Becoming Armenian Again

This book examines the reconstruction of Armenian collective identity among refugee communities in Lebanon during the 1920s and 1930s, following the Armenian Genocide and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It argues that transnational Armenian elites sought to forge a new national culture by standardising language, music, church architecture, historical memory and other forms of cultural expression. Drawing on subaltern studies and theories of nationalism, Vahé Tachjian explores the tensions between elite nation-building projects and the heterogeneous social and cultural worlds of the refugees, whose Ottoman Armenian heritage was often perceived as incompatible with national unity. Based on an extensive range of sources – including newspapers, memoirs, archival documents, photographs, films and oral testimonies – the book examines how cultural uniformity was promoted while alternative identities, practices and memories were marginalised. In doing so, it restores visibility to subaltern experiences largely absent from existing historiography and offers a new perspective on nation-building, cultural transformation and the Armenian diaspora.