ABSTRACT
The history of the Armenian People is the history of an ongoing straggle for self-preservation, survival, and the maintenance of a coherent Armenian identity and culture. Greek and Persian sources from the sixth century B.C. contain clear evidence of sizable Armenian settlement in the plateau of Armenia. The Armenians, like the Jews and the Greeks, comprised an ethnic-religious minority within the Ottoman Empire. Each of the three major non-Islamic minorities—the Armenians, the Jews, and the Greeks—enjoyed a measure of administrative autonomy in its internal affairs: culture, religion, education, internal adjudication. The majority of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire lived as farmers, mostly in the six eastern districts of the empire in the Armenian plateau: Erzuram, Sivas, Bitlis, Harput, Van, and Diyarbakir, which were also known as the "six Armenian provinces." The nineteenth century witnessed a national awakening among the Armenian population. The evacuation and expulsion of the Armenian population was an important part in the process of genocide.
