Historical Armenia has been a pivotal point between the forces of the east and of the west over much of its long history. That history has seen subjugation and conquest by rival empires and peoples.
The conversion of Armenia to Christianity led to a distinctive Christianity as historian Anne E. Redgate shows, and to a distinguished architectural and artistic heritage, vernacular literature and historical tradition, which survived Arab conquest and flourished for some two hundred years in independent kingdoms. Art, historical literature, and textual analysis contribute to the author’s consideration of the realities and ideas of power in antique and early medieval Armenian elite society, which had elements in common with early medieval Western European society. The contributions of Armenians and their culture to European history are also examined.
The book closes with a survey of Armenia under foreign rule, most recently under the Ottoman Empire and as part of the Soviet Union, and also with Armenians’ recent experience and expectation of an independent, though tiny, Armenia, the most plausible for nearly a thousand years.
