With good reason, casual readers and specialists alike continue to view the diasporic distribution of Armenians before World War I as one of the more fascinating aspects of modern Armenian history. Examining the motivations and actions of Armenian militants who crisscrossed the porous Russian-Ottoman-Iranian frontiers in 1905–1911, Houri Berberian uncovers the tangible links—if not the seeming omnipresence—of Armenian activists operating during three contemporaneous upheavals.

The book employs the revolutions in Russia (1905), the Ottoman empire (1908), and Iran (1905–11) as a canvass on which to elucidate Armenian intellectuals’ and fighters’ visions of national identity and geopolitical maneuvering. Berberian argues that, “whatever the parallels and dissimilarities among the revolutions, neither the revolutions nor the participants were isolated from each other. In fact, they were inextricably connected, a concept not yet fully explored in the study of revolutions. Activists of all three revolutions knew of and about each other and their actions; they were not operating in a vacuum” (3). Organized into four thematic chapters, with a short concluding fifth chapter, the book's sources are mainly published and unpublished documents of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, Dashnaktsutiun) and Armenian-language periodicals from the three empires and western Europe.

Berberian's protagonists are members of the ARF, the Social Democratic Hnchakian Party, and various Armenian offshoots of the broader Socialist Revolutionaries and Social Democrats. Owing to their size, vitality, and commendable record-keeping, however, the ARF are the main focus. Although readers must wait until Chapter 3 for a thorough exposition of the activists’ political ideologies and objectives, early on Berberian explains that, “key among the factors driving Armenian participation was the revolutionaries’ conviction that the fate of the Armenian populations living in all three empires would benefit from the victory, the establishment of a constitution that promised the end of autocracy and arbitrary rule, and the realization of representative government, social and economic justice, harmonious coexistence, and equality of all citizens regardless of religious and ethnic differences” (10).

If the broader contours of each revolution and the relative degree of Armenian participation in them are not quite terra incognita, then the book makes several novel contributions to the study of empires, nationalisms, and the modern histories of Russia, the Ottoman empire, Iran, and the Caucasus.

First, Berberian highlights how technological advancements facilitated the endeavors of Armenian intellectuals dispersed from London and Geneva to the Caspian Sea coast and inner Iran. One of the book's central premises is that, “the extent of circulation of roving Armenian activists, arms, and global ideas that we witness at the turn of the twentieth century only becomes possible when we consider the role of new technologies like railways and telegraph and the proliferation of periodicals and books, all of which had a powerful effect on revolutionaries taking part in multiple struggles against autocracy” (41).

Second, the author provides a nuanced analysis of the Armenian understandings, and misunderstandings, of such concepts as “constitutionalism,” “federalism,” and “autonomy.” While Armenian polemicists sought “constitution” in all three empires, in practice various leaders “had mixed feelings about the reality or practical application of constitution, even if they espoused its principle and promise” (112). The revelation that Armenian revolutionaries looked to American and Swiss federalisms as potential models for decentralized, multiethnic states shakes many assumptions about the Dashnaks’ and other groups’ insular ideological gestations.

Third, the book cogently illustrates socialism's entanglement with various, even ostensibly anti-Marxist, narrowly nationalist, Armenian currents. Armenian socialists insisted that they “promoted an understanding of nation in socialist terms—that is, as upholding the rights of nationalities, persevering against political oppression and economic exploitation, and maintaining alliance and solidarity with workers of other countries—for them, a far cry from chauvinism” (151). Berberian shows how “it was imperative for Armenian activists and intellectuals to reconcile socialism, on the one hand, and cultural and political autonomy for nationalities, on the other, and to demonstrate that the two were not incompatible and, in fact, were supported by the ‘most brilliant’ socialist minds” (156).

This book carries valuable implications not only for practitioners of east European and Middle Eastern histories, but also for scholars of global, diasporic, and late inter-imperial dialogues. Explaining how and why the fervent activists of a scattered people conceived of their nation's place at the increasingly interconnected and also hostile junction of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, this study brings us closer to grasping the ethnonational dimensions of three empires’ terminal years.