Oddly enough, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were considered the model Christian minority prior to the emergence of the Armenian Question in the late 19th century. They even earned the epithet of millet-i sadıka, "the loyal millet", millet here is an ottoman term used to denote an ethnic and religious community. The reason for this, as the title implies, was the perceived loyalty of Armenians compared to the other Christian minorities.

In the European part of the ottoman empire, rising wave of nationalism was felt relatively shortly after the French Revolution, with the first Serbian uprising happening in 1804, and Greeks were the first amongst Empire's Christian subjects to have their own independent state in 1832. Although the Greek kingdom was restricted to Peloponnese for most of the 19th century, it opened a Pandora's box which the ottomans never managed to shut down.

For Armenians however, things progressed far more slowly. "The Eastern Question" didn't become a widely spoken issue until it was mentioned in the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. Even this was the result of external powers' pressure upon the ottoman government to improve the situation of the Christian subjects in the eastern provinces, and not an Armenian rebellion. An Armenian bishop at the time even states that this is the first time in which the Armenians make a political, rather than merely religious, appearance. Reasons for relatively late development of this national identity is complex, but i think it is fair to state that Armenians, living at the eastern provinces, were somewhat isolated from the events happening at the Balkans at the turn of the 19th century.

Source; Masayuki Ueno (2013). “FOR THE FATHERLAND AND THE STATE”: ARMENIANS NEGOTIATE THE TANZIMAT REFORMS.