Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / Armenia's First Constitution: A Lost Experiment in Democracy
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about Armenian kingdoms and empires — the Bagratids, the Artaxiads, the Cilician state. But what about the idea of Armenia as a republic? A constitutional democracy, before any such thing existed in the region? Luna: I didn't know Armenia had a constitutional tradition that early. Lucas: It didn't — not in practice. But in 1773, a wealthy Armenian merchant in India, named Shahamir Shahamirian, published what is arguably the first Armenian constitution. It's called 'Snare of Glory', or 'Girk Anvogh Prats' in Armenian. He wrote it in Madras, of all places, as a blueprint for a future independent Armenian state. Luna: Madras? What was he doing there? Lucas: Shahamirian was part of the New Julfa merchant network — Armenians who had been resettled by Shah Abbas I in the 17th century. Some of those families eventually expanded their trade routes all the way to India. By the 1770s, Madras had a thriving Armenian community, and Shahamirian was one of its richest members. He was also deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideas — he'd read Rousseau, Montesquieu, the American revolutionaries. Lucas: His constitution is extraordinary for its time. It envisioned a democratic republic with a parliament, an independent judiciary, a bill of rights — including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to trial. It even proposed that the Catholicos, the head of the Armenian Church, should be elected by popular vote and serve a limited term. No other document in the Ottoman or Persian empires came close to that kind of radicalism. Luna: Wait — a Catholicos with term limits? That would have been revolutionary. Lucas: Absolutely. And Shahamirian didn't just write a theoretical treatise. He actually sent copies to Armenian communities across the world — to Venice, to Tiflis, to Nakhijevan. He funded a printing press in Madras and published several books promoting his ideas. He even tried to recruit volunteers for a military expedition to liberate Armenia from Persian rule. Lucas: But here's the thing — his project never got off the ground. The Persian Empire was still too strong, the Armenian nobility was fragmented, and the Ottoman and Russian empires had their own agendas. Yet the constitution itself survived. It was rediscovered in the 19th century by Armenian nationalists, and some of its ideas influenced the drafters of the First Republic's secret constitution in 1918. Luna: So it's kind of a ghost constitution — never implemented, but still shaping later thinking? Lucas: Exactly. And it raises a fascinating question: what if Shahamirian's dream had succeeded? Could a small, landlocked nation in the Caucasus, surrounded by empires, have sustained a democratic republic in the 18th century? It seems almost impossible, but the fact that someone imagined it — and wrote it down in such detail — tells us a lot about the resilience of Armenian political thought. Luna: I love that we're talking about ideas as well as battles and kingdoms. Lucas: Me too. And it's worth noting that Shahamirian was not alone. There were other Armenian Enlightenment figures in the diaspora — like the Mkhitarist monks in Venice, who published books on science, philosophy, and history. They were all part of a broader movement to revive Armenian culture and imagine a future beyond imperial domination. Lucas: The Mkhitarists even drafted their own constitutional proposals in the early 1800s, though they were more conservative — they still wanted a monarchy, just with checks on royal power. But Shahamirian's version was the most radical: a fully democratic republic with universal male suffrage and a separation of church and state. Luna: Did he have any contact with the American or French revolutionaries? Lucas: There's no direct evidence, but it's likely he knew about them. Madras was a British colony, so news from America and France would have reached him. And his writings reference 'the rights of man' in ways that echo the French Declaration. But his real inspiration seems to have been the Armenian tradition of self-governance in the medieval nakharar system — the old feudal nobility had councils and assemblies, and he wanted to modernize that into a parliamentary democracy. Lucas: Now, the 'Snare of Glory' is more than a political document. It's also a moral and religious text — Shahamirian was a deeply devout Armenian Christian, and he believed that liberty and faith were intertwined. He wrote that a republic could only thrive if its citizens were virtuous, and that virtue came from religious education. So his constitution includes provisions for free public schools, and for a national church that would teach civic duty alongside the Gospel. Luna: It sounds like he was trying to square republicanism with Christianity. Lucas: Exactly. And that was a tension that many Enlightenment thinkers struggled with — how to create a secular state without abandoning religious morality. Shahamirian's answer was to make the church part of the state, but under democratic control. It's a fascinating blend of old and new. Luna: So what happened to his movement? Did it just fizzle out? Lucas: Pretty much. Shahamirian died in 1798, and without his wealth and energy, the Madras group disbanded. The printing press stopped, the volunteers never sailed, and the constitution was shelved. But copies survived in libraries in Venice, in Tiflis, and eventually in Yerevan. In the 1860s, Armenian intellectuals rediscovered it, and it became a symbol for the emerging nationalist movement. Lucas: And today, the original printed copy is in the Matenadaran in Yerevan — a reminder that even when you can't build a country, you can still build its blueprint. Luna: That's a powerful thought. And I guess it connects to why we do this show — we're not just recounting what happened, but what people dreamed of. Lucas: Exactly. And you know, we're able to have these conversations without ads because of listeners who support us directly. If you value that ad-free space, and you want to help us keep exploring these forgotten corners of history, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, ever — just a way to keep the show independent. Luna: Yeah, it really lets us follow the threads that interest us, without worrying about sponsorship constraints. Lucas: Alright, back to the story. So Shahamirian's constitution is one thing, but there's another text from the same period that's even more mysterious: the 'Code of Laws' attributed to the 12th-century king Levon I of Cilician Armenia. That one actually was used, though not as a constitution — more as a legal code for the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. Luna: Wait — are you saying there's an earlier legal tradition in Cilicia? Lucas: Yes, and it's fascinating. When the Cilician kingdom was established, it needed a legal framework that mixed Armenian customary law, Byzantine law, and the feudal codes of the Crusader states. Levon I commissioned a compilation known as the 'Assizes of Antioch' — but adapted for Armenian use. It covered everything from property rights to criminal procedure, and it was written in both Armenian and French. Luna: So it's like a medieval legal hybrid. Lucas: Exactly. And that code survived in Armenian monasteries for centuries. Some of its principles — like trial by jury — were remarkably advanced for the time. And when Shahamirian was writing his constitution, he may have drawn on that tradition, though he modernized it completely. Luna: It's amazing how much legal thought Armenians produced, even without a state. Lucas: Right. And that brings us back to the question of what makes a nation. Is it territory? An army? Or is it a shared idea of justice, written down and passed from generation to generation? Shahamirian's constitution, even though it never took effect, is part of that inheritance. It's a reminder that Armenia's story isn't just about survival — it's about imagination. Luna: I'll never look at a piece of paper the same way again.