians to reconsider their options.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Thanks, RGB. Not bad for being tired after a long week of work finally done. :D

Basically, what I was trying to say was that the Russians basically used the Armenians as pawns in their own game - as such, it was only an alliance of convenience. If the Tsar decided to turn on them - which could easily happen, especially since some of the later monarchs (such as Nicholas II) were a bit batty, IMO - that could probably force the Armenians to reconsider their options.

There's no doubt the Russians used the Armenians as a means to an end in their quest to dominate the Near East. However, the Russians wouldn't have just decided to persecute the Armenians all willy-nilly. They largely left Caucasian culture intact and there's no reason to think the same wouldn't happen to Armenian culture. Russification was designed for Finland and the Pale of Settlement, not Transcaucasia. And the Russians knew that pissing off the Armenians could embolden the Ottomans.

So yes, the Russians were imperialistic, expansionistic, opportunistic pragmatists, but they weren't idiots. Well, at least not when it came to this sort of thing.
 
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