14 ATLASES

History of Armenia in maps

Armenia as it appears in 14 interactive history atlases, from 264 BC to 2015: Armenia, Soviet Union, Soviet Armenia. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.

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Map of Europe in January 1894, showing Armenia — MAP OF EUROPE IN JANUARY 1894

These maps are reconstructed from published sources · Cliopatria v 0.2.1 · Natural Earth physical geography

Source details

Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. Source polygons retained with original identities; geographic selections and corrections by Maps of History.. CC BY 4.0
Made with Natural Earth; geographic reference and physical land only. No modern political boundary is used as a historical boundary.. Public domain

Annual source features can describe claims, legal territory or military control. Occupied extensions are separated from the prewar Central Power homelands, while the original source names and shapes remain available.

reconstruction: 1871–1918 · reconstruction: 1894 Ottoman footprint · vector: 1815–1937 · vector: 1820–1899 · vector: 1848–1935 · vector: 1856–1894 · vector: 1864–1921 · vector: 1871–1914 · vector: 1871–1916 · vector: 1873–1914 · vector: 1880–1894 · vector: 1880–1897 · vector: 1880–1899 · vector: 1885–1894 · vector: 1885–1899 · vector: 1885–1904 · vector: 1885–1907 · vector: 1885–1910 · vector: 1885–1911 · vector: 1890–1894 · vector: 1890–1897 · vector: 1890–1904 · vector: 1890–1914

Layer records and reconstruction methods

What was Armenia before it was Armenia? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.

Armenia · Ancient Rome

Armenia stood between Rome and Persia, and each sought influence over its monarchy. Roman generals installed kings, Persian dynasties supplied royal connections, and both powers invaded. Trajan annexed Armenia in 114; Hadrian relinquished it; and in 387 the empires partitioned it. Armenia’s adoption of Christianity as the first state to do so is traditionally dated to 301, before the Roman Empire’s adoption.

264 BC	Hellenistic kingdoms — the opening position
62 BC	Roman clients & allies
AD 117	Roman territory
AD 180	Roman clients & allies
AD 395	Rival great powers

ANCIENT ROME: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Armenia — highland & Cilician · Crusades

Armenian Christians were indispensable allies of Outremer from the first winter. Armenian lords guided and fed the First Crusade through the Taurus passes, and Baldwin of Boulogne acquired Edessa in 1098 through adoption into an Armenian ruler’s house. Cilician Armenia was tied to Antioch by a century of marriages and became a kingdom when Levon I was crowned in 1198 with a crown sent by the German emperor. It outlasted every mainland crusader state, until the Mamluks extinguished it in 1375. Armenians on the highland plateau meanwhile lived under Seljuk and then Mongol rule, enduring between empires through a history much longer than the crusades.

CRUSADES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Armenia · Mongol Empire

Mongol rule brought heavy tribute to Greater Armenia in the 1230s. Cilician Armenia’s king Het‘um chose another course, entering a voluntary alliance in 1247 and traveling to Karakorum. His realm benefited as a favored client and fought beside the Ilkhans against the Mamluks; when the Mongols withdrew, it paid a price. The two Armenian regions had taken different paths under Mongol power.

1206	Other settled powers (Jin China, Christendom, Delhi) — the opening position
1241	Tributaries & vassals

MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Armenia · Industrial Revolution

1890	Industrialising — the opening position
1890	Industrialising

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Armenia · Age of Revolutions

JUL 1789

Neutral / uncommitted — the opening position

AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Armenia · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia

A movement to unite Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, turning the politics of a Soviet republic into a national struggle. That December the Spitak earthquake killed an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people in northern Armenia and exposed poor Soviet construction. By the 1994 ceasefire Armenian forces held Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians had fled Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijanis had fled Armenia.

OCT 1964	The USSR, then Russia — the opening position
DEC 1991	Independent neighbours

MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Armenia · Russian Revolution

Armenia became independent in 1918, after its people had suffered genocide under the Ottomans. Caught between Turkey and Bolshevik Russia, it was crushed and sovietized in late 1920. It became a Soviet republic: survival under Moscow was chosen over annihilation between empires.

SEP 1855	The Tsarist empire — the opening position
MAR 1917	Provisional Government, then the Whites
MAR 1918	Breakaway national states
1921	Soviet power

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Armenia (Russian Empire) · WWI

Across the border from Russian Armenia, genocide destroyed Ottoman Armenia (Ch. 6). An independent Armenian republic emerged amid the chaos in the Caucasus in 1918. Its ranks included survivors of the deportations when it fought Turkey, and by 1921 it had been divided between Kemalist Turkey and Soviet Russia. The diaspora created by the genocide carries its memory worldwide.

JAN 1894	The Entente & Allies — the opening position
JAN 1894	The Entente & Allies
NOV 1917	Russia in revolution
JUN 1919	Neutral or unaligned
JUL 1923	Russia in revolution
NOV 1918	Neutral or unaligned

WWI: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Armenia (Armenian SSR) · Stalin’s Soviet Union

The people of mountainous Soviet Armenia lived with the memory of the Ottoman genocide of 1915. Their small republic belonged to the Transcaucasian federation until 1936. In that year its party leader, Aghasi Khanjian, died in Beria’s office, and the Terror took much of the intelligentsia. After the war Stalin invited diaspora Armenians to “return”. About 90,000 arrived in 1946–49; many were later deported to Siberia as suspect foreigners.

JAN 1924

The Soviet Union — the opening position

STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →