The Lions of Marash is an eye-witness account by an American Near East Relief official of the tragic events which resulted in the annihilation of the Armenian population of Marash, in Central Anatolia, following World War I. On 10 February 1920, the French garrison at Marash withdrew abruptly under cover of darkness, thus abandoning more than twenty thousand Armenians to the Turkish Nationalist forces. The French pullout caused considerable embarrassment in Paris and roused a storm of angry protest in England and the United States, but for the Armenians of Marash, and all of Cilicia, it led to renewed massacre and to final exodus. American philanthropy administered through Near East Relief, successor organization to the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, saved thousands of starving Armenian women and children from Turkish marauders. Workshops and other rehabilitative establishments built by ACRNE and NER slightly mitigated the bitter disappointments arising from the American refusal to ensure the Armenian people a collective future by accepting a protective mandate over the independent Armenian state that had been sanctioned by the Paris Peace Conference. In Cilicia NER worked among the repatriates for four years and, after the total Armenian exodus in 1922, attempted to assist the refugee throngs to resettle in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and other lands of the Middle East. Among the scores of men and women who responded to the ACRNE call for volunteers in 1919 was Stanley E. Kerr, then an officer in the United States Army Sanitary Corps. First serving at Aleppo in a multiplicity of positions, including clinical biochemist, and photographer, Kerr transferred in the autumn of 1919 to Marash, where he took charge of American relief operations after the French withdrawal. In view of the fact that many Turks regarded the Americans as collaborators with the French and Armenians, it was at no small risk that Kerr and his courageous colleagues stayed at their posts to help the thousands of Armenians whom the French had deserted. Indeed, the uncertainties of a hostage-like existence did not end until Kerr departed for Beirut with the last caravan of Armenian orphans in 1922. Now, fifty years after leaving Cilicia, Dr. Kerr presents his account of the happenings of Marash. Although his personal experiences form the basis for narrative, the author has also utilized the studies and memoirs of French officers, and priests, Turkish military historians, and Armenian survivors, particularly prominent Protestant and Catholic spokesmen.

There is a great deal of interest in the history of Armenia since its renewed independence in the 1990s and the ongoing debate about the genocide - an interest that informs the strong desire of a new generation of Armenian Americans to learn more about their heritage and has led to greater solidarity in the community. By integrating themes such as war, geopolitics, and great leaders, with the less familiar cultural themes and personal stories, this book will appeal to general readers and travellers interested in the region.

As revolution swept over Russia and empires collapsed in the final days of World War I, Azerbaijan and neighbouring Georgia and Armenia proclaimed their independence in May 1918. During the ensuing two years of struggle for independence, military endgames, and treaty negotiations, the diplomatic representatives of Azerbaijan struggled to gain international recognition and favourable resolution of the territorial sovereignty of the country. This brief but eventful episode came to an end when the Red Army entered Baku in late April 1920. Drawing on archival documents from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia, United States, France, and Great Britain, the accomplished historian, Jamil Hasanli, has produced a comprehensive and meticulously documented account of this little-known period. He narrates the tumultuous path of the short-lived Azerbaijani state toward winning international recognition and reconstructs a vivid image of the Azeri political elite’s quest for nationhood after the collapse of the Russian colonial system, with a particular focus on the liberation of Baku from Bolshevik factions, relations with regional neighbours, and the arduous road to recognition of Azerbaijan’s independence by the Paris Peace Conference. Providing a valuable insight into the past of the South Caucasus region and the dynamics of the post-World War I era, this book will be an essential addition to scholars and students of Central Asian Studies and the Caucasus, History, Foreign Policy and Political Studies.

State building processes in the Caucasus are influenced by the culture of the Caucasus, and previous experiences with state building after World War I. The conflicts which erupted at the time have influenced territorial claims. The role of foreign powers as Russia, the United States, Turkey, Germany is considerable in the region. Divide and rule policy of Joseph Stalin is another factor which describes existing animosities between peoples in the Caucasus. Since 1989 a transition process, or state building process, has started in the North and the South Caucasus. This book gives an in-depth analysis of the backgrounds of the conflicts, including activities by IGO's and NGOs, and the developments in international law with regard to state building practice.

The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) was a unique, bottom-up, and a fleeting display of political unity and federalism among the main Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian political factions between 22 April 1918, when it declared its independence, and 26 May 1918, when it was dissolved and replaced by the three nation-states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Focusing on a crucial but poorly understood moment in the modern history of the Caucasus at the end of the First World War, this book offers a systematic, contextually-rich, and multi-perspectival—Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Ottoman, German, British, American, Italian, Bolshevik, Ukrainian and North Caucasian—account of the TDFR, drawing on contributions (with the new material from archives in Tbilisi, Grozny, Yerevan, Baku, Istanbul, Berlin, London, Washington D.C.) by a new generation of historians and scholars working on the region. The book argues that despite its month-long existence in this geopolitically volatile region, the TDFR, with and its federative nature and the various discussions about federalism and federation that it provoked, continued to have an appeal for Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians as well as for the Great Powers well beyond its dissolution. Moreover, the experience of the TDFR reifies federalism as a key political concept in the modern history of the Caucasus. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Caucasus Survey.

From the Author of Frida, the Moving and Heroic Story of One of the Central Painters of the Twentieth Century Born in Turkey around 1900, Vosdanik Adoian escaped the massacres of Armenians in 1915 only to watch his mother die of starvation and his family scatter in their flight from the Turks. Arriving in America in 1920, Adoian invented the pseudonym Arshile Gorky-and obliterated his past. Claiming to be a distant cousin of the novelist Maxim Gorky, he found work as an art teacher and undertook a program of rigorous study, schooling himself in the modern painters he most admired, especially Cézanne and Picasso. By the early forties, Gorky had entered his most fruitful period and developed the style that is seen as the link between European modernism and American abstract expressionism. His masterpieces influenced the great generation of American painters in the late forties, even as Gorky faced a series of personal catastrophes: a studio fire, cancer, and a car accident that temporarily paralyzed his painting arm. Further demoralized by the dissolution of his seven-year marriage, Gorky hanged himself in 1948. A sympathetic, sensitive account of artistic and personal triumph as well as tragedy, Hayden Herrera's biography is the first to interpret Gorky's work in depth. The result of more than three decades of scholarship-and a lifelong engagement with Gorky's paintings-Arshile Gorky traces the progress from apprentice to master of the man André Breton called "the most important painter in American history."