Guest of the cultural association “Arménia” Onnik Jamgocyan give a lecture on “Prince-Traders Armenians of the Ottoman Empire” Friday, February 5 at 20:30 at the Library Gateway Bourg-Les-Valence (Drôme). It also sign copies of his two books “The Bankers sultas” and “The Time of the reforms. The Ottoman Armenia “published in editions of the Bosphorus.

Krikor Amirzayan / Armenian News Magazine: Mr. Onnik Jamgocyan, we know that the Armenians were very large traders and even big bankers. No one had yet taken the measure of the importance of this phenomenon in the Ottoman Empire before your work. How do you explain that this story has remained so long “ignored”, although in the minds of many of us? .

Onnik Jamgocyan: This story was known to our elders. Many authors have spoken or written about the importance of our ancestors in the great trading and the high bank. H. Mrmrian, Patriarch Ormanian, T. Azadian, H. Dj. Sirouni saved from perdition snippets of this story and handed on to future generations. This topic was forgotten from the 1970s contemporanéistes Armenian historians or researchers chose to focus on the study of the Genocide of 1915. In Turkey, Turkish historians of the Ankara School, wish to nationalists did their side everything possible to bring down this phenomenon into oblivion.

Armenian News Magazine: How did you come to study this important issue for the economic, financial and banking of our people?

Onnik Jamgocyan: The late Hagop Barsoumian has taken the first that torch. Unfortunately it disappeared in Lebanon events, kidnapped and probably murdered. Fernand Braudel, the master par excellence of economic and trade modern history, understood the omnipresence of Armenians in the Mediterranean. At the end of my studies in History at the University of Paris I Panthéon – Sorbonne, Braudel asked me to dedicate myself to this. Research companies were now under the leadership of Jean-Claude Perrot, Professor at the Sorbonne and Director of the Institute of Social and Economic History. The great French historian gave me space to my work and guided me to the defense of my doctoral thesis in 1988. This was described by Raymond Barre as “a major contribution to the economic and financial history “.

Armenian News Magazine: The reader finds your books a more considerable research. Can you tell us how such a search?

Onnik Jamgocyan: These searches were to begin the Archives of the Presidency of the Council of Istanbul where I went with a recommendation letter from Professor Perrot, my Director of Research. I was welcomed by the Archives staff, but the agreement of the authorities of the country was slow in coming. This was the policy of silence, neither agree nor refusal. I returned to Paris a little desperate. My master then advised me to go around Europe Archive knowing Ambassadors and Consuls of foreign powers near the Sublime Porte were reporting to their governments. We also found there the letters of merchants, trials before commercial courts, the wills of notaries. Over five years I was able to strip more than 4,000 boxes of the Archives Riksarkivet (Stockholm), the Public Record Office (London), the Archivio di Stato (Venice), the Archivio di Stato (Trieste), the National Archives and Archives of the Quai d’Orsay (Paris). Ardaches Kardashian and Raymond Kevorkian also made me the best welcome in their time Nubar Library in Paris.

Armenian News Magazine: What is the outcome of this research?

Onnik Jamgocyan: This research show that the Armenians controlled the largest international trading and mastered the high finance mechanism on all European markets. The rate of profit on capital amazes historians. These Amiras maintained the imperial Ottoman Institutions two centuries without resorting to foreign debt. They were the great patrons of our nation, the custodians of our culture and traditions of the years 1650-1850, the date of their disappearance.

Interview by Krikor Amirzayan