258) The Armenian Community in Holland Through the Ages

 

René Bekius

 

About 6,000-9,000 Armenians now live in Holland. The exact number is unknown, since the Dutch Immigration Office only offers data on country of origin. Ethnic subcategories are not taken into account. Apart from the contemporary Armenian community spread out over Holland, there was an independent Armenian community concentrated in Amsterdam during the 17th and 18th centuries can be distinguished..
Current Armenian community

 

Armenians arrived in Holland between 1950-2000 in various migration waves. The main causes for migration were: decolonisation, civil wars, political and economical upheavals, and religious repression.

 

Armenians arrived from Indonesia (former Dutch Indies) (1950s), Turkey (1970s), Lebanon (1970s), Iran (1980s), Iraq (early 1990s), Russia and Armenia (1990s). The current biggest group of Armenians arrived from Shirnak and Dyabakir in Turkey in the 1970s as guest workers in chain migration, finding employment in textile plants in Almelo and Hengelo. Currently most Armenians live in the major urban centres in the western part of Holland: Amsterdam, Dordrecht, The Hague, Leiden and Rotterdam. Armenian church services are held in Amsterdam and Almelo.
Amsterdam Armenian community in the 17th and 18th centuries

 

Armenian merchants arrived in the Republic of the Seven United Dutch Provinces in three immigration waves during the 17th and 18th centuries. The first wave arrived from Julfa, a suburb of Isfahan, in Iran and were called ’Jolfalijnen’ or Persians by the Dutch. The second group came from the main Turkish seaports Aleppo, Constantinopel and Smyrna and the third from Archangel, Moscow and St. Petersburg. The main incentive to migrate was the rise of the Dutch Republic, and Amsterdam in particular, as a centre of global economic activity in the 17th century. The Republic was economically less protectionist than surrounding countries like England and France, and Amsterdam’s merchant elite tried to attract foreigner merchants to bolster the city’s leading position. A series of trade pacts concluded with Turkey and Iran in the 17th and 18th centuries permitted the Dutch to settle in Turkey or Iran, while Turkish and Iranian Armenians were allowed to start a business in the Republic.
Demography

 

The Armenian community in Amsterdam was small. Approximately 800 Armenian names appear in the notarial acts of the city’s municipal archives for the period from 1600 to 1800. The community reached its demographic zenith in 1668 when 66 Armenian family names can be counted. By 1687, however, there were only 26 Armenians are left. A new peak of 71 was reached in 1715, and between 1731 and 1750, numbers fluctuate between 26 and 45. In 1810, the community had as good as died out, with only five Armenians are left in Amsterdam.

 

The settlement pattern of Armenians in Amsterdam shows a low level of integration in Amsterdam society. 71 of the 110 Armenians whose addresses are known settled in quarters 10, 11 and 12 in the heart of the city, a relatively small area situated eastwards from the Nieuwmarkt (New Market). This area remained the centre of the community, even after Armenians started to settle in other parts of the city after 1750. Their initial social isolation was not the result of a deliberate policy by the Amsterdam authorities, but a matter of choice. The Armenians, who specialised in importing raw silk bales, wanted to be close to the silk dying plants. In 1591 the city council had decided to locate the plants in this area, outside the city gates. So the Armenians rented cellars and attics in warehouses, weighed the bales in the nearby Weighing House on the Nieuwmarkt and worshipped at the Armenian Church, on the nearby Kromboomssloot.
Trade

 

Although most Armenians, particular those coming from Iran, initially specialised in trading raw silk, they spread their economic risks by importing a variety of products from Turkey and Iran, including precious stones, Turkish yarn, camel and goat hair, raisins, figs, rice and coffee beans. They also imported whale teeth from Archangel, amber from Danzig and mirrors from Venice and exported Dutch products ranging from Leiden cloth, linen and moquette to furniture and tiles, to Turkey and Iran. Tiles exported from Holland were reused in the church of Santa Maria in Cadiz.

 

Since the Amsterdam guild records have been lost, it is difficult to assess how many Armenians were members of the local guilds. In 1755, an Armenian by the name of Martin Gregory passed his pharmacist exam, while another, Jacobus d’Avetik, belonged to the broker’s guild. Perhaps this is no coincidence, since both of these guilds were open to Jews and other foreigners.

 

Dutch paintings, engravings and poetry show that Armenian merchants had their own niche in the economic life of Amsterdam. The earliest source on which Armenians are depicted is an allegoric engraving by Pieter Bast, dating from 1611, called Panorama of Amsterdam. They are depicted as Persians, trading in silk and precious stones. Armenians silk merchants had their own fixed trading spot in the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, in the inner courtyard between 12 and 13, next to the Turkish merchants. They also made active use of the services of the Amsterdam Exchange Bank. On the stock exchange, Armenians dealt in debentures, shares, bonds and bills of exchange. They never succeeded, however, in acquiring prominent positions in the sectors in which they traded. Even in the silk trade, they were unable to challenge the Jews and Huguenots, who already dominated the branch before they arrived.
Social status

 

Armenian merchants in Amsterdam were middle class and cannot be placed on the same level as the local merchant elite or the wealthy Portuguese Jewish merchants. Few Armenian merchants are registered in the tax register of 1742 as capitalists. Those who were successful showed off their social status with sumptuous summerhouses in the country or town houses along the main canals in Amsterdam. In the second half of the 18th century, Alexander di Masse possessed a country house ‘Welgelegen’ (well situated) with a double pleasure garden. Johannes de Jacob Galdar owned a country house and town house on the Fluweelenburgwal, a fashionable quarter of Amsterdam.
Mariage and burials

 

Data on the frequency of marriages between Armenians merchants and brides indicate a gradual but not full integration into Dutch society. Rich Armenians imitated the Amsterdam elite, by ordering gold- and- silver birth and marriage medallions bearing Armenian inscriptions to mark births and marriages. In contrast to the Jews, who had their own graveyards outside Amsterdam, Armenians were mainly buried in prestigious Protestant churches or in the adjacent graveyards. At least 50 Armenians are buried in the Oude Kerk, indicating quite a high level of integration in Amsterdam society.
Armenian church

 

The trade pacts concluded between Holland and Iran and Turkey permitted the citizens of the signatory countries to practise their own religion in the other countries. Before 1578 Amsterdam was a mainly catholic city, but in that year Dutch Protestants came to power and banned Catholics from practising their religion in public. They were forced to hold services in ‘hiding churches’, which were not visible from the street. Only minority religions were tolerated by the Amsterdam Burgomasters with proviso that, like the Catholics, they they kept a low profile. Gradually, however, religious minorities obtained permission from the city authorities to erect official churches and synagogues. The first Armenian priest was invited to Amsterdam to hold religious services in private homes in 1665. A notarial inventory dating from 1703 refers to an Armenian hiding church in the Koningsdwarsstraat.

 

On 30 January 1714 the authorities issues a permit for Armenians to erect an official church building, visible from the street. In May 1714, 40 Armenian merchants financed the conversion of two warehouses into an Armenian Church on the Kromboomsloot in the centre of Amsterdam. In 1749 the outside entrance was embellished with a monumental gable stone with a lamb and an Armenian text, privately financed by the Armenian priest Johannes di Minas. Most probably, Armenian priests first lived at the upper floor of the church but di Minas moved to a private house at 27 Koningsstraat. The gable stone clearly indicates the profession of the resident.

 

Armenian Church: Social and Cultural Broker

 

Armenian priests supported newcomers in search of rooms and storage space. They also acted as solicitors when Armenian merchants set out on missions abroad and as witnesses in trade transactions, or in cases of bankruptcy. Most Armenians felt obliged to do something in return and would leave part of their money to the Church or allow priests to sell their house or make use of its usufruct. In certain periods, priests played an important role as exporters of Armenian culture.

 

Amsterdam was the leading book export centre in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.The small Armenian printing house in Amsterdam, intermittently active between 1660 and 1718, was no serious threat to the main Amsterdam printing firms. Most Armenian books, bibles and other religious works, printed in Amsterdam were exported to Turkey and Iran. In 1666, the priest-printer Oskan took the initiative of printing an Armenian Bible, illustrated with engravings of the Dutch artist Christoffel van Sichem. Exporting books was often a risky business. In 1694 6,000 of some 8000 book exported from Amsterdam to Smyrna were lost in an earthquake. Armenians books were partly financed by priests or privately by Armenian merchants. In 1699 Martin Gregory placed an order to print and bind 250 Persian music books. Specimens from the Amsterdam Armenian printing firm can be consulted in the library collections of the universities of Amsterdam and Leiden.
Decline of the Armenian Community

 

It is difficult to say exactly when the Armenian community in Amsterdam cam to an end. The last year when the Armenian Church had a priest was in 1806. The last member of the church, Stephan di Gabriel (born in Smyrna in 1760), died in Amsterdam in 1835. Several curators were in charge of the legacy of the Armenian Church. On 9 March 1874, the church was sold for 10,100 guilders in a public auction and in 1890, it was transformed into a Roman Catholic primary school.

 

As municipal records show, the Armenian community in Amsterdam show declined gradually rather than coming to an abrupt end. Economic recessions in 1720, 1763 and 1772/1773 certainly played a role forcing Armenians to look for better economic prospects in neighbouring European countries. Fewer Iranian Armenians came to the Republic after the fall of the Safavid led to a decline in trade with Iran in the first quarter of the 18th century. The Turkish Armenian community died out for different reasons. In the Levant Armenians and the Dutch were fierce competitors and the Dutch States-General took a series of protective measures. Armenians merchants using Dutch ships to transport their goods to Holland were obliged to pay higher consulate fees to the Republic than the Dutch merchants in the Levant. Many evaded these taxes by diverting their goods via Moscow, which did not fall under this regulation. However, in 1703, the same fees were applied to this route, too, and in 1769, the States-General forbade Dutch subjects in the Levant from starting commercial partnerships with Armenians. As the costs of trading with Holland became too high, the influx of new Armenians from the Levant declined.

 

Gradually the remaining Armenian community of Amsterdam died out as a result of social integration and mixed marriages. Armenian family names became completely ‘Dutchified’ and were no longer recognisable: e.g. Sirkus Boghus became Joris Paulusz, and Eghehia di Petros was transformed into Elias Pietersz. In 1989 the Amsterdam Armenian community bought back the original building in which the old Armenian Church has been housed and, after restoration, the Armenian Church was officially consecrated by the Armenian archbishop of Paris.

 

Source: Hye Tert, 2.4.2001.

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