First published in 1977. Although hundreds of books have been published on the Armenian question and massacres, very little is known about their services in the cultural, economic and administrative life and development of the Ottoman Empire. This study is an investigation into the contribution by Armenians to Ottoman public life from 1860, when the Armenian community in Turkey was given a new legislative Constitution on the basis of Tanzimat (Reforms) until 1908, when the young Turks seized power and there followed a bitterly fanatic policy of intolerance which had tragic consequences for both the Armenians and the Turks. The author has concentrated his investigations on the eastern provinces of Anatolia, which earlier formed the western part of historic Armenia and which in the diplomatic language of the nineteenth century were referred to as ‘provinces inhabited by Armenians’. To these he has added the provinces of Syria, close to the neighbouring Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, and where, especially in and around Aleppo, old Armenian communities had settled. Both in Anatolia and Syria, the Armenians were employed in various administrative, judicial, economic and secretarial fields and, to a lesser extent, in technical affairs, agriculture, education and public health. The author shows how this contribution was made in spite of the fact that for the Armenians these were years of transition from their established status as a favoured Christian millet to the tragic insecurity of a hunted people.

The final years of the Ottoman Empire were catastrophic ones for its non-Turkish, non-Muslim minorities. From 1913 to 1923, its rulers deported, killed, or otherwise persecuted staggering numbers of citizens in an attempt to preserve “Turkey for the Turks,” setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide in pursuit of political ends while largely escaping accountability. While this brutal history is most widely known in the case of the Armenian genocide, few appreciate the extent to which the Empire’s Assyrian and Greek subjects suffered and died under similar policies. This comprehensive volume is the first to broadly examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion, analyzing the similarities and differences among them and giving crucial context to present-day calls for recognition.

One hundred years after the deportations and mass murder of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and other peoples in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the history of the Armenian genocide is a victim of historical distortion, state-sponsored falsification, and deep divisions between Armenians and Turks. Working together for the first time, Turkish, Armenian, and other scholars present here a compelling reconstruction of what happened and why. This volume gathers the most up-to-date scholarship on Armenian genocide, looking at how the event has been written about in Western and Turkish historiographies; what was happening on the eve of the catastrophe; portraits of the perpetrators; detailed accounts of the massacres; how the event has been perceived in both local and international contexts, including World War I; and reflections on the broader implications of what happened then. The result is a comprehensive work that moves beyond nationalist master narratives and offers a more complete understanding of this tragic event.

Avoiding the sterile "was-it-genocide-or-not" debate, this book will open a new chapter in this contentious controversy and may help achieve a long-overdue reconciliation of Armenians and Turks.