Between Stockholm, New Julfa, and Lviv: Prof. Troebst on Forgotten Networks of Armenian History
Prof. Dr. Stefan Troebst is one of Europe’s most distinguished historians in the field of East and Southeast European studies. Through his long-standing work at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig and at Leipzig University, he has significantly shaped scholarly engagement with the region’s complexities, entanglements, and lines of conflict. His research spans early modern economic history and the role of Armenian trade networks, imperial interconnections in Eastern Europe, and contemporary political developments.
Prof. Troebst has made a particularly notable contribution through the initiation and direction of the multidisciplinary series “Armenians in Eastern Europe,” which today stands as a central platform for Armenia-related scholarship within the European academic landscape. He has also supervised numerous young scholars from Armenia and the Armenian diaspora, thereby strengthening and sustaining international academic exchange.
You are a distinguished historian specializing in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. What first sparked your interest in Armenia, and how has this engagement shaped or complemented your broader research on the region’s history and cultural interactions?
In the years from 1988 to 1990 I did research in archives in Sweden (Uppsala and Stockholm), the Soviet Union (Leningrad), the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark for my habilitation thesis on early modern economic history. In particular, I was interested in trade relations between Muscovy and Western Europe with a special focus on Sweden as a transit region. In this context I realized that the Swedish crown used periods of relaxed relations with Moscow to push for transit permits for Armenian trading houses in New Julpha, a suburb of Isfahan, then the capital of Safavid Iran, via Muscovy to Sweden’s Baltic provinces and further on to Amsterdam. First contacts between Stockholm and New Julpha had been established in the framework of the “Holstinian Project” of the years 1633-1641 and the main protagonist of this project, the German Philipp Crusius, entered the Swedish state service and became for many years the main advisor to the crown for all questions of the Russian trade as well as the transit trade from Iran. Accordingly, my habilitation thesis contains a number of subchapters of Swedish-Iranian diplomatic and trade relations with a focus on the Armenian merchant firms of New Julpha from the 1620s to the 1650s.
In 1991 and 1992 I went back to the Royal archives in Stockholm to look into the sources on relations with Iran also during the second half of the 17th century and was surprised to find out that the long-standing Swedish efforts to establish a direct transit trade from New Julpha via the Caspian Sea, Astrakhan, Moscow and Novgorod to the Swedish port of Narva on the Gulf of Finland were successful: In 1687, the Shah signed a treaty with the King of Sweden to which the Tsar agreed. Thus, from 1690 on up to the outbreak of the Great Northern War between Charles XII of Sweden and Peter I of Muscovy in 1700 an estimated share of 10 per cent of Iran’s export of raw silk and silk products to Western Europe ran through Narva. Here, the Swedish crown granted to Armenian merchants next to far-reaching privileges a trading house of their own, the “Persian House” (Persianisches Haus).
After publications of my findings I was contacted by several experts on the main export routes for Iranian silk to Europe operated by the Armenians of New Julpha – by caravans via Anatolia to Smyrna, on the Caspian Sea and river Volga through Muscovy to the port of Archangel on the White Sea and by ship around the Cape of Africa – who were surprised that the Swedish route had been so far gone unnoticed in international research.
At the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), you played a key role in launching and leading the multidisciplinary research initiative, particularly the book series “Armenians in Eastern Europe” since 2008 focusing on the presence and impact of the Armenians Eastern Europe. Could you tell us what inspired you to establish this project, and what vision you had for integrating Armenian case into the broader framework of East European scholarship?
I was wondering why in publications on the multi-ethnic history of East-Central Europe the presence of Jews and Roma was highlighted, not however the one of Armenians. And this despite the fact that in historical regions like Galicia, Transylvania and others this presence was highly visible. Even the multitalent of the 18th century Johann Gottfried Herder in his knowledgeable Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind, published between 1784 and 1791, ignored “the Armenians whom I consider in our part of the world just as travellers”. Another question which interested me was the perception of East-Central Europe, i.e., the lands inbetween the German and Russian imperial realms, as a historical meso-region not only in Western Europe but also through Armenian eyes. A first result is the edition of Minas Bzskeanc’ travelogue on the Armenians in East-Central Europe of 1830 by Bálint Kovács and Grigor Grigoryan, published in 2019. Also published – in 2024 – is Markus Denzel’s edition of the merchant handbook of Łukas Vanandec’i, printed in Amsterdam in 1699, and in the pipeline are Hovhannes Dschughayec’i’s merchant diary of 1693 as well as Levon Babayan’s book on the Armenians in Moldavia and the Bukovina of 1911.
The “Armenians in Eastern Europe” series has become a cornerstone for Armenian studies within a European academic context. Could you highlight some of the most significant volumes or research outcomes from this project and explain how they have contributed to deepening understanding of Armenia’s historical and cultural connections with Eastern Europe?
Next to the volumes mentioned above the weighty tome Armenier im östlichen Europa. Eine Anthologie of 2018 could be mentioned as an attempt to make previous research in “exotic” languages like Armenian, Hungarian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Polish available to German and international readers and combine it with recent research results in English and German. A special segment of Armenian culture in East-Central Europe, namely art – painting, book art and architecture – is the topic of the very first volume in the series, Die Kunst der Armenier im östlichen Europa, edited by Marina Dmitrieva and Bálint Kovács and published in 2014. But the focus of the series is not exclusively on history as the volume Armenians in Post-Socialist Europe of 2016 demonstrates.
Over the years, you have mentored and supervised a number of Armenian PhD candidates at the Graduate School Global and Area Studies (GSGAS) of Leipzig University. Could you share some insights into their research topics and how their work has enriched both the field of Armenian studies and the broader dialogue between Armenian and European historians?
Despite the fact that I myself am a historian, most Armenian PhD students wrote theses on topics related to social sciences as, for instance, Anahit Babayan on Armenia on the Horizon of Europe. Successes and Shortcomings of Democratization Efforts by European Organizations in a Post-Soviet State, published in 2015, or Liana Geghamyan on Exercising Human Rights in Armenia. Interactions between governmental and non-state actors, published in 2020. Only Tamara Ganjalyan’s thesis had a truly historical focus: Diaspora und Imperium. Armenier im vorrevolutionären Russland (17. bis 19. Jahrhundert), published in 2016.
During your working period at the University of Leipzig, you organized study trips with the Graduate School to the "conflict regions" of Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, including study visits to Georgia, Armenia, and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Could you please share details on the goals and conclusions of these visits?
The idea of these study trips in the years 2016 to 2019, financed by the German Academic Exchange Service, was to demonstrate that on the fringes of Europe - from Estonia via Ukraine to Armenia - due to Russian threat the danger of warfare is imminent and accordingly fear of war widespread. We visited among else the the predominantly Russophone Estonian town of Narva located directly on the border to the Russian Federation, the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine from Charkiv via Bachmut and Mariupol to Odessa including visits to the Ukrainian military on the contact line to the pro-Moscow separatists of Donbass as well as Stepanakert in Karabakh. While the defense authorities here gave us a tour of a tank regiment some kilometers north of the capital, the commander of the 102nd Russian Military Base in Gymri denied access to our group, yet agreed to a conversation in front of the base's gates. In Georgia, we had the opportunity to approach the barbed wire fence towards Russian-occupied Southern Ossetia and talk across the fence to a Georgian citizen trapped there. Accordingly the wars of aggression by Azerbajan against Artsakh in 2020 and 2023 and by Russia against Ukraine since 2022 did not come as complete surprises to the members of our study group consisting of PhD students from Germany, Czech Republic, Columbia, PR China, Israel, Poland, Ukraine and Armenia.
Given your long involvement in integrating Armenian-related research into broader East European historical scholarship, how would you assess the progress and current state of this field? What challenges and opportunities do you see for strengthening Armenian–European academic collaboration in the future?
There has been considerable progress in research on the historical East-Galician capital Lemberg/Lwów/L’viv/Lemberik resp. Lvov in Armenian by Ukrainian as well as Polish historians on the city’s Armenian dimension (both who however engage in futile discussion on whether to call the urban Armenians either “Ukrainian Armenians” or “Polish Armenians”), and the same goes for Armenopolis/Hayakaghak (Gherla) and Elisabethopolis (Dumbrăveni, formerly Ibașfalău) in today Romanian Transylvania. But also contemporary Armenian diasporic groups in East-Central Europe are in the focus of research, e.g. by sociologists like Hakob Matevosyan whose monograph on the different layers of Armenians in the Hungarian capital Budapest is about to be published. In general it is an encouraging sign that particularly on the level of PhD students productive exchange between Armenia proper, centres of Armenian diaspora worldwide and academic institutions in Europe – here in Cracow, L’viv, Budapest, Leipzig et al. – takes place, and this not the least thanks to the funding by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation of Portugal.
The interview was conducted by Dr. Sirarpi Movsisyan.