Page 174 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol Two

diasporas 523

So many are the Genoese, scattered worldwide, that they build
other Genoas wherever they reside. • M. Bozzi (c. 1320)

anti-Semitism led to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in Mediterranean, and subsequently most lived as minorities
1492.Within the Muslim world, where Jews lived as con- under the rule of Muslims.Armenians resisted conversion
strained minorities in self-governing enclaves, trade may and, as traders, traveled far afield.
have motivated more Jewish mobility; certainly trade was A revolutionary movement in pursuit of an indepen-
one motivation for those Jewish merchants who first ven- dent Armenian state led to the murder of thousands of
tured into the Atlantic world and the Americas. Armenians in the Ottoman empire and the deportation
By the early nineteenth century, Jewish migrants resem- of some 1.75 million Armenians in 1915. Perhaps half
bled other central and western Europeans in traveling to the Armenian population either starved or were killed
the Americas in search of work, commercial advantage, during the course of the deportation. Of those who sur-
or educational opportunity. Even later in the century, Jew- vived, many sought refuge in the Americas and Europe.
ish migrants to the United States were almost as likely to Today about 2 million Armenians live in Europe, western
leave those countries that had begun to open opportu- Asia, and the Americas; roughly another 2 million live in
nities for full citizenship to them as they were to leave the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union,
places such as the Russian empire, where the threat of and approximately 3 million live in an independent
violent peasant attacks (pogroms) and levels of discrim- Armenian republic in their regional homeland.
inatory practices in military service, schooling, and If many Armenians stayed relatively close to their
landownership remained very high. ancestral home, even when dispersed forcibly, an African
Over the centuries, Jewish communities reached long- diaspora formed far from the African continent—but
term and relatively peaceful accommodations with the only in the Americas. At least since the time of the
Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Muslim majority Roman Empire, slave trading had scattered Africans
populations in the lands where they settled. Thus when across the Sahara and the Mediterranean and into the
opportunities to return to their homeland opened with Muslim world of western Asia. After 1500, the numbers
the creation of Israel in 1947, most Jewish North Amer- of slaves sent across the Atlantic to serve as laborers on
icans did not choose to relocate.The vast majority of Jews plantations came to outnumber those sent elsewhere
worldwide still live in the Diaspora. Nevertheless, mem- along older OldWorld slave routes.The culture and iden-
ories of persecution and the possible necessity of renewed tities of Africans in the NewWorld were a product of the
flight have been elements of Jewish life for millennia, ele- complex intermingling of the customs of many African
ments that were reinforced by the horrific genocide— ethnic groups and of animist African, Muslim, and Chris-
now termed the Holocaust—that occurred in Europe dur- tian religious beliefs. Separate African languages disap-
ing World War II. peared but contributed to the creation of hybrid pidgin
dialects that blended African, English, Spanish, and Por-
The Armenian and tuguese elements.
African Diasporas As African slaves in the Americas gradually acquired
Like those of the Jewish faith,Armenians trace their exile their freedom between 1830 and 1889, small numbers
to an early date. Armenians regard their homeland as did return to Africa, notably to Liberia. But the much
Mount Ararat, a mountain in the east of present-day larger group remained in the New World, where they
Turkey, near the border with Iran.There, according to the identified with biblical stories of Jewish captivity, exile,
Bible, Noah’s Ark landed and repopulated the earth and longing for home. Many regarded Africa—and espe-
with people and animals. Armenians, whose Christian cially the independent nation of Ethiopia (the only African
beliefs differed from those of their Orthodox rulers and area not colonized by Europeans in the nineteenth cen-
neighbors, were first deported in large numbers in 578 to tury)—as the symbol of a lost homeland.
Macedonia, Cyprus, and other locations in the eastern In the early twentieth century, the development of