ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the rise of the Ottoman or Western Armenian problem and the failure of the established Armenian community in Istanbul working within the millet system to bring about social and economic reforms. Nationalism has been generally regarded as one of the central concepts in the understanding of nineteenth-century Armenian political thought. Taking root in the 1850s, it came to embody the concerns and goals of many segments of the Armenian people. By the middle of the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire was brought within the sphere of the European-dominated world market system. The new middle class groups had little involvement with tax farming, the economic basis of the sarrafs. This new middle class began a process of secularization and democratization of Armenian institutions, which performed the classical function of liberalization. Yet this middle class lacked the social legitimacy and integration within dominant institutions that the amiras had enjoyed.
