This book gives an accurate and reasonably complete narrative account of the Armenian events of 1909 and their aftermath and provides an interpretive framework that makes some sense out of this episode in Ottoman history.

The purpose of the book is twofold: first, to give an accurate and reasonably complete narrative account of the Armenian events of 1909 and their aftermath in the province of Adana and the developments leading up to and following them; and equally importantly, to provide an interpretive framework that makes some sense out of this episode in Ottoman history. The book opens with an exposition of the geographical and economic importance of the province of Adana and its vicinity in the Ottoman Empire. This is followed by a broad demographical overview of the region. The position of the Armenians in Adana at the turn of the twentieth century, their linguistical and educational characteristics, their role in the economic and social life, and their schooling effort in the province are all examined. Further, the major causes of the outbreak in the area in 1908-1909, the dimensions of the disorders in April 1909, and the responsibility for the outrages are explored along with the reestablishing of order in the district in May-August 1909. A description and an analysis of Cemal Paşa’s work of humanitarian relief and reconstruction when he was provincial governor in Adana and a survey of post-1911 Adana and Cemal Paşa’s governorship at Baghdad are also included in this study.

Dadrian, a former professor at SUNY, Geneseo, currently directs a genocide study project supported by the Guggenheim Foundation. The present study analyzes the devastating wartime destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire as the cataclysmic culmination of a historical process involving the progressive Turkish decimation of the Armenians through intermittent and incremental massacres. In addition to the excellent general bibliography there is an annotated bibliography of selected books used in the study. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A Financial Times Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Book of the Year A Spectator Book of the Year “A landmark contribution to the study of these epochal events.” —Times Literary Supplement “Brilliantly researched and written...casts a careful eye upon the ghastly events that took place in the final decades of the Ottoman empire, when its rulers decided to annihilate their Christian subjects...Hitler and the Nazis gleaned lessons from this genocide that they then applied to their own efforts to extirpate Jews.” —Jacob Heilbrun, The Spectator Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region’s Christian minorities. By 1924, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, once nearly a quarter of the population, had been reduced to 2 percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. The Thirty-Year Genocide is the first account to show that all three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia’s Christian population. Despite the dramatic swing from the Islamizing autocracy of the sultan to the secularizing republicanism of the post–World War I period, the nation’s annihilationist policies were remarkably constant, with continual recourse to premeditated mass killing, homicidal deportation, forced conversion, and mass rape. And one thing more was a constant: the rallying cry of jihad. While not justified under the teachings of Islam, the killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation. “A subtle diagnosis of why, at particular moments over a span of three decades, Ottoman rulers and their successors unleashed torrents of suffering.” —Bruce Clark, New York Times Book Review

The Great Game of Genocide addresses the origins, development and aftermath of the Armenian genocide in a wide-ranging reappraisal based on primary and secondary sources from all the major parties involved. Rejecting the determinism of many influential studies, and discarding polemics on all sides, it founds its interpretation of the genocide in the interaction between the Ottoman empire in its decades of terminal decline, the self-interested policies of the European imperial powers, and the agenda of some Armenian nationalists in and beyond Ottoman territory. Particular attention is paid to the international context of the process of ethnic polarization that culminated in the massive destruction of 1912-23, and especially the obliteration of the Armenian community in 1915-16. The opening chapters of the book examine the relationship between the great power politics of the 'eastern question' from 1774, the narrower politics of the 'Armenian question' from the mid-nineteenth century, and the internal Ottoman questions of reforming the complex social and ethnic order under intense external pressure. Later chapters include detailed case studies of the role of Imperial Germany during the First World War (reaching conclusions markedly different to the prevailing orthodoxy of German complicity in the genocide); the wartime Entente and then the uncomfortable postwar Anglo-French axis; and American political interest in the Middle East in the interwar period which led to a policy of refusing to recognize the genocide. The book concludes by explaining the ongoing international denial of the genocide as an extension of the historical 'Armenian question', with many of the same considerations governing modern European-American-Turkish interaction as existed prior to the First World War.

This book provides a comprehensive picture of Armeno-Turkish relations for the brief period of Ottoman Constitutional rule between 1908 and 1914. Kaligian integrates internal documents of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and existing research on the last years of the empire, as well as the archives of the British, American, and German diplomatic corps. By reducing the overemphasis on central government policies and by describing unofficial contacts, political relations, and provincial administration and conditions, Kaligian provides a unified account of this key period in Ottoman history. Kaligian sets out to resolve many of the conflicting conclusions in the current historiography—including the most central issue, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation relations with the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress. It is impossible to obtain a true picture of Armeno-Turkish relations without an accurate analysis of their two leading parties. This study finds that the ARF was torn between maintaining relations with a CUP that had failed to implement promised reforms and was doing little to prevent increasing attacks on the Armenian population, or break off relations thus ending any realistic chance for the constitutional system to succeed. The party continued to stake its reputation and resources on the success of constitutional government even after the trauma of the 1909 Adana massacres. The decisive issue was the failure of land restitution. This book sets the record straight in terms of understanding Armeno-Turkish relations during this short but pivotal period. Kaligian’s study, the first of its kind, shows that the party’s internal deliberations support the conclusion that it did remain loyal and contradicts the view that the party’s only aim was to incite a rebellion against Ottoman rule. The author has done an excellent job of leading the reader through this rich history, using primary source information to bridge the gaps from theory, to analysis, to evidence.