Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question Author(S): Robert F
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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 Armenians 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 Ottoman Empire.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 Armenia (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 Balkans 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. Russia 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-Caucasus 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.