The Armenian diaspora: how a small community made big Asian connections

When one hears about diasporas, it is usually the Jewish, Chinese and Indian diasporas that come to mind.  However, a much smaller community - the Armenian diaspora - has had a disproportionate impact on the rest of Asia. In a column for the Thai newspaper The Nation, Andrew Sheng, author of From Asian to Global Financial Crisis, provides a few fascinating factoids:

• Armenians are one of the largest diasporas in the world in relative terms, with 11 million Armenians compared with 3 million in Armenia
• There are Armenian Streets in Singapore, Penang, New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai (formerly Madras) and Dhaka. An odd fact of history is that three Armenian churches have been built on No.2, Armenian Street in Calcutta, Dhaka and Madras

I reproduce a longer extract here:

Armenians in the Far East came via India, mostly as merchants, the most famous being Thomas Cana, arriving in Kerala in 780 AD. The earliest reference to an Armenian in the Far East is the gravestone of Jacob Shameer in Malacca, born in New Julfa, Isfahan, Persia who died on January 3, 1746. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Armenians were already important traders of Indian goods for the Russian and Italian markets. Based from their foothold of Surat in India, they began the China trade, noting in 1783 that they lost lots of money in a ship from China because of the Anglo-French war. In 1797 there is a letter describing Armenians trading from Madras to Penang, but sailing to Malacca, where they were attacked by three French frigates and lost all their possessions. But they lived to trade another day.

There is no doubt that Armenian entrepreneurs played an important mercantile role in British colonial history in the Far East. Singapore was founded by Sir Thomas Raffles in 1819. By 1835, the small Armenian community in Singapore had grown prosperous enough to build the Armenian Church of Saint Gregory, the second Christian church in Singapore. Anyone who travelled in the Far East may have stayed in the chain of hotels that the Armenian Sarkies brothers (Martin, Arshak, Aviet and Tigran) founded in key commercial cities - the Eastern and Oriental in Penang (1885), the Strand in Rangoon (1896), the Raffles in Singapore (1899) and the Majapahit in Surabaya (1910). At one time, the Sarkies family also owned the Adelphi in Singapore.

In addition to the church and Raffles, the Armenian contribution to Singapore included the founding of the Straits Times by Catchick Moses in 1845 and the orchid Vanda Miss Joaquim, named after Agnes Joaquim, which is today the national flower of Singapore.

Sheng tries to make a broader point from this account of a remarkable community:

Globalisation is not about quantity, but the quality of interconnection. Small communities of traders made possible the trading of goods and services around the world, even in the days when communication was difficult. Indeed, their foresight and ability to see opportunities and to create partnerships in new fields is their hallmark of success. These communities thrived on knowledge, research and innovation.

The footprints of Armenian traders and investors, past and present, suggest that talented people from small countries have a lot to offer the rest of the world. It is no wonder that cities that welcomed and allowed these communities to flourish became themselves the centres of trade and commerce in Asia, especially Hong Kong and Singapore.

Source article:

• Big Asian connections that started small (The Nation)