Mapping the World

Armenia: Small Country, Big History

This week, "The Underside of the Maps" takes you to discover Armenia, this small mountainous country which has suffered, since its independence in 1991, from a very complex geographical situation, between its Azerbaijani rival and its Turkish sponsor. The case of Nagorno-Karabakh is particularly thorny and took an even more dramatic turn in September 2023, with the forced exile by Azerbaijan of the Armenians who lived there, against a backdrop of Russian disengagement and, beyond that, a certain laissez-faire of the West, which trades with Baku for its hydrocarbons. The history of Armenia is that of an ancestral country that has constantly had to resist great empires and of a people who suffered terrible massacres in the 19th century and then with the first genocide of the modern era, in the 20th century.