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Alexander Mantashev
Have you ever heard of Mr. Five Percent, the businessman and philanthropist Calouste Gulbenkian? How about the composer Komitas Vardapet? In all likelihood you have, but who is Alexander Mantashev? Even though the Iron Curtain was lifted nearly two decades ago, a lion’s share of Armenians within the Diaspora are to this day largely unfamiliar with the spectacular life and journey of Alexander Mantashev. During his lifetime, Mantashev significantly influenced the fate of countless Armenians throughout the world, including the aforementioned Komitas and Gulbenkian.
Dubbed as the Armenian Crassus at the prime of his life, Alexander Ivanovich Mantashev (Russified from Mantashyants/Mantashyan) was born in Tiflis (modern Tbilisi) in 1842. Mantashev’s father Hovhannes was an influental textile trader who was elected to the duma (representative assembly) of Tiflis in 1865. Mantashev spent a good deal of time in Tabriz, where his father was involved in the cotton and textile trade. Getting involved in his father’s business affairs early on, he moved to Manchester in 1869, a major center of cotton and textile processing industries, from where he helped ship goods to his father back in Tabriz. Mantashev’s stay in Manchester played an important role in the development of his character. Not only did he learn the secrets and crafts of the textile industry in Manchester, but he also delved into the intricacies of European business and British culture. During this period he learned English, French, and German. In addition to becoming very well acquainted with Western European everyday life, culture and business, he also initiated contacts with Diaspora Armenians for the first time. Mantashev made a charitable contribution to help build the Holy Trinity Armenian Church of Manchester in 1870, the first Armenian Church built on British soil.
In 1872, Mantashev returned to Tiflis with his father. The Mantashevs opened their first cotton store in the first floor of the hotel Caucasus, located in Erivansky Square (Freedom Square today) and eventually became fully engaged in the wholesale textile trade. The following year Mantashev became a member of the Tiflis Mutual Credit Society. Though they faced very stiff competition in Tiflis within the textile industry, the Mantashev’s maintained a competitive edge through the import of British technology and methods. 1881 was a decisive year for Alexander for it was that year when he became a First Guild merchant.1 The following year he was elected to the Tiflis Duma like his father before him. He was also appointed as the honorary trustee of the Tiflis Comprehensive School, a title which he held until 1894.
With rapidly growing income, the Mantashev’s diversified their enterprise and entered the world of finance. In 1882 Alexander became a member of the Financial Reporting Committee of the Tiflis Central Commercial Bank. Eventually he became a board member of the same bank, becoming deputy chairman of the bank in 1885. After his father’s death in 1887, Alexander became the principal shareholder of the bank, and was elected as Chairman in 1890. The bank was involved in almost every aspect of trade in the Caucasus. Thanks to his merit, the bank was the only financial institution in the Caucasus whose shares traded on the Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange.
The Armenian bourgeoisie who dominated trade in the Caucasus for centuries had shifted their attention to textile manufacturing, tobacco processing and by the late 19th century, oil. The city of Baku was responsible for 90 percent of the wealth produced in the region, Tiflis accounted for 4 percent and Yerevan even less. The first successful oil well was drilled in Baku in 1871 by an Armenian named M.I. Mirzoyev.2 Alexander’s childhood friend Michael Aramyants had moved from Tiflis to Baku in 1884 and along with his compatriots from Karabakh: A. Tsaturyan, G. Tumayan and G. Arapelyan, established the oil company “A. Tsaturov & Co.” This company played a substantial role in the oil production of Baku. Requiring an urgent investment to purchase new oil tankers, Tsaturyan borrowed 50, 000 rubles from the Tiflis Central Bank (that is from Mantashev). In return for such a generous loan, Mantashev was allowed to purchase shares of the Tsaturov Company at a bargain price. In the years that followed, Mantashev purchased all the shares of Tsaturyan, Tumayan and Arapelyan, effectively taking over the company. In 1899, he along with Aramyants established the “A.I. Mantashev & Co.” The significance of this development cannot be understated.
Throughout the early 1890’s, Mantashev began buying up marginally successful oil wells and making them profitable. He opened representative offices and warehouses in the major cities of Europe and Asia: Smyrna, Thessaloniki, Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo, Port Said, Damascus, Paris, London, Bombay and Shanghai. In 1896, during a trip to Egypt, Mantashev met Calouste Gulbenkian who was fleeing the Ottoman Empire with his family as a result of the Hamidian massacres. Mantashev introduced Gulbenkian to the upper echelons of society in Cairo, including Sir Evelyn Baring, the British colonial administrator of Egypt.3 He became famous for his uncanny ability to choose successful drilling sites.4 By 1900, Armenians owned the third of all the oil companies in Baku but foreign capitalists such as the Rothschilds and Nobels were beginning to gain a footing. For refining oil, Mantashev built a kerosene plant in Baku, as well as a lubricant plant and a marine refinery for pumping oil and fuel to vessels. His company owned a factory for the fabrication of canisters, packaging and storage of oil in Batumi, a mechanical workshop in Zabrat, an oil pumping station in Odessa, along with one hundred freight cars circulating in the southwestern railways of Russia.
Mantashev became a shareholder in a number of competing oil companies, among them the Nobel Brothers company Branobel. 51.3% of the total stock of oil and 66.8% of the oil content in the Caspian Sea was centered around that firm. In 1900, the Rothschilds and the Nobels controlled about half of Russia’s crude production, two-thirds of its oil refineries, half the Russian domestic market, and three-quarters of Russia’s kerosene exports. The Mantashev Company and its allies controlled a third of the domestic market and about a quarter of kerosene imports. In 1904, it was the third largest oil company in Baku, next to only Branobel and the Caspian Sea Society of the Rothschild brothers. 5
“The world oil market,” wrote Otto Jeidels (director of Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft bank) in 1905, “is even today still divided between two great financial groups — Rockefeller’s American Standard Oil Co., and Rothschild and Nobel, the controlling interests of the Russian oilfields in Baku. The two groups are closely connected. But for several years five enemies have been threatening their monopoly: (1) the exhaustion of the American oilfields; (2) the competition of the firm of Mantashev of Baku; (3) the Austrian oilfields; (4) the Rumanian oilfields; (5) the overseas oilfields, particularly in the Dutch colonies (the extremely rich firms, Samuel, and Shell, also connected with British capital).”6
A 100 ruble bond for the Mantashev company issued in 1910
A 100 ruble bond for the Mantashev company issued in 1910
In order to combat John D. Rockefeller’s (Standard Oil had started taking over smaller companies in Baku) aggressive marketing policy in Russia, he founded the Russian General Oil Company along with the other major oil interests of Russia, the Nobels and the Rothschilds. 7 Rockefeller was extremely interested in Baku oil since it outproduced all the oil fields of the United States combined. Following Dmitry Mendeleyev’s advice (that’s right, periodic table of elements Mendeleyev), Mantashev funded the Baku-Batumi pipeline which was launched in 1907, becoming the world’s longest (835 kilometers long) and according to some, first oil pipeline. Mantashev’s Baku assets suffered great losses during the Armenian–Tatar massacres of 1905-1907. At the same time, Leon Trotski used Mantashev’s oil factories to preach his revolutionary rhetoric, while the young Joseph Stalin committed acts of sabotage and disobedience at Mantashev’s factories. Stalin organized strikes in Mantashev’s Batumi factory and organized protests against Mantashev in 1902.8 Despite these perils, Mantashev managed to gradually restore previous oil production levels. By 1909, his company by volume of fixed capital was worth 22 million rubles.
Mantashev was well known for his charity and generosity, particularly towards Armenian causes. Novelist and playwright Alexander Shirvanzade wrote:
It was not the great amounts of money that he donated to the sacred temple of charity, which is the queen of the celestial temples. It was the heart that performed the only role, and the supreme role in the benevolence by Mantashyants. He gave away without accounting, without empty vanity, he gave, because so prompted his national soul. His benevolence was of a pure Christian character, so what the right hand gave, the left hand ignored. It was his modesty, that is so rare these days. Only a small part of his doings are known to the public. Countless were his deeds that only his very close people knew about...
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