New approaches to the Hamidian massacres (1894-1897)

Bibliographical essay

 

By Owen Miller & Jelle Verheij

 

The enormous public interest in the Hamidian massacres in late 19th century Europe and North America resulted in a flood of newspaper articles, pamphlets, and books. Most of these highly biased sources are only of interest for reconstructing Western images and policies. Edwin Munsell Bliss’ Turkey and the Armenian atrocities. New York: Hubbard & Young, 1896) and Frederick Davis Greene’s Armenian massacres (Philadephia & Chicago: American Oxford Publishing Co., 1896) may be mentioned as early, reasonably solid depictions of the massacres. For the numerous contemporary publications the bibliography by George Shirinian is useful (The Armenian massacres of 1894-1897: A bibliography, 1999). Soon after the events, several European states published collections of documents, of which the French Livres Jaunes (Documents diplomatiques. 1897. Affaires arméniennes; projets de réformes dans l'empire Ottoman, 1893-1897 and supplement: Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1897) and a number of volumes in the British Parliamentary Papers (also known as Blue Books), are the most relevant (Correspondence relative to the Armenian Question and Reports from her Majesty's consular officers in Asiatic Turkey. London: February 1896; Correspondence relating to the Asiatic provinces of Turkey. Reports by Vice-consul Fitzmaurice from Birejik, Ourfa, Adiaman, and Behesni. London 1896; Further Correspondence respecting the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey and Events in Constantinople. London: January, 1897). Documentation of the Sasun massacre can be found in Correspondence relating to the Asiatic provinces of Turkey. Part I. Events at Sassoon, and Commission of Inquiry at Moush (London: September 1895). In the years following the massacres, sympathizers with the Armenian cause also issued collections of primary sources. Some of these, such as Les Massacres d'Arménie. Témoignages des Victimes (1896) are still of value to researchers.

            An interesting separate genre are the accounts of relief workers and travelers who visited the eastern provinces after the massacres, such as America's Relief Expedition, containing reports from American Red Cross workers (Washington: no publisher, 1896), Letters from the Scenes of the Recent Massacres in Armenia by the couple J. Rendel and Helen B. Harris (London: James Nisbet, 1897), and George H. Hepworth's Through Armenia on horseback (London: Isbister, 1898). H.F.B. Lynch's Armenia, Travels and Studies (vol.2. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902) also contains valuable observations on the state of the region. Other notable travelers include Ludovic de Contenson (Chrétiens et Musulmans. Voyage et Études. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1901), Ferdinand Brockes (Quer durch Kleinasien. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1900), and Paul Rohrbach's Vom Kaukasus zum Mittelmeer (Leipzig & Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1903).

            One of the few contemporary works which had a major impact on the discourse is Johannes Lepsius, Armenien und Europa. Eine Anklageschrift (Berlin-Westend, Faber & Co., 1897), translated into several languages (including English: Armenia and Europe. An Indictment. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1897) and recently republished in Johannes Lepsius Schriften zur Armenischen Frage in 4. Bänden (edited by Hacik R. Gazer, Roy Knocke and Bartholomäus Kühn. Leiden etc: Brill, 2025). Lepsius's work must be seen in its historical context. It was anything but a critical investigation. Steeped in essentialist and Orientalist prejudices about "the Turks" and Islam, his book was an "indictment" driven by outrage at the treatment of Armenians and indifference to their fate in his native Germany.  Lepsius's projection of the massacres as a well-organized and systematic state project had a great influence on later writers, most notably genocide scholar Robert Melson, who uncritically adopted his assumptions in a widely read research article (‘A theoretical inquiry into the Armenian massacres of 1894-1896’, in: Comparative studies in society and history 24/2 (July 1982): 481-509). Lepsius' count of the number of victims became more or less the norm, without ever being subjected to critical scrutiny. It would not be an exaggeration to classify "Armenia and Europe" as an overrated and outdated work, which probably remained important only in the absence of any replacement or criticism.

            After the First World War, silence prevailed on the Armenian Question. The discussions of Fridtjof Nansen (Armenia and the Near East. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928, pp. 286-294) and Hrant Pasdermadjian (Histoire de l'Arménie. Paris: H. Samuelian, 1971, 3rd ed., pp. 346-371) are among the more detailed accounts. In general, the few works on modern Armenian history that have appeared have discussed the Hamidian massacres only very briefly. When the quest for recognition of the Armenian Genocide began in the 1960s, and more books on Armenian history began to appear, their authors had little to draw upon in describing the 1894-97 massacres other than the existing older literature. Their brief, almost standardized accounts of the Hamidian massacres painfully exposed the lack of original historical research. Meanwhile students of Turkish and Ottoman history kept almost completely silent on any aspect of anti-Armenian violence.

            Two research articles by Jelle Verheij published in 1998-99 (“Les frères de terre et d'eau' : sur le rôle des Kurdes dans les massacres arméniens de 1894-1896", in: Bruinessen, M. van & Blau, Joyce (eds), Islam des Kurdes (special issue of Les Annales de l'Autre Islam 5, Paris, 1998, pp.225-276) and "Die armenischen Massaker von 1894-1896. Anatomie und Hintergründe einer Krise', in: Kieser, Hans-Lukas (ed.), Die armenische Frage und die Schweiz (1896-1923) (Zurich, Chronos, 1999) pp.69-132). were the first publications on the Hamidian massacres fully devoted to the subject in a century. After 2005, driven by the professionalization of Armenian and Ottoman studies and the "rediscovery" and freer discussion of the Armenian question during the first years of AKP rule in Turkey, critical research on various aspects of the massacres boomed. Much of fresh research on the Armenian question has been done by historians of Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish descent who were born or came from Turkey. Extensive research has been done by Edip Gölbaşı, whose comprehensive article on the main issues of the events of 1894-97, may classify as the first overview in Turkish by an academic historian not affiliated with the official discourse (“1895–1896 Katliamları: Doğu Vilayetlerinde Cemaatler Arası ‘Şiddet İklimi’ ve Ermeni Karşıtı Ayaklanmalar,” in 1915: Siyaset, Tehcir ve Soykırım, ed. Oktay Özel and Fikret Adanır (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2015). In a later article, the author analyzes in more detail the perceptions of state officials and the Ottoman narrative of the massacres (‘The Official Conceptualization of the anti-Armenian Riots of 1895-1897: Bureaucratic Terminology, Official Ottoman Narrative, and Discourses of Revolutionary Provocation’, in: Études arméniennes contemporaines 10 (2018): 33-62). A number of recent articles have focused on specific aspects of the Hamidian massacres. Selim Deringil has done pioneering research on the many forced conversions that took place during the massacres ('“The Armenian Question is Finally Closed”: Mass conversions of Armenians in Anatolia during the Hamidian massacres of 1895-1897', in: Comparative Studies in Society and History 51/2 (2009): 344-371). Nazan Maksudyan focused on one aspect of the aftermath - the thousands of Armenian children orphaned by the massacres and the orphanages established by the Armenian Patriarchate (‘“Being saved to serve”: Armenian orphans of 1894-1896 and interested relief in Missionary Orphanages’, in Turcica 42 (2010): 47-88). Ayşenur Korkmaz addressed the important issue of gendered violence during the massacres, which was much commented upon by many horrified contemporaries, but has remained largely undiscussed in historiography ever since (‘The Hamidian massacres: ‘Gendered violence, biopolitics and national honour’, in Astourian, Stephan & Kévorkian, Raymond (eds), Collective and State Violence in Turkey (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2021), 97-121). Deborah Mayersen focused on forms of Armenian resistance to the massacres. Symbolizing the new prominence given to the study of the 1894-97 massacres, in 2018 Études arméniennes contemporaines devoted two entire issues of the journal to the subject, with introductions by Boris Adjemian and Mikaël Nichanian and contributions by Edip Gölbaşı, Ali Sipahi, Owen Miller, Jelle Verheij, Deborah Mayersen, David Gaunt, Oded Y. Steinberg, Vazken Khatchig Davidian, Selim Deringil, and Stefan Ihrig. American-Armenian Professor Ronald Grigor Suny summarized the contributions in ‘The Hamidian Massacres, 1894-1897: Disinterring a Buried History’.

            The bulk of recent scholarship consists of case studies of violence in specific localities. Several authors have focused on the first episode of the Hamidian massacres, the revolt and massacre of Sasun (1894), continuing a long trend in historiography, as these events have always attracted more interest than the later, more widespread violence. In an early article that has not received the attention it deserves, Rebecca Morris examines the reports of the official Ottoman inquiry for clues to the violence (‘A Critical Examination of the Sassoun Commission of Inquiry Report’, Armenian Review 47 (2001): 79-112). Since the inquiry has mostly been regarded as an Ottoman smokescreen, this is an important rehabilitation of these sources. Two authors, Raymond Kévorkian (‘The Armenian Population of Sassoun and the Demographic Consequences of the 1894 Massacres’, Armenian Review 47 (2001): 41-53) and Tigran Martirosyan (‘The 1894 Sasun Massacre: Revisiting the number of victims’, in Etudes arméniennes contemporaines (hereafter abbreviated as ÉAC) 14 (2022): 7-53), dealt respectively with the demographic consequences and the number of victims of the Sasun massacre. Mehmet Polatel (‘The complete ruin of a district: The Sasun massacre of 1894’, The Ottoman East in the nineteenth century: Societies, identities, and politics, ed. Ali Sipahi, Dzovinar Derderian and Yaşar Tolga Cora (London, I.B. Tauris, 2016) 179-198) used Ottoman documents from the Yıldız Palace archives to shed light on the background of the harsh Ottoman repression in Sasun. His research illustrates that Ottoman documentation does not necessarily support Turkish official theses. Two other historians, who worked extensively on Sasun are Owen Miller and Toygun Altıntaş. Miller’s Sasun 1894: Mountains, Missionaries and Massacres at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Columbia University, 2015) is not just a case study, but places the events in the much broader historical context of Ottoman centralization and Armenian resistance in the Muş region, examines the main sources in detail, and contrasts the main Ottoman and Armenian/Western narratives. On the same subject Miller also published ‘Rethinking the violence in the Sasun mountains (1893-1894)’ ÉAC 10 (2o18): 97-123). Altıntaş studied the events in Sasun over a longer period (‘The Abode of Sedition: Resistance, Repression and Revolution in Sasun, 1891-1904’ in: Age of Rogues, Rebels, Revolutionaries and Racketeers at the Frontiers of Empire, ed. Ramazan Hakkı Öztan and Alp Yenen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021) 178-207).

            Jelle Verheij's article on Diyarbekir (‘Diyarbekir and the Armenian crisis of 1895’, in

Social relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir, 1870-1915, ed. Joost Jongerden and Jelle Verheij (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012) 85-145) is the first detailed case study of one of the 1895 massacres, based on Ottoman and non-Ottoman evidence, including the published reports of a key eyewitness, the French consul Meyrier (Claire Mouradian & Michel Durand-Meyrier (eds), Les Massacres de Diarbékir, Paris: L’inventaire, 2000, summarised by Giancario Casà, ‘Les massacres arméniens de 1895 à Diyarbekir à travers le témoignage du vice-consul Gustave Meyrier’, in ÉAC 8 (2016): 91-118). Since then, other case studies have been added. Ali Sipahi provided a detailed description and discussion of the Harput massacre of 1895 (‘Narrative Construction in the 1895 massacres in Harput: The Coming and Disappearance of the Kurds’, ÉAC 10 (2018): 63-95). Deborah Mayersen summarised the reports of American missionaries on this massacre ( ‘The 1895-1896 Armenian Massacres in Harput: Eyewitness Account’, ÉAC 10 (2018): 161-183). Edip Gölbaşı examined the role of local authorities in the Sivas massacre in his ‘The official conceptualization of the anti-Armenian riots of 1895-1897’, (ÉAC 10 (2018): 33-62). One of the most important recent urban case studies is undoubtedly Ümit Kurt's discussion of Ayntab. Drawing on Armenian, British, Ottoman and other sources, he describes the events and their historical background, emphasizing the socio-economic conditions that led to the violence. The most recent addition is a case study of the 1895 massacres in the Bitlis region by Mehmet Polatel (‘The Armenian Massacre of 1895 in Bitlis Town’, Kurdish Studies 9/1 (2021): 59-76) . Finally, several authors have dealt with the Constantinople massacre of September 30, 1895 and the much wider violence of a year later ( Notably Ethem Eldem, ’26 Ağustos 1896 “Banka Vakası” ve 1896 “Ermeni olayları”’, in: İmparatorluğun Çöküş Döneminde Osmanlı Ermeniler. Bilimsel Sorumluluk ve Demokrasi Sorunları. 23-25 Eylül 2005, ed. Fahri Aral (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2011) 125-152, and Sinan Dinçer, ‘The Armenian massacre in Istanbul (1896)’ Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geschiedenis 10/4 (2013): 20-45. Apart from the Sasun region, case studies on the massacres in the countryside are rare. Jelle Verheij's study of events in two districts of Bitlis province (‘The year of the firman: the 1895 massacres in Hizan and Şirvan (Bitlis vilayet)’, ÉAC 10 (2018): 125-159) is the only attempt so far.

            Several authors have discussed the reverberations of the Hamidian massacres in American and European press, politics and public opinion. We can mention here the researches of Davide Rodogno (Against massacre Humanitarian interventions in the Ottoman Empire 1815-1914, New Jersey/ Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2012, chapters 4 and 8), Ann Marie Wilson (‘In the name of God, Civilization and Humanity: The United States and the Armenian massacres of the 1890s', Le Mouvement Social 327 (April-June 2009): 27-44), Karine V. Walther (‘The United States and the Armenian massacres, 1894-1896’, chapter 7 of Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821-1921. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), Margaret L. Anderson (‘A responsibility to protest ? the public, the Powers and the Armenians in the era of Abdülhamit II’, Journal of Genocide Research 17/3 (2015): 259-283 and ‘“Down in Turkey, far away”: Human rights, the Armenian massacres, and Orientalism in Wilhemine Germany’, the Journal of Modern History 79/1 (March 2007) 80-111), Stefan Ihrig (Justifying genocide. Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler, Cambridge Mass,/ London: Harvard University Press, 2016), Stéphanie Prévost (‘L’opinion publique brittanique et la Question arménienne (1889-1896)’, ÉAC 8 (2016) 51-90), Michelle Tusan (The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide. Humanitarianism and Imperial Politics from Gladstone to Churchill. London/ New York: IB Tauris, 2017), Houssine Alloul & Henk De Smaele (‘L’Arménie dans la politique et l’imagination belge de l’avant-guerre’ Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 97/3 (2019): 809-840), Dirk Roodzant (De Armeense gruwelen. Nederland en de vervolging van Armeniërs in het Ottomaanse rijk 1889-1923. Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2021, 81-115) and Hans-Lukas Kieser (Die armenische Frage und die Schweiz (1896-1923), ed. Hans-Lukas-Kieser, Zürich: Chronos, 1999).

            Despite the booming research on the 1894-97 massacres in recent years monographs on main wave of massacres in 1895-6 remain rare. The dissertations of Edip Gölbaşı (The Anti-Armenian Riots of 1895-1897: The “Climate of Violence” and Intercommunal Conflict in Istanbul and the Eastern Anatolian Provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Fraser University,2018) and Jelle Verheij ('Armenian massacres of the Hamidian period, 1894-1897. An empirical inquiry’, Amsterdam University, 2022), of which an abridged version is to be published by IB Tauris, fill an important gap.

            Due to strict censorship during the Hamidian period, no Ottoman-Turkish publications about the events exist. A collection of documents presented by the Minister of Police Hüseyin Nazım Pasha to Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1897 ("Ermeni târih-i vukûâtı") remained almost unknown until Mehmed Hocaoğlu in his Arşiv vesikalarıyla tarihte Ermeni mezâlimi ve Ermeniler (İstanbul: Anda Dağıtım, 1976) published parts of it, adapted to modern Turkish. The first publication of the original text was only in 1994 Ermeni olayları tarihi, Ankara: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü). Nazım Pasha framed the events as an Armenian revolt while minimizing references to violence by Ottoman Muslims. This attitude has always remained the hallmark of the Turkish “official” historiography (“resmi tarih”). Esat Uras, considered the father of the official history of the Armenian Question, in his Tarihte Ermeniler ve Ermeni Meselesi, İstanbul: Beige Yayınları, 1976 (First published in 1950; translated into English as The Armenians in history and the Armenian Question, İstanbul: Foundation for the Establishment and Promotion of Centers for Historical Research and Documentation, 1988) even managed to reduce the treatment of the issue to a few lines, scattered over the voluminous work.

            It is a little known fact that in response to the boom of international scholarly attention to the Armenian question, the character of publications in Turkey has also changed recently. The last two decades have seen an increasing number of publications on the Hamidian massacres. Based almost exclusively on Ottoman sources, most of these works maintain the "Armenian rebellion" as the dominant framework, coupled with a lack of attention to Muslim violence and a lack of dialogue with the divergent findings of non-Turkish research publications. Some examples: chapter 3 of Oktay Bozan, Diyarbakır vilayetinde Ermeniler ve Ermeni olayları (1878-1920), Konya: Çizgi, 2013 (about Diyarbekir); Ramazan Erhan Güllü, ’16 Kasım 1895 Antep Ermeni İsyanı’, İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi 51 (2011): 123-164 (about Ayntab/ Gaziantep); Yunus Özger, 1895 Bayburt Ermeni ayaklanmaları, İstanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, 2007 (about Bayburt); Ermeni Ayaklanmaları Sempozyumu (1894-1909) (23 Ocak 2014, Ankara). Bildiriler. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 121-153 (contributions to a conference entirely devoted to the “Armenian revolts” of the Hamidian era). One of the few, and rather unknown, works in written in Turkish that cannot be classified as “official history” is independent researcher Nihat Karademir’s Korku ve Umut. II Abdülhamid dönemi Kürt-Ermeni ilişkileri, Istanbul: Çıra Basın Tatın, 2015.

            Finally, as part of the general upsurge of Ottoman and Armenian studies in recent years, researches were published that shed essential light on the historical background of the Hamidian massacres, touching on subjects like Armenian-Ottoman-Kurdish relations, Ottoman state policies in the area, social-economic developments and the development of Armenian political activism. Just a few of the most relevant titles can be mentioned. Janet Klein’s The margins of Empire. Kurdish militias in the Ottoman tribal zone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011) is the foremost study on the Hamidiye, the tribal cavalry often portrayed as the main perpetrators of the massacres. The work of İlkay Yılmaz deftly examines the Hamidian violence through the lens of internal colonialism and political geography. (“Internal colonization, political geography and security in the Ottoman Eastern Provinces (1895–1899),” Middle East Studies, 2023). The work of Varak Ketsemanian is important for his re-appraisal of the Armenian revolutionary movement (among other titles: ‘Ideologies, Paradoxes, and Fedayis in the Late Ottoman Empire: Historiographical Challenges and Methodological Problems in the Study of the Armenian Revolutionary Movement (1890-1896)’, in: Armenians and Kurds in the Late Ottoman Empire, eds. Ümit Kurt & Ara Sarafian,. Fresno: California State University, 2020. pp. 119-160). For the social-economic background the work of Yaşar Tonga Cora (by example ‘Doğu'da Kürt-Ermeni çatışmasının sosyoekonomik arkaplanı’, in: 1915: Siyaset, Tehcir, Soykırımı, eds. Fikret Adanır and Oktay Özel. İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları 2015, 126-139) is recommendable. Zozan Pehlivan’s studies on the effects on climate changes on agriculture and pastoralism in the Ottoman eastern provinces are important to understand the background of tribal anti-Armenian violence (Most recent publication: The political ecology of violence: Peasants and pastoralists in the last Ottoman century. Cambridge University Press, 2024).  A nuanced environmental approach to the history of violence is also undertaken by Matthew Ghazarian (“A Climate of Confessionalization: Famine and Difference in the Late Ottoman Empire,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (2022), 54, 484-504).