America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915

This page intentionally left blank America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 Before Rwanda and Bosnia, and before the Holocaust, the first genocide of the twentieth century happened in Turkish Armenia in 1915, when approximately one million people were killed. This volume is the first account of the American response to this atrocity. The first part sets up the framework for understanding the genocide: Sir Martin Gilbert, Vahakn Dadrian, and Jay Winter provide an analytical setting for nine scholarly essays examining how Americans learned of this catastrophe and how they tried to help its victims. Knowledge and compassion, though, were not enough to stop the killings. A terrible precedent was born in 1915, one which has come to haunt the United States and other Western countries throughout the twentieth century and beyond. To read the chapters in this volume is chastening: the dilemmas Americans faced when confronting evil on an unprecedented scale are not very different from the dilemmas we face today. is Professor of History at Yale University, a former Reader in Modern History at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is the author of many books on the First World War, including Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History and, with Jean-Louis Robert, Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919. He was chief historian and co-producer for the Emmy-award winning television series “The Great War and the shaping of the twentieth century,” first screened on PBS and the BBC in 1996, and subsequently broadcast in twenty-seven countries. He is also a director of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, an international museum of the First World War at Pe´ronne, Somme, France. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare General Editor Jay Winter Ya l e U n i v e r s i t y Advisory Editors Omer Bartov Brown University Carol Gluck Columbia University David M. Kennedy Stanford University Paul Kennedy Ya l e U n i v e r s i t y Antoine Prost Université de Paris-Sorbonne Emmanuel Sivan Hebrew University of Jerusalem Robert Wohl University of California, Los Angeles In recent years the field of modern history has been enriched by the exploration of two parallel histories. These are the social and cultural history of armed conflict, and the impact of military events on social and cultural history. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare presents the fruits of this growing area of research, reflecting both the colonization of military history by cultural historians and the reciprocal interest of military historians in social and cultural history, to the benefit of both. The series offers the latest schol- arship in European and non-European events from the 1850s to the present day. For a list of titles in the series, please see end of book. America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 Edited by Jay Winter Ya l e U n i v e r s i t y Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521829588 © Cambridge University Press 2003 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2004 - ---- eBook (EBL) - --- eBook (EBL) - ---- hardback - --- hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents List of contributors page ix Map x Acknowledgments xii Introduction: witness to genocide 1 Part I The framework 1 Twentieth-century genocides 9 2 Under cover of war: the Armenian Genocide in the context of total war 37 3 The Armenian Genocide: an interpretation 52 . Part II During the Catastrophe 4 A friend in power? Woodrow Wilson and Armenia 103 ,. 5 Wilsonian diplomacy and Armenia: the limits of power and ideology 113 . 6 American diplomatic correspondence in the age of mass murder: the Armenian Genocide in the US archives 146 vii viii Contents 7 The Armenian Genocide and American missionary relief efforts 185 . 8 Mary Louise Graffam: witness to genocide 214 9 From Ezra Pound to Theodore Roosevelt: American intellectual and cultural responses to the Armenian Genocide 240 Part III After the Catastrophe 10 The Armenian Genocide and US post-war commissions 257 . 11 Congress confronts the Armenian Genocide 276 . 12 When news is not enough: American media and Armenian deaths 294 . Index 309 Contributors is Director of the Armenian National Institute, Washington, D.C. . is Professor of History, University of Nebraska- Lincoln is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English at Colgate University ,., is E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions, University of Wisconsin-Madison . is Director of Genocide Research, Zoryan Insti- tute, Cambridge, Mass., and Toronto, Canada is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford is an independent writer . holds the Armenian Educational Founda- tion Chair in Modern Armenian History at the University of California, Los Angeles . is University Librarian and Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley . is a historian and an independent writer is Associate Historian in the US Senate Historical Office is Professor of History, Yale University ix Figure 1. “The 1915 Armenian Genocide in the Turkish Empire.” Originally produced by, and reproduced with the kind permission of, the Armenian National Institute (ANI) (Washington D.C.), and the Nubrarian Library (Paris). c ANI, English Edition, copyright 1998. ! Acknowledgments The chapters in this volume arose out of the conference, “The American Response to the Armenian Genocide,” held in Washington, D.C., on 27– 28 September 2000. All have been revised to enable scholars to extend their work and its documentation. The conference was co-sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Armenian National Institute, in cooperation with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The participation of these three institutions opened a new phase in the public and scholarly discussion of the Armenian genocide and its implications. It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge and thank the following in- dividuals for their assistance in organizing and realizing this event: James H. Billington, The Librarian of the Library of Congress; Prosser Gifford, Library of Congress Director of Scholarly Programs; Levon Avdoyan, Library of Congress Armenian and Georgian Area Specialist; Irving Greenberg, Chairman, Sara Bloomfield, Director, and William Parsons, Chief of Staff, of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum; Robert A. Kaloosdian, Chairman of the Board of Governors, Armenian National Institute; and Carolyn Mugar, of the Armenian National Institute Board of Governors. Particular thanks are due to Sir Martin Gilbert, whose keynote lecture forms the first chapter in this book. We are grateful to many others whose help was essential; among them are Richard G. Hovannisian, Chairman, Armenian National Institute Academic Council; Sylvia Parsons, Armenian National In- stitute Conference Coordinator; Rouben P. Adalian, Director of the Armenian National Institute; and Jackie Abramian, editorial assistant. Yale University, January 2003 xii Introduction Witness to genocide Jay Winter Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow. T. S. Eliot “The Hollow Men” (1925) The Armenian National Institute convened a meeting in Washington in September 2000 out of which this volume emerged. The meeting had two venues: first in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and then in the Library of Congress. The location of this meeting in the heart of the nation’s capital, and in two such monumental settings, had a particular importance. For this meeting of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic was testimony to the increasing prominence of the subject of the Armenian genocide in public discourse as well as in contemporary schol- arship. It has taken many decades to grow, but by the end of the twentieth century, a consensus has emerged that the Armenian genocide of 1915 is of universal significance. It disclosed much about the century which followed, and, in particular, its history illuminates uncomfortably the ob- stacles which block international action in situations where genocidal acts appear possible or likely. This book does not address the question of the justification in general of American or international intervention in “trouble spots” around the world. The disastrous record of US foreign policy in Vietnam, in Chile, and in many other parts of the world where ruling or insurgent movements appeared to threaten American interests or bolster Soviet power precludes any easy argument for the deployment of American power. This book is restricted to a set of events where the murder of a people is in question. How Americans have related to the phenomenon of genocide is the subject of this book. Its particular reference is to American responses to the first genocide of the twentieth century, the Turkish genocidal campaign against its Armenian population, which resulted in approximately one million deaths in 1915–16. 1 2 Jay Winter This volume is not a story of heroic intervention. On the contrary, the book catalogues the enormous distance between full recognition of an unfolding catastrophe and effective action to mitigate it or stop the perpe- trators before they realize their objectives and complete their plans. Mass murder happened, and the world let it happen.

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