This study will analyze how Armenian “nationalism” came to develop within the Ottoman milieu and question whether it was a full-fledged ideology or a patriotic construct adopted by Armenian political/revolutionary elites who hailed from different imperial entities (Ottoman/Western and Russian and Persian/Eastern Armenian). Western Armenian “nationalism” in this sense was a product of the internal developments of the Armenian Millet in the Ottoman Empire. Even in its earliest manifestations in 1850s, the experience was catechized through a project of Educational Reawakening—introduced by the Western Armenian elite in Constantinople—which was geared toward self recognition and equality before law and guaranteeing the security of Armenian communities in the eastern provinces vis-à-vis the Kurdish land grabs. This political outlook was not nationalistic per se but rather it advocated some sort of self rule (Adam-i Merkeziyyet) within the political confines of the Ottoman State. This was in itself commensurate to the overall Tanzimat project that successive Ottoman governments tried to implement since the 1860s. It is from this perspective that this study attempts to reconstruct the Armenian “nationalist” paradigm within the confines of a patriotic project that would ultimately lead to an ideology of Ottomanism that, in the minds of many Armenian intellectuals, was best suited for a multi-ethnic state such as the Ottoman Empire. Eastern Armenian “nationalism,” on the other hand, was developed by an elite educated in the Russian/revolutionary atmosphere from the 1860s onwards, and came to advocate a much more aggressive ideology akin to those found among the Ottoman Christian populations in the Balkans. It was through the filtration of this eastern Armenian ideological construct into Western Armenia that the proverbial Millet-i Sadika was to be transformed into a Millet-i Asiya between 1890 and 1908. Yet the 1908 Second Ottoman Constitutional Revolution brought with it what seemed to be a new breath for the development and success of Ottomanism. This was to be the ideal culmination of what Armenians in the empire had hoped for. However, international power politics and successive wars (1911, 1912-1913) would lead to the demise of this fledgling Ottomanism and all hopes attached to it. By tracing these complex local, regional, and international contexts, this study highlights how and when the Western and Eastern Armenian milieus overlapped and diverged in the development of Armenian “nationalism.” And it does so by utilizing sources from the ARF, Hnchag, Ottoman (BOA), and British Archives (FO).