Early history Armenians have a long history of settlement in France. The first Armenians appeared in
Francia in the
Early Middle Ages. In 591, an Armenian bishop named Simon is recorded to have met
Gregory of Tours in the city of
Tours. Among other churches, the 9th-century church of
Germigny-des-Prés—built by
Odo of Metz (possibly an Armenian)—is said by architecture historians to have an Armenian influence. The thirty-six letters of the
Armenian alphabet found in a Latin inscription at the
St. Martha Church in
Tarascon show that Armenians lived there before the 13th century, when the last three characters of the Armenian alphabet were added. in
Avignon Contact between Armenians and the French became frequent during the
Crusades. The
Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, located on the north-eastern shore of the
Mediterranean Sea, became of strategic importance to the crusaders en route to Palestine. Armenian kings
Oshin and
Leo IV are known to have given special trading privileges to the French. In the 14th century, the
Hethumids were unable to retain power in Cilician Armenia and following the assassination of
Leo IV in 1341, his
Lusignan cousin became King of Armenia as
Constantine II. The Lusignan kings were of French origin and ruled the country until 1375 when the last king,
Leo V, was captured by the Mamluks and taken to Egypt. He was later released and transferred to France where he died in 1393 and was buried at the
Basilica of St Denis, the burial place of the French monarchs. In 1672, an Armenian named Pascal (Harut'iwn) opened the first
coffee house in Paris. From 1672 to 1686,
Voskan Yerevantsi operated a publishing house in Marseille. With the liberalization of the economy, the number of Armenians in France increased and reach 300–400 by 1680.
Jean Althen (Hovhannès Althounian), a
Persian-Armenian agronomist from
Nakhchivan, is known to have introduced
madder to southern France in the 1750s. A statue of him was erected in
Avignon expressing the city's gratefulness to him. During his
campaign in Egypt,
Napoleon was presented an Armenian
Mamluk named
Roustam Raza. He became Napoleon's bodyguard and served him until 1814. In the 19th century, many young Armenian males (among them poet and political activist
Nahapet Rusinian and architect
Nigoğayos Balyan) moved to France for education.
Papier d'Arménie ("Armenian Paper"), a popular deodorising paper, was created in the late 1880s by Auguste Ponsot. He visited
Turkish Armenia and found out that the Armenians use
benzoin resin and
plant sap to disinfect their homes and churches. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, thousands of Armenians escaped persecution in
their ancestral homeland that was part of the
Ottoman Empire at the time. Events like the
Hamidian massacres and the
Adana massacre gave rise to greater Armenian emigration. By the eve of the First World War, around 4,000 Armenians lived in France.
World War I and the Armenian genocide By the 1916 French–Armenian Agreement, the
French Armenian Legion was formed out of Armenians from around the world, including many French Armenians, by negotiations between
Boghos Nubar and French political and military authorities. The Legion took part in the
Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the
Franco-Turkish War. As a result of the Allied victory in the First World War, tens of thousands of survivors of the
Armenian genocide found themselves living in the French-occupied part of the
Ottoman Empire in
Cilicia, and far more in the
French Mandate territories of Syria and Lebanon, as the
death camps of
Deir ez-Zor were in Syria. In 1920, the French army under General
Henri Gouraud ordered the French Armenian Legion to lay down their weapons and that the Armenian refugees should leave at once. He had formed a "peaceful, reconstructive policy" with the
Turkish nationalists to pull French troops out of Cilicia, but all that ended up doing was allowing attacks against Armenian civilians to resume. Most Cilician Armenian fled alongside the French and were resettled in refugee camps in
Alexandretta,
Aleppo, the
Beqaa Valley (e.g.
Anjar) and
Beirut. From there, entire families took the opportunity to flee to France. The influx of the
Armenian genocide survivors brought tens of thousands of Armenians to France. By the early 1920s, approximately 50,000 to 60,000 Armenians lived in France. According to another source 90,000 genocide survivors settled in France, more than half of whom were villagers. Most Armenians initially arrived in Marseille, thereafter many of them spread across France and settled in large cities, especially in Paris and the urban areas across the
Paris–Marseille railway, notably
Lyon. In the
Interwar period, the majority of Armenians in France were unskilled villagers that mostly worked in factories for low wages. Between 1922 and 1929, 80% of Armenians in France were labourers earning 10–15% less than Frenchmen. On 29 October 1920, Grégoire Sinabian was appointed by the
Armenian government as the consul-general of
Armenia to France. In this period, a number of Turkish Armenian intellectuals moved to France, including
Arshag Chobanian (1895),
Komitas (1919, transferred to a hospital in Paris where he remained until his death),
Levon Pashalian (1920),
Shahan Shahnour (1923).
World War II and the Fourth Republic The Armenian community of France played an active role in the
French Resistance. Poet and communist militant
Missak Manouchian, the commander of the multiethnic
Groupe Manouchian, became an important Resistance leader. Besides Arpen Lavitian, the other executed Armenian member, his group also included many Jews from across Europe. Poets
Kégham Atmadjian and
Rouben Melik were other prominent participants in the Resistance. The
Anti-Fascist Underground Patriotic Organization was commanded by Armenian officers. Resisters Alexander Kazarian and Bardukh Petrosian were awarded by the highest military orders of France by General
Charles de Gaulle. Another Resistance fighter,
Louise Aslanian, a famous writer and poet, was a recruiter for the
Francs-Tireurs et Partisans in a combat cell of the
French Communist Party. She along with her husband
Arpiar Aslanian worked in an underground publishing house and actively engaged in supplying fighters of the
French Resistance with weapons. Louise opened the women's division of the
French Resistance and was responsible for the Armenian Resistance in Northern France. She and her husband were arrested on 24 July 1944 and were later killed in
Nazi concentration camps. Henri Karayan, a member of the Manouchian Group, participated in the illegal distribution of
Humanité in Paris and was engaged in the armed struggle until the Libération. In 2012, 95-year-old
Arsène Tchakarian, the last survivor of the Manouchian resistance group who fought against occupying Nazi German forces during World War II, was decorated as Officer of the
Legion of Honor by President
Nicolas Sarkozy. Immediately after the Second World War, about 7,000 Armenians were repatriated to Soviet Armenia.
Migration of Armenians from the Middle East Langues du monde (1952) estimated 70,000 Armenians in France. Thousands of new immigrants have arrived in France from Middle Eastern countries like
Turkey,
Lebanon,
Syria and
Iran since the 1950s. These new immigrants mobilized the French Armenian community. By the 1980s around 300,000 Armenians lived in France. In 1983, the
Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia launched an
attack at the Paris Orly airport, as part of its campaign for the recognition of and reparations for the Armenian genocide. The explosion killed eight people and injured fifty-five. The campaign to pass the resolution condemning the
Armenian genocide at the
European Council unleashed on June 19, 1987, at a
Strasbourg demonstration.
Contemporary period The
devastating earthquake in Armenia on 7 December 1988 led to a huge mobilization of the French Armenian community. Among others,
Charles Aznavour established a charitable foundation to help the victims of the earthquake. As the
Institut national d'études démographiques, France's national statistics agency, does not collect data on ethnicity there is no reliable information about the number of French people of Armenian ancestry. Various experts, media and organizations have estimated the number of French Armenians to be 250,000, 300,000, 400,000, 450,000, 500,000–700,000, 750,000. As of 2005, there were 12,355 Armenian-born people residing in France. ==Culture==