Russia's Entangled Embrace traces the relationship between the Romanov state and the Armenian diaspora that populated Russia's territorial fringes and navigated the tsarist empire's metropolitan centers. By engaging the ongoing debates about imperial structures that were simultaneously symbiotic and hierarchically ordered, Stephen Badalyan Riegg helps us to understand how, for Armenians and some other subjects, imperial rule represented not hypothetical, clear-cut alternatives but simultaneous, messy realities. He examines why, and how, Russian architects of empire imagined Armenians as being politically desirable. These circumstances included the familiarity of their faith, perceived degree of social, political, or cultural integration, and their actual or potential contributions to the state's varied priorities. Based on extensive research in the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yerevan, Russia's Entangled Embrace reveals that the Russian government relied on Armenians to build its empire in the Caucasus and beyond. Analyzing the complexities of this imperial relationship—beyond the reductive question of whether Russia was a friend or foe to Armenians—allows us to study the methods of tsarist imperialism in the context of diasporic distribution, interimperial conflict and alliance, nationalism, and religious and economic identity.

This book is about the Pontus as seen and described by Western travellers of the 19th century. The information offered by these travellers was examined in the process of determining on the map the route of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, as narrated by Xenophon in his Anabasis. The problems associated with this determination are addressed in a book written in parallel with the present one (Iordanis Paradeisopoulos (2023), Xenophon’s Riddle. Also in Greek, Ιορδάνης Παραδεισόπουλος (2023), Ο γρίφος του Ξενοφώντος). Chapters from nine books are presented here. The books, written in English, are in chronological order those of Kinneir (1918), Porter (1822), Smith (1834), Hamilton (1842), Southgate (1850), Layard (1853), Curzon (1853), Tozer (1881), and Lynch (1901). Two articles are also presented, writthen by Brant (1836), and Briot (1870), and published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Additionally, excerpts are provided from the Greek text of historians narrating the sack of Trebizond by the Goths in 258 AD (Zosimus), and the conquest of Trebizond by the Ottomans in 1461 (Sphrantzes, Critobulus, Chalkokondyles, Ducas, Pseudo-Sphrantzes, Amiroutzes, Ecthesis Chronica). These excerpts are provided both in the original and in our English translation.