Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question Author(s): Robert F. Zeidner Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Oct., 1976), pp. 465-483 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162505 . Accessed: 26/10/2013 10:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Journal of Middle East Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Int. J. Middle East Stud. 7 (1976), 465-483 Printed in U.S.A. 465

Robert F. Zeidner

BRITAIN AND THE LAUNCHING OF THE ARMENIAN QUESTION

In August 1894, as if by prearranged signal, a series of Muslim attacks on the Gregorian1 Armenian subjects of the Porte broke out in eastern Anatolia and spread gradually, province by province, throughout most of Asiatic Turkey. These disorders raged sporadically for two years until finally, in August 1896, they culminated in a similar assault on the Gregorian Armenian community of Istan- bul, beneath the very windows of the embassies of the Great Powers. European estimates place(l the total of kille(l thlroughlout this period at between 250,000 and 300,000 men, women, and children, an(l ro percent of the entire Armenian pop)ulation of the .2 Tle Great Powers were outraged. The presses of the West bristled with indig- nant appeals for immiiediate action against the Porte to relieve the sufferings of its

1 The Gregorian (or Apostolic) community was by far the largest of the four Armenian minorities. The other, smaller groups were Catholic, Eastern Rite (Greek Orthodox), and Protestant. The latter groups did not escape harm entirely; they too suffered, but mildly in comparison with their Gregorian compatriots. The three smaller communities enjoyed the protection of the Great Powers; and, thus, the Ottoman Governmentapparently took pains to spare them-to deny the Powers a pretext for intervention. Tlle actual attackers, on the other hand, occasionally lacked sophisticationin differentiatingamong Armenians of different sects. See Sidney Whitman, Turkish Mlemories (New York, I914), pp. 20-21; Sir Charles N. Eliot ("Odysseus"), Turkey in Europe (London, I908), p. 408. 2 Rev. Edwin M. Bliss, Turkey and the Armenian Atrocitics (New York, I896), pp. 368- 481; J. Rendel Harris and Helen B. Harris, Letters from the Scenes of the Recent Massacres in (London, I897) passim; Paul Cambon, Correspondance, 1870-1924, Vol. I (Paris, 1940), pp. 389-398, 405-423; Sir Edwin Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople (New York, I916), pp. 144-I69; Victor Berard, La Politique du Sultan, 4th ed. (Paris, I900), passim; Abraham Hartunian, Neither 7ToLaugh nor To FWeep,A Memoir of the Arimenian Genocide, trans. Vartan Hartunian (Boston, I968), pp. 10-26; George H. Hepworth, Through Armenia on Horseback (New York, I898), passim; Eliot (Turkey in Europe, pp. 405-413) and Whit- man (Turkish Me,mories, pp. 10-35) contain descriptions of these events based on the mem- oirs and letters of interested observers, both in the provinces and in Constantinople. A more detailed survey of casualty estimates is available in Louise Nalbandian, The Armenian Revo- lutionary Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), p. 206 n. 54. The total Armenian population of the empire was about 2.6 imillion. For documented analyses of the Armenian population and its distribution throughout the Ottoman Empire, see Esat Uras, Tarihte Erneniler ve Ermtcni Meselesi (Ankara, I950), pp. 13I-147; Garo Chichekian, "The Arme- nians since the Treaty of San Stefano: A Politico-Geographical Study of Population," The Armentian Reviewe, XXII, 2-82 (Spring I968), 42-49; Sarkis Atamian, The Armenian Com- munity (New York, 1955), pp. 43-46; William L. Langer, The Diplomtacy of Imperialism, Ir890-I902, Vol. I (New York, 1935), p. I47 n. 3.

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 466 Robert F. Zeidner

Armenian subjects.3 Close uniformity of pattern in the execution of these massacres and the apparent care taken to spare Armenians of the Eastern Rite (Greek Ortho- dox) and of the Catholic and Protestant faiths4 from harm convinced the Powers that the entire affair had been planned and ordered by the Porte or the palace, or both.5 Moreover, foreign and native witnesses had reported Ottoman troops- especially units of the newly formed Kurdish irregular cavalry (the famous Hamidieh regiments) 6-and police assisting the mobs in their bloody business. Reactions among diplomats in the capital and among other subject Christian peoples in the were so fraught with terror and anxiety that the Russian government considered a quick seizure of Istanbul and the Straits on the pretext of restoring order.7 This was the first great agony of the Armenian Question, purportedly the work of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The Young Turk regime unleashed the final two at- tacks against all Armenians, regardless of faith, in I909 and 1915.8 The purpose of this paper is not to examine the circumstances of any of these early attempts at

3 For examples, see The Duke of Argyll, Our Responsibilities for Turkey (London, I896); W. E. Gladstone, The Earl of Meath et al., "The Massacres in Turkey," The Nineteenth Cen- tury Review, XL (I896), 654-680; Diran Kelekian, "La Turquie et son Souverain," ibid., pp. 689-698; Wilfred Scawen Blunt and E. F. Du Cane, "Turkish Misgovernment," ibid., pp. 838-848; Malcolm MacColl, The Sultan atnd the Powers (London, New York, Bombay, 1896). 4 The Catholic Armenians enjoyed the formal protection of France and Austria-Hungary. looked after the small Orthodox sect. See text of the Treaty of April 28, I649, in J. C. Hurewitz, ed. and trans., Diplomacy iin the Near and Middle East: A Diplomatic Record, 1535-1914 (Princeton, I956), p. 24; also, Treaty of Kiuiik Kaynarca, July IO/21, I774, in ibid., pp. 54-60. 5 Count Chedomille Mijatovich, The Memoirs of a Balkan Diplomat (London, I917), pp. 82-83; N. V. Tcharykov, Glimpses of Higjh Politics through War and Peace, 1855-1929 (New York, 1931), p. 226. Whitman (Turkish Memories, pp. 61-62), on the other hand, ab- solves the sultan of any blame. For a balanced assessment of culpability in the massacres, by a keen student and observer of Hamidian Turkey, see Eliot, Turkey in Europe, pp. 391-414. 6 These units were raised in eastern Turkey during late 1890 or early I891 for the alleged purpose of maintaining order along the Russian and Persian frontiers. See ibid., p. 392; Whitman, Turkish Memories, pp. 73, 109, I45-I55; The Times (London), April 4, I89I, p. 5 (this source henceforth cited as LT) ; and Sir William A. White (British Ambassador to the Porte) to the Marquis of Salisbury (British Prime Minister), Feb. 24 and March 13, I89I, in Great Britain, House of Commons, Sessional Papers, ed. Edgar L. Erickson, Readex Micro- print Edition (New York, I967), 1892, Vol. XCVI, pp. I9, 25 (this source henceforth cited as BSP). 7 Count A. I. Nelidoff (Russian Ambassador to the Porte) to N. P. Shishkin (Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs), Sept. 6/I8 and Nov. I8/30, I896; Count S. Y. Witte (Russian Finance Minister) to Nelidoff, Nov. 24/Dec. 6, I896, as summarized in Leona W. Eisele, A Digest of the Krasnayi Arkhiv: Red Archives, Vol. II (Ann Arbor, 1955), p. 62; E. J. Dillon, The Eclipse of Russia (New York, I918), pp. 231-244. Even the U.S. Senate, on Dec. 3, I894, resolved to request details and causes of the massacres from President Cleve- land, as reflected in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-I897, Vol. IX (New York, 1917), p. 557. 8 Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Abdul Hamid'in Hattra Defteri, ed. tsmet Bozbag (Istanbul, I960), pp. I30-133. For authoritative, eyewitness accounts of the events of I909 and 1915-22,

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Britain and the launching of the Armenian question 467

violence but to trace the genesis of the Armenian Question as an international issue during the incubation period of the Armenian Revolutionary Movement, roughly I877-I890. The dean of contemporary Ottoman historians, Professor Enver Ziya Karal, has declared that the Armenian Question did not exist before the ascension of Abdul Hamid II (1876). Even the Albanian and Arab national issues, Karal asserts, had surfaced as separate and distinct facets of the greater Eastern Question before the middle of the nineteenth century.9 This is not to suggest that a sense of national identity had not existed among the dispersed Armenian subjects of Turkey, Russia, and Persia at an earlier date. Several Armenian kingdoms had flourished in the Trans- area and in Eastern Asia Minor from about the fourth century B.C. until conquered by the Arabs in A.D. 639. The Bagratid dynasty man- aged to reestablish a measure of independence for Armenia from 886 until Byzan- tium annexed it in 1045; and it was overrun shortly thereafter by the first major wave of Seljukid Turks to penetrate Anatolia. Armenian refugees from the east then created a "New Armenia," centered on , but this tenuous state was absorbed by the Egyptian in I375. Even after assimilation into the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Armenians of Anatolia retained a form of unified administration and representation through the theocratic system of government (the millet system) adopted by the Turks for the control of their subject peoples. By the mid nineteenth century, however, the hierarchy of the Gregorian millet had become corrupt to the point that the patriarch and his senior functionaries had allied themselves with the Porte to suppress and fleece their flock. Although the Armenian National Constitution of I860 (actually ratified by the Porte in I863) did much to ameliorate this situation-at the instigation of the growing Armenian intelligentsia of Con- stantinople-the moneyed amliraclass retained influence in the governing of the tillet far in excess of its relatively small numbers; and a vast hiatus of mutual understanding, much less sympathy, continued to separate the urban Armenian element from the peasantry, until the "back to the provinces" movement gained considerable momentum following the Berlin Congress of T878.10 see , The New Map of Europe (New York, I914), pp. 190-194; Helen Davenport Gibbons, The Red Rugs of Tarsus: A Woman's Record of the Armenian Massacres of I909 (New York, I917), pp. 103-I7I; Hartunian, Neither To Laugh nor To Weep, pp. 43-205; J. A. Zahm, Fronm Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon (New York, 1922), pp. 205-213; Arnold J. Toynbee, The Armeniian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation (London, I915), passim; Henry Morganthau, Ambassador Morganthau's Story (Garden City, I918), pp. 293-384; and Stanley E. Kerr, The Lions of Marash, Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (Albany, I973), passim. 9 Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanlh Tarihi, Vol. VIII (Ankara, 1962), p. 126. For primary sources on the same issue, see James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat (London, I896), pp. viii, 445; J. H. Skene, Anadol: The Last Home of the Faithful (London, 1854), pp. 353, 357. 10 For authoritative, dispassionate, and well-documented surveys of early Armenian history and of the antecedents of modern , see Hrand Pasdermadjian, Histoire

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 468 Robert F. Zeidner

Moreover, relative geographic isolation from the mainstream of events and thought in Europe had simply prolonged the embryonic phase of nationalistic development among the Armnenians of Anatolia. Although the Armenian "Dias- pora" had been in progress for over a millennium by the advent of the nineteenth century, the disastrous Ottoman wars in the Balkans and the Trans-Caucasus region following the tturn of that century (the Serbian and Greek struggles for independence, the Russo-Turkish W\ar of 1828-29, the and the Russo-Turkish Wrar of 1877-78), plus the subsequent consolidation of an inde- pendent Bulgarian state, did much to dimlinish the Armenian proportions of the total Ottoman population in Eastern Anatolia. Not only did many thousands from the Armenian community emigrate to the cities of the empire-and to Trans- Caucasian Russia-to escape the depredations of the untamed Kurdish tribes of the East the Porte, in turn, attempted to pacify its unruly eastern provinces by settling there hordes of Turkish refugees from the Balkans, and Muslim Circas- sians andi Lezghians from the Trans-Caucasus.11 In short, by 1878 the Turco- Armenians (lid not constitute a clear imajority of the total polulation in any of the six Anatolian provinces where the bulk of them lived.12 This fact alone prob- ably sufficed to stifle separatist ambitions and to relegate the Armenians to a d(e I'Armn;ia depuis les origines jusqut'au Traitc de Lausanne (Paris, 1949); A. 0. Sarkissian, History of the lArlcmnianl) Question to 1885 (Urbana, I938); Nalbandian, Arm1cnian Revolt- tionary Movement, pp. 1-89; Vahain M. Kurkjian, , (New York, I959); Claude Cahen. Pre-Ottomian Turkey, trans. J. Jones-Williams (New York, i968), passim; and Atamian, Armenian Community, pp. 1-63. For assessments of the functioning of the millet system in the late nineteenth century, see M. A. Ubicini, Letters on Turkey, ed. and trans. Lady Easthope, Vol. II (London, I856), letters iv-vii; Roderic H. Davidson, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, l856--I876 (Princeton, I963), pp. 12-19; Bliss, Turkey, pp. 303-309. For the text of the Armenian National Constitution, see H. F. B. I.ynch, Ar,menia: Travels and Studies, Vol. II (London, 1901), pp. 445-467. Article LVII of the constitution allowed the provinces only 40 deputies in the National General Assembly, whereas the clergy and lay Armenian (Gregorian) of Constantinople received 20o and 80 deputies, respectively. Thus, the Gregorian inhabitants of the capital alone-about I5o,000 souls-became the "tail that wagged the dog." With respect to the "back to the provinces" movement, see n. 23 below. 11 F. Dubois de Montpereux, Voyage autour du Caucase (Paris, 1839-43), II, 263-265; James Brant, "Journey through a Part of Armenia and Asia Minor," Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, VI (1836), 201 ; R. Wilbrahim, Travels in the Trans-Caucasian Prov- inces of Russia (London, I837), pp. 294, 314; Janmes Brant, "Notes of a Journey through a Part of Kurdistan," Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, X (1840), 344; Robert Curzon Zouche, Armenia: A Year at Erzeroom, antd on the Frontiers of Russia, Turkey, anid Persia (New York, I854), pp. I88, 2IO; Austen Henry Layard, Discoveries armtongthe RuiJns of Niueveh and Babylon (New York, 1853), p. II; Frederick Millingen, fW'ild Life among the Kurds (London, I870), pp. 36, 104-IO6, 264; William M. Ramsay, Impressions of Turkey dur- ing Twelve Years' Wanderings (London, I897), pp. 110-II4. After I878, it is highly probable that the Porte viewed the settlement of Muslim refugees in the eastern provinces as a deterrent to separatist plotting and uprisings among the Armenians there. By that date the Porte had seen over seventy-five years of such activity among its subject Christian peoples in the Balkans. 12 White to Salisbury, May 26, I89g, in BSP, 1890-1891, Vol. XCVI, pp. 498 ff. Both Otto- man and British estimates placed the Armenians of all faiths at about 35 percent of the total population in the provinces of eastern Asia Minor. See n. 2 above.

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Britain and the launching of the Armenian qutestion 469

"least favored" position among the various Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire in the eyes of the Great Powers. Meanwhile. from 1830 to 1847, the Porte had employed its new, Westernized army to sub(lue the rebellious Kurds-and thils brought to most of eastern Asia Minor almiost thirty years of relative freedom from tribal terror. The successes of this camplaign were confirmed by greatly relduce(l Armenian emigrations fron- the easternIlrovinces (during the Crimean War and the opening months of the Russo- Turkisll War of 87,7-78.1: Although occasional Kurdish outrages against the Christian mninorities of tle East continued to occur, the Armenian peasants tlere appeared to be resigned to their lot until 1877.14 Furtliermore, they were relatively prosperous and content. Even in the many farmn villages of Asia Minor, where life was least pleasant for all subjects of the Porte, the Armenians enjoyed im- munity fronm nmilitary conscription and thus were free to look after their own interests. Their Muslim neighbors, on the other hancd, lived in constant dread of tle sultan's conscription officers, an(l many of tlhemnwere forcibly carried away to serve long and arbitrary terms of military duty, fighting in the nunerous civil and foreign wars which rocked the empire throughout the nineteenth century. Strangely enotugh, Armenians and Turks got along ratlher well until 1877, especially at the village level, despite the second-class citizenship impose(l on the former by the elite of the latter.15 Although the Armenians labored under a number of civil disabilities (forbidden to bear arms, to ride a horse, to hold certain public offices, and to wear certain articles of clothing), they prospered greatly in the cities of the empire. Ali Vehbi Bey, a private secretary to Abdul Hamid, claimed that they held one-third of all state positions on the civil list. These positions included those of cabinet minister, provincial governor, ambassador, and principal assistant to Muslim cabinet minis- ters. Moreover, Armenian bankers, imerchants, and entrepreneurs controlled shares

13 William Francis Ainsworth, Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamlia,Chal- dea, and Armenlia, Vols. I, II (London, I842), passim; Zouche, Armenia, pp. 80, 94; Charles McClumpha et al., eds. and trans., Essays, Speeches, and Mem7oirs of Field-Marshal Contt Hfelmuth. von Moltke, Vol. I, (London, I893), pp. 278-287. Concise sketches of the Kurdish wars of the nineteenth century are available in Arshak Safrastian, Kurds and Knzrdistan (London, I948), pp. 49-60; V. Minorsky, "Kurds," Encyclopaedia of Islam, II, 1147-II48. 14 Friedrich Parrot. Jolurneyto Ararat, trans. W. D. Cooley (New York, 1846), pp. 97-98, 230-231; Milli,ngen, Wild Life, p. 262; Bryce, Transcaucasia,pp. 336, 344, 464; Pears, Forty Years, p. 153; Charles B. Norman to LT, Oct. 1, 1877, p. 10; Norman, Armenia and the Campaiqgnof 1877 (London, 1878), pp. 329 ff.; David G. Hogarth, A Wanidering Scholar int the Levant (New York, I896), p. I49; Ramsay, Imjpressions of Turkey, pp.I90, 207-209, 215; Noel Buxton and Rev. Harold Buxton, Travels and Politics inzArmenia (London, I914), pp. 36-37. The Armenian uprisings at Van, Zeytiin, Mus, and Erzurum during the years I860- 1863 are notable exceptions and occurred under extraordinary circumstances. See Nalbandian, Armenian Revolutionary Moz,vemnct,pp. 65-79, for documented outlines of these events. 15 Layard, Discoverics, pp. I3-I6, 20; Cyrus Hamlin, Among the Turks (New York, i878), p. 334; Buxton and Buxton, Travels, pp. viii, 19; Hogarth, WFandering Scholar, p. 149; Eliot, Turkey in Europe, pp. 396-397, 401.

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 470 Robert F. Zeidner of imperial trade and industry far out of proportion to their numbers. Thus, the upper strata of the Armenian community had little interest in revolt or upheaval during the nineteenth century despite the sufferings of their rural brothers in eastern Asia Minor. Even there life was relatively good and secure until, as sug- gested above, the outbreak of war between Turkey and Russia in I877.16 The war precipitated a general collapse of order, such as it was, in the eastern provinces of the empire. Masses of Muslim Circassian and Kurdish nomadic tribesmen took flight in the wake of Russia's advancing armies in the Trans- Caucasus area, passing into Asia Minor il great disorder. The Muslim elite of the Ottoman government naturally felt a deep obligation to grant haven to these tribesmen. Their forebears had been loyal Ottoman subjects before the advance of Russia beyond the Caucasus barrier (commencing in T803). On the other hand, Ottoman administrative and defensive organization in the eastern provinces had long since proved too weak to resist the frontier maraudings of the tribes. This sudden mixture of masses of nomads with the sedentary Armenian farmers and tradesmen of the frontier provinces nevertheless wrought great upheaval in the security of life and property. The resultant milieu mirrored the contemporary struggle for the fencing of grazing lands in the American West. The invading nomads generally bore armis as part of their occupational gear. They were unruly and thus usually pastured their flocks in regions wliere local authority was weak or lax. The remoteness of the Trans-Caucasus area from both Istanbul and St. Petersburg made for equally remote interest, and means, for the maintenance of order there in the councils of both powers concerned. Thus, the Armenians, un- armed and inexperienced in the military arts, suffered every description of outrage. They saw their crops stolen, burned, or trampled by livestock. Tribesmen violated or carried away their women. During winter the nomads even drove them from their homes and villages. To make matters worse, the Circassian and Kurdish tribes already living in eastern Turkey, encouraged by the collapse of local authority, joined in this sport. Murder, robbery, and rape became commonplace events in the Armenian towns and villages, and especially so along the roads between them. Ottoman authorities were too preoccupied with the prosecution of the war to bother with the mniseries of their Armenian subjects. The Russian Army, however, gradually restored order to many areas as it slowly pressed into the easternmost

16 Ali Vehbi Bey, Penscdes ct Souvenirs de l'Ex Sultan Abdul-HamZid (n.p., n.d.), p. 12; Turk Tarih Kurumu Library, Ankara, Atif Hiisni (Hiiseyin) Bey, Abdulhamid'in Hatiralarz MSS, Box IX, No. 14; Ismail Kemal Bey, The Memoirs of IsmiiailKeIal Bey (London, I920), p. 2I; Ramsay, Imipressions, p. I67; Whitman, Turkish Memories, p. I9; Andreas D. Mordt- mann, Stamlbul und das imoderne Tiirkenthtu (Leipzig, I877-I878), I, I29-131, 141, I77-I79; Murad Efendi (Franz von Werner), Tiirkische Ski-zcn, Vol. II (Leipzig, 1877), p. 72; Abdolonyme Ubicini and Pavet de Courteille, Etat present de l'Esmpire Ottomani (Paris, 1876), p. 87; G. G. B. St. Clair and C. A. Brophy, Twelve Years' Study of the Eastern Question (London, I877), pp. I25-134.

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Britain and the laulnchingof the Arm-enianqtuestion 471 provinces of Turkey. Moreover, the Russians, in occupying much of eastern Turkey, set up a more enlightened regime for Muslim and Christian alike than either of them had recently known at the hands of the Porte. Thus, the Armenian villagers and townsmen had cause for discontent with their Ottoman masters when Russia offered peace at San Stefano in March of I878.17 Meanwhile, other, more subtle forces had long been at work to gradually infect all Christian minorities with Western ideals of government by the consent of the governed. Western Christian missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, had been pouring into the Ottoman Empire since 1820. Their numbers had swelled to several thousands by the advent of war with Russia. Frustrated initially in their efforts to win converts among the Muslim peoples of the Empire, they promptly reconcentrated their attention on the task of imlproving (so they apparently thought) the level of life among the Christian communities. Many British, Ameri- can, and German missionaries (levoted their labors to the Gregorian Armenians.18 The results were chaotic for the patriarchate. The olscurantist hierarchy of the Gregorian minority naturally opposed the mlissionaries.The latter posed a grave threat to the authority and vested interests of the formner.Thus, the Patriarchate, in order to strike terror in the hearts of its adherents, restored to summlary excom- munication of those who kept company with the missionaries. The excommunicated elements sought refuge with their newfound benefactors, and a splinter Armenian community was soon born: the Protestant Armenian sect, under the formal pro- tection of Great Britain.19The large Gregorian group remained, to the end of the Empire, the only Christian minority without foreign guardianship. Although the WTesternmissions began modestly with elementary Bible lectures and readings, they soon expanded to establish literacy classes for their unschooled communicants in rural areas. Formal primary schools followed. The consequent development of a complete mission educational system climaxed in the founding of Robert College, in Istanbul, in I86i. In the meantime, the zeal of the missionaries and the generosity of their sponsors in the \est had also yielded hospitals, normal schools, and even Protestant seminaries in the remote provinces of Asia Minor. On the cliplomatic scene in Istanbul, the burgeoning of their missions soon swamped the British and American embassies in the mere business of routine assistance and protection. The missionaries, on the other hand, made

17 Capt. Henry Trotter (British Consul at Erzurum) to Salisbury, Nov. 13, and Dec. 28, 1878, in BSP, 1879, Vol. LXXX, pp. 458, 466; Sir A. H. Layard (British Ambassadorto the Porte) to Salisbury, June I2 and July I, 1879, in ibid., pp. 547-548, 559; LT: April 4, I877, p. io; June II, I878, p. 10; Aug. 31, I878, p. 10; Sept. 24, I878, p. 6; Oct. I5, 1878, p. 4; Pears Forty Years, p. I53; Bryce, Transcaucasia, pp. I37-I39, 343-346, 349, 428-429; Ramsay, Imlpressionls, p. 205. 18 See n. 4 above. 19 Bliss, Turkey, pp. 302-3II ; Ubicini, Letters, II, 206-208; Noel Verney and George Damb- mann, Les puissances Otrangcres dains le Levant (Paris, I900), pp. 31-I45; Hamlin, A4mong the Turks, pp. 24, 29 ff., 37 ff.; George Washburn, Fifty Years in Constantilople (Boston and New York, I909), pp. I-50.

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 472 Robert F. Zeidner

diplomatic negotiations witli the Porte difficult through vociferous, and frequently exaggerated, representations in support of the grievances of their congregations. Thus, the missions lprovided a setting, in the forms of both intellectual atmosphere and physical facilities, for the incubation of daring and ambitious ideas and for the hatching of dangerous plots within their flocks.20 The intellectual leavening of the Ottoman Armenians and, for that matter, of all Armlenians in general during the nineteenth century was by no means restricted to the Protestant segment. Early involvement of Armenians in the trade of the Orient had contributed both to the Armenian "" and to the growth of a prosperous commercial class amnong them. By the turn of the century, thriving colonies of Armienian merchant-bankers had emerged across a broad span of the Old \Vorld, extending frolm ILondon to Calcutta and beyond. Moreover, the gradual displacemient by Armenians of the Plhanariote Greeks from domlinance in the trade of the Ottomanl Empire, following the Greek War of independence, wit- nessed rapid growth and increasing wealth within the a;mira and Armenian petite bourgeoisie classes of Istanbul an(d Izmir. Thus, Armeniian contacts with tlhe West expanded apace, and the continuing diaspora of Armenians fromn Turkey gained force through a growing flow of Armenian youtlh to institutions of higher learning in Christian Europe (particularly to Paris, London, Geneva, Venice, , Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Dorpat). A concurrent expansion of Armenian philanthropic activity in both Turkey and Russian Trans-Caucasia soon yielded exclusively Armenian institutions of learn- ing, in addition to the seminaries of long standing, both in Europe and the home- land. In the latter area, the sclhool systems of all Armenian sects enjoyed simiilar growth and improvement. One school after another opened until, in I866, there were thirty-two schools for boys and fourteen for girls in Istanbul alone. Like other "backward" peoples, the Armenians were seized with a veritable mania for edutcation and information. The first newspaper appeared in Izmir during 1839; and, within the next twenty-five years, Istanbul alone saw the pul)lication of fourteen mnore.-1

20 Bliss, Turkey, pp. 311-323; Washburn, Fifty Years, pp. 76-88; Mary Patrick Mills, A Bosphorus Adventure (Palo Alto, 1934), pp. 28 if., 62 ff.; Bryce, Transcaucasia, PP. 466- 470; Lloyd C. Griscom, Diplohmatically .S'peakin (New York, 1940), PP. 134-135; Edmund Hornby, Aiutobiography (London, 1928), pp. I24-125. Layard had foreseen nationalist plotting within the missionary folds, as reveale( in his l)iscovecries, pp. 348-350. Whitman, Turkish 1Memories, p. 120, reported 621 Protestant schools, serving more than 27,000 students, in Asia Minor (luring his investigatory tril) through the "Armenian" provinces in 1896. 21 Ibid.; Pears, Forty Years, p. 151 ; Jacob Burckhardt, Die Zcit Constantine's des GrosseiL (Basel, I853), p. 125. With tIle forJmation of a formal Protestant millet in 1849, animosity between the Gregorian Patriarchate and thle Armenian Protestants gradually dwindled; and Gregorian students soon began to attend the missionary schools throughout Turkey. For more detailed discourses onI these developments, see Nalbandian, A4rmeniant tRe,olutionary Move- lmerit, pp. 30-40, 48-66; Atamiail, Armncian Community, pp. 70-91 ; Leon D. Megrian, "Ar- menian Life and Thought in the Ottoman Empire between 1839-1863," The ArmenJian Revicw, XVI, 3-63 (Sept. 1063), 33-39; and Ara Caprielian, "H. Ajarian and his 'The Role of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire'," ibid., XXI, 3-83 (Sept. I968), 51---58.

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Britain and the launching of the Armenian question 473

Meanwhile, on the international political front, Turkish Armenian hopes for relief from hardship in the provinces-even for autonomy on the order of that granted the Christian Maronites of Lebanon in I86o-rose when General Skobeleff, tle Russian commander at San Stefano, granted an audience to the Gregorian Patriarch, Narses Varjabelian, during the peace negotiations started there to end the war of 1877-78. As a result of Armenian grievances presented by Varjabedian, Russia wrote into Article XVI of the peace pact a demand for sweeping reforms in the rule of Christian minorities in the eastern provinces as a condition for her withdrawal therefrom. Although Britain and Austria-Hungary, in pursuit of their traditional policies of blocking Russian expansion toward the Mediterranean Sea, quickly intervened to abrogate the Treaty of San Stefano, the Armenians found new assurance when the powers invited an unofficial delegation from the Gregorian Patriarchate to attend the subsequent Congress of Berlin, convened in mid-1878 to forge a new peace treaty.22 The Treaty of Berlin, signed on July 13, 1878, disappointed the Armenians sorely, however. It provided for the inmmediatewithdrawal of Russian troops from eastern Turkey, in (leference to British demands. Although the powers did not reject the issue of relief for the beleaguered Armenians, they successively diluted the stringent provisions of Article XVI of the San Stefano agreement to produce Article LXI of the new pact. The latter article obliged the Porte to pursue reforms andIsecurity for its Christian subjects in Turkish Armenia under the supervision of the Great Powers. But the nature of this supervision remained undefined. The new treaty failed, moreover, to set up any sort of administrative machinery for such supervision. Thus, it appeared that the Porte, noted for lethargy and for tolerant disinterest toward the plight of the Armenians, stood free to reform or to neglect its eastern provinces as it saw fit.23 British public opinion, long conditioned to sympathy for the Armenians by the

22 Abdul Hamid, Deftcr, pp. II9, 14I; Sir Edwin Pears, The Life of Abdul Hatlid (New York, I917), p. 218; Minasse Tcheraz (an Armenian delegate to the Congress of Berlin) to LT, n.d., in LT, April 6, I890, p. 6. A copy of the Armenian petition, presented to the Great Powers at the Berlin Congress, is available in Antoine de La Jonquiere,Ifistoire de l'Empire Ottomanl(Paris, I881), pp. 39-44. 23 The text of Article LXI of the Treaty of Berlin is reproducedin Hurewitz, Diplomlacy, p. 190. For the personal observationsof a contemporaryOttoman bureaucrat (and historian) involved in the implementationof the treaty, see Ali Fuat Tiirkgeldi, Mcsail-i Muhizmmiln-i Siyasiyye, Vol. II (Ankara, 1957), pp. 86-87. The leader of the Arrmeniandelegation, Gre- gorian Archbishop Mekertitch Khrimian (Khrimian Hairig), explained the failure of his lelegation, and its mission at Berlin, to his congregation in Constantinoplein his famous "Sermonof the Iron Spoon."This sermon is reproducedin toto in A. Asvadzadrian,"Armenia before the Revolutionary Movement," The Armenian Review, XVI, 2-62 (May I963), 55-56. In short, Khrimian told his flock that Armenia, in contrast with the Christian states of the Balkans, did not win autonomy from the Porte because no Armenian blood had been shed in the cause of freedom. He went on to say that the only hope to gain autonomy lay in sending masses of educated Armenian youth to the provinces-to raise the spirit, economic welfare, and political awareness of the Armenian peasantry. This sermon marked the de facto launch- ing of the "backto the provinces"movement among the urban element of Turco-Armenians.

This content downloaded from 92.44.165.91 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 10:21:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions