The United States and the Armenian Genocide: History, Memory, Politics

By Julien Zarifian

During the first World War, over a million Armenians were killed as Ottoman Turks embarked on a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing. Scholars have long described these massacres as genocide, one of Hitler’s prime inspirations for the Holocaust, yet the United States did not officially recognize the Armenian Genocide until 2021. 
 
This is the first book to examine how and why the United States refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide until the early 2020s. Although the American government expressed sympathy towards the plight of the Armenians in the 1910s and 1920s, historian Julien Zarifian explores how, from the 1960s, a set of geopolitical and institutional factors soon led the United States to adopt a policy of genocide non-recognition which it would cling to for over fifty years, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. He describes the forces on each side of this issue: activists from the US Armenian diaspora and their allies, challenging Cold War statesmen worried about alienating NATO ally Turkey and dealing with a widespread American reluctance to directly confront the horrors of the past. Drawing from congressional records, rare newspapers, and interviews with lobbyists and decision-makers, he reveals how genocide recognition became such a complex, politically sensitive issue. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: May 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9781978837942

Book preview

Cover: The United States and the Armenian Genocide, History, Memory, Politics by Julien Zarifian

THE UNITED STATES AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

GENOCIDE, POLITICAL VIOLENCE, HUMAN RIGHTS SERIES

Edited by Alexander Laban Hinton, Nela Navarro, and Natasha Zaretsky

For a list of titles in the series, see the last page of the book.

THE UNITED STATES AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

History, Memory, Politics

JULIEN ZARIFIAN

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey

London and Oxford

Rutgers University Press is a department of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, one of the leading public research universities in the nation. By publishing worldwide, it furthers the University’s mission of dedication to excellence in teaching, scholarship, research, and clinical care.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Zarifian, Julien, author.

Title: The United States and the Armenian genocide : history, memory, politics / Julien Zarifian.

Other titles: History, memory, politics

Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2024] | Series: Genocide, political violence, human rights | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023044431 | ISBN 9781978837935 (hardback) | ISBN 9781978837928 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978837942 (epub) | ISBN 9781978837959 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923. | Genocide—Turkey. | United States—Foreign relations—Turkey. | Turkey—Foreign relations—United States. | United States—Foreign relations—Armenia. | Armenia—Foreign relations—United States. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Human Rights | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Genocide & War Crimes

Classification: LCC DS195.5 .Z38 2024 | DDC 956.6/20154—dc23/eng/20240109

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023044431

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2024 by Julien Zarifian

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

rutgersuniversitypress.org

For my grandparents

CONTENTS

Introduction

PART I: THE UNITED STATES, THE ARMENIANS,AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BEFORE THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION

1 The United States and the Armenians Prior to the Genocide: The Emergence of Certain Bonds

2 The United States and the Massacres of 1915

3 From Hope to Memory Erosion: The United States and the Armenian Matter in the Interwar Period

PART II: THE UNITED STATES ANDTHE POST-WWII ARMENIAN AWAKENINGS

4 The United States and the Armenian Awakening of the Late 1940s

5 The United States and the Armenian Awakening of 1965

6 The United States and Turkish-Armenian Extreme Polarization in the 1970s–1980s

PART III: THE FIRST STEPS OFA DECADES-LONG STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITIONOF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT (1970S/1980S)

7 A Sinuous Road: The Matter of Recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the United Nations, at the White House, and in Congress in the 1970s

8 Progress and Setbacks under the Reagan Administration

9 A Case Both Emblematic and Unique: Bob Dole and Senate Joint Resolution 212 (1989−1990)

PART IV:INTENSIFICATION ANDDIVERSIFICATION OF THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN THE PRO- AND THE ANTI-RECOGNITION FACTIONS (1990S/2000S)

10 The Armenian Genocide and the U.S. Post–Cold War Context

11 George W. Bush’s First Mandate: Between Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Illusions and Armenian Efforts in Congress

12 George W. Bush’s Second Mandate and the Difficult Progress of U.S. Recognition of the Genocide

PART V: TOWARD FULL RECOGNITION OFTHE GENOCIDE: THE OBAMA, TRUMP, AND (EARLY) BIDEN ERAS

13 High Hopes and Immense Regrets: The Genocide (Non)recognition during the Obama Era

14 Toward Full Recognition of the Genocide in Congress—Despite the Trump Administration’s Opposition

15 Finishing the Job: President Biden’s Historic Recognition of the Genocide

PART VI: WHY IT TOOK THE UNITEDSTATES FIFTY YEARS TO RECOGNIZE THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

16 Turkey, Geopolitics, and Nonrecognition of the Armenian Genocide by the United States

17 The Nonrecognition of the Armenian Genocide: A Matter of Lobbying?

18 The Armenian Genocide and Memory Issues in the United States

Conclusion

Notes

Sources and Bibliography

Index

THE UNITED STATES AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

INTRODUCTION

The year 2021 marked the long-awaited, unequivocal recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the executive branch of the United States, through the voice of President Joseph Biden. It followed recognition by the legislative branch in 2019, through nonbinding resolutions approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate. These two political decisions brought an end to five decades of wavering by the U.S. government, which could be identified as a policy of nonrecognition of the genocide of 1915, perpetrated by the Turkish Ottoman authorities, and which eliminated the Armenian people from their ancestral homeland. This U.S. policy differed from the policy of active denial advanced by Turkey, but relayed the Turkish position. It amounted to a persistent and obstinate refusal to use the term genocide to characterize the massacres of 1915–1916, viewed as genocide by the vast majority of academics, intellectuals, international institutions, and countries with a stance on the matter.

The radical political change on this question initiated in Congress in 2019 and concluded in 2021, contrasted with the executive branch’s stance during the centennial of the genocide, in 2015, under President Barack Obama, which can be considered as emblematic of the refusal by U.S. leadership to recognize the genocide and contribute to its full memorialization. Observed across the world, the many ceremonies that took place provided world leaders with the opportunity to publicly affirm or reaffirm the genocidal nature of the massacres of 1915–1916. Some of these leaders, including heads of state, Speakers of Parliament, ministers, members of parliaments, and religious leaders, came to Yerevan for the Genocide Remembrance Day, April 24, to commemorate the genocide in Armenia. Others, like German president Joachim Gauck and Pope Francis, chose this special year to use publicly the term genocide to qualify the events for the first time, despite vocal opposition from the Republic of Turkey (the successor state of the Ottoman Empire), which has always denied that what happened to the Ottoman Armenians was genocide, and fought any international recognition of it. Following a policy established decades earlier, for this centennial, President Obama, who had promised to recognize the genocide while campaigning for the presidency in 2008, made a commemorative statement in which he avoided using the G Word, and his administration sent to Armenia merely the secretary of the treasury, Jacob Lew, accompanied by four legislators. Meanwhile, on April 21, Secretary of State John Kerry (himself a firm supporter of the Armenians when he was a senator), and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu met in Washington, DC, and, as expected, John Kerry did not mention the Armenian Genocide or the April 24 anniversary.¹

This episode is emblematic of decades of U.S. policy regarding recognition of the genocide, a policy perceived as pro-Turkish, to the chagrin of Armenians around the world, and more significantly Armenian Americans. However, the U.S. policy regarding what happened to the Armenians in 1915 has not always been such. When the genocide took place, the United States, under President Woodrow Wilson, was one of the nations most shocked by the massacres. Numerous reports by U.S. diplomats based in the Ottoman Empire (and especially Ambassador Henry Morgenthau), and hundreds of articles published in the U.S. press were very explicit about the tragic fate of the Armenians of the Empire, reiterating this sense of shock. The U.S. government and the general population became heavily involved in providing humanitarian aid and, to a lesser and more nuanced extent, political support to the Armenians. Although the term genocide had not yet been coined, the intentional, organized, and massive character of this crime against humanity was not questioned at this period, in the United States or elsewhere. However, U.S. support and its position in favor of the Armenians faded progressively throughout the 1920s and 1930s, after the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, preceded by the Soviet Union’s creation in 1921. This support ceased completely with the beginning of the Cold War and the integration of Turkey into NATO in 1952.

The Shoah and the conceptualization of the crime of genocide, by jurist Raphael Lemkin, codified internationally in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (also referred to as the Genocide Convention), had an effect on the Armenian issue. Many realized that the Armenian nation had suffered genocide, and it had been neglected and unjustly forgotten. Hitler himself, in 1939, said Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?² Yet, only in the 1960s did the Armenians really began to fight collectively and massively, so that what they, their parents and grandparents had endured would not be forgotten, demanding firmly that Turkey and the world recognize that what occurred was genocide. This struggle began during the cultural revolution of the 1960s–1970s and was primarily led by Armenian youth. It started with the organization of massive demonstrations throughout the world for the fiftieth anniversary of the genocide in April 1965, and took different forms, including mostly lobbying but also paramilitary activities, seeking international recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Washington soon had to respond to this claim, and under the impulse of the executive branch and especially the State Department, the U.S. federal government opted for an ambiguous policy of nonrecognition of the genocide. Until 2021, the executive branch never used the term genocide to refer to the 1915 massacres (except in a couple of notable occasions), and systematically blocked attempts by Congress to pass legislation recognizing them as such.

The main objective of this work is to examine the relationship the U.S. government and, to a lesser extent, U.S. society and media, has had with the issue of the Armenian Massacres of 1915–1916, from the perpetration of these crimes to their nonrecognition as genocide in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. I will analyze the reasons and mechanisms that have led the United States to be sensitive to the fate of Ottoman Armenians in the 1910s and 1920s, and occasionally to champion their cause, and its failure to recognize the events of 1915–1916 as genocide from the 1960s–1970s to the early 2020s, despite academic consensus to the contrary and growing international recognition. I will focus on the arguments and processes that have led the United States to maintain their decades-long position, making this case, at the crossroads of U.S. foreign and domestic policies, a remarkable example of continuity in U.S. policy. In other words, this study seeks to understand why and how the position of the United States, and especially the president and his cabinet, have evolved from a de facto recognition of the genocidal character of the Armenian Massacres, to an ambivalent policy of neutrality, which has been tantamount, for decades, to ignoring a crime against humanity that directly impacted a segment of the U.S. population, Americans of Armenian origin, and which implicitly supports Turkey’s official policy of denial.

I have opted primarily—although not exclusively—for a diachronic and chronological approach, starting with the massacres in 1915–1916 (and even before). The first five parts of the book follow a chronological-analytical approach and discusses the main episodes of the United States’ stance with regard to the genocide. This changes in part VI, where I opt for a specifically thematic-analytical approach that builds on the preceding parts to engage more broadly with the reasons for the United States’ delayed recognition of the genocide. I decided to present the detailed chronological narrative before engaging in a discussion on causal arguments, because this analytical narrative is important per se and most of it has not been discussed specifically in the academic literature, and because it is the best way to encourage the reader in a didactic and stimulating way to explore these causal explanations.

The matter of the sources used in this study, whose temporal scope covers more than a century, is necessarily complex. In addition to hundreds of secondary sources, many primary sources have been used; their volume and nature vary from one chapter to another. The first chapters (often shorter and synoptic) cover periods and episodes that have already been studied to a degree. The focus was thus mainly on the study of the secondary sources, supported by official reports and press articles from Armenian American and U.S. outlets. For parts II and III, the more recent the periods and episodes discussed, the more official documents, archival sources, and press documentation were used. For the study of the recent decades, I also used twenty-five semistructured interviews I personally conducted with decision-makers and their staff, and lobbyists. The primary source material consists mostly of documents issued by the executive branch (reports, notes, presidential papers, etc.) and Congress (principally from the Congressional Record and reports by congressional committees). Mainstream U.S. daily newspaper articles were used extensively, but the originality of this study in this domain rests in the use of nearly the entire collection of two Armenian American weekly papers, Hairenik Weekly, later Armenian Weekly, and Armenian Mirror-Spectator. Both are organs of two major Armenian diaspora political parties, and represent different, often opposing, political trends. As historical sources, they complement each other well. In the end, although I thoroughly studied hundreds of archival materials and other primary sources, I am fully aware that some other ones may exist and/or may be made accessible in the coming years. These potential additional sources and their study will probably not modify the main conclusions of this work, but may refine the analysis of some situations and episodes studied in this book. Therefore, I do hope that this study, which is the first of its kind on this topic, will be followed by others, possibly focusing specifically on one or several of the many periods and themes that this book analyzes.

Indeed, one of the main specificities of this work relates to the fact that the United States’ positions and policies on the Armenian Genocide have been the subject of little scholarship to date. While several studies have been published on U.S. reactions during the massacres and their immediate aftermath,³ there are no analyses that scrupulously review the ways and the reasons the United States established and developed its ambiguous policy on the matter, and nobody has sought to analyze this policy over time as a single topic. In addition to my works,⁴ there are book chapters by Richard Hovannisian⁵ and Vigen Guroian,⁶ published in the early 1990s, and sections of a book by Michael Bobelian⁷ in 2009. Yet, these are relatively short studies focusing on specific time periods or themes. Approaching this topic in a more systematic and global way brings it within important academic and political debates, to which it can offer new perspectives. These debates concern diverse and significant questions that have often been examined thoroughly in academic spheres, such as the complexity and multifaceted nature of genocide denial⁸; the role of human rights and ideals in shaping U.S. foreign policy⁹; the importance of Turkey in U.S. foreign policy¹⁰; the role of lobbies in forming U.S. foreign policy¹¹; the recurrent conflict between the president and Congress¹²; the place of memory and remembrance issues in American Life.¹³

When they are discussed, specifically in the media, the reasons and political processes that led the United States not to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide for over fifty years are often, if not always, examined through the lens of Turkey and U.S.–Turkish relations. The focus is on the fact that Turkey refuses to acknowledge the genocide, and therefore, as it is a major geopolitical ally of the United States, it is not in the latter’s interest to oppose Ankara on this issue and to risk any cooling of bilateral relations. Although this point is central, and will be discussed in this book, other causal arguments that are rarely discussed, relating to the decision-making process in Washington, DC, the importance of lobbies in this process, the force of inertia in certain institutions opposing recognition (especially the State Department), aspects of Washington, DC’s, political culture, or the place of memory in U.S. political life, are important and will be addressed as well.

To cover the complexity of the topic in the most exhaustive and comprehensive way, this six-part study has three chapters per part. The first part presents the relations the United States had with the Armenians and Turkey/the Ottoman Empire during the first decades of the twentieth century, and how it handled the Armenian Massacres when they were committed and until WWII. The second part discusses the resurgence of the issue of the Armenian Genocide in the decades following WWII, and how the United States handled it. The third focuses on the initial political struggles, in the 1970s and 1980s, of the Armenian Americans and their allies in Washington, DC, to obtain formal recognition of the genocide by the U.S. government. The fourth part analyses the continuation of this struggle in the 1990s and 2000s, and how polarization and tension developed and intensified between the Armenian camp and Turkey, the U.S. Executive, and certain congresspersons, successfully blocking recognition. The fifth part discusses the Obama, Trump, and early Biden eras, which corresponded to a gradual weakening of the nonrecognition policy, leading to its reversal in 2019–2021. The sixth part analyses in detail the geopolitical, political, institutional, and memory-related reasons why it has taken over fifty years for the U.S. government to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

PART 1 THE UNITED STATES, THE ARMENIANS, AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BEFORE THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION

1 • THE UNITED STATES AND THE ARMENIANS PRIOR TO THE GENOCIDE

The Emergence of Certain Bonds

The first encounters between the United States and Armenia date to the earlier half of the nineteenth century. They are relatively ancient for a young nation like the United States (though much more recent from the perspective of Armenia, whose history dates to around 900 B.C.). These initial encounters are important because, while they predate the genocide, they occasionally involved human rights issues, as Armenians were already, in the nineteenth century, regularly persecuted in the Ottoman Empire, of which most Armenians were subjects. As Armenia had not been a sovereign state since the Middle Ages, the initial interactions took place primarily through the policies of the United States toward the empire, the reactions of U.S. political circles and civil society to the treatment of Ottoman Armenians, and American missionaries who, from the 1800s, were active in the area. Exchanges also took place through the immigration of Armenians to America, the first significant waves of which occurred in the late nineteenth century.

THE EARLY DAYS OF ARMENIAN IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES

Martin the Armenian, likely a subject of the Persian Empire, is believed to be the first Armenian to have set foot on American soil. He settled in the Jamestown colony as early as 1618 or 1619, presumably as a governor’s servant, although the Virginia Company’s records show that he also grew tobacco. He was naturalized as British (which makes him, arguably, the first naturalized person in North America), and left Jamestown in 1622.¹ Thirty years later, Martin was followed by two Armenians from the Ottoman Empire, one of whom was apparently known as George the Armenian. They were sponsored by Edward Diggers, landowner and prominent figure of Jamestown. Diggers sought to develop the culture of silk in Virginia, and his father, then British ambassador to Russia, knowing of Armenian skills in this field, recommended Diggers recruit them.² These cases, and others in the eighteenth century, attest to an ancient Armenian presence on American soil and are significant in Armenian American culture and memory. Then, the Armenians arriving in the United States in the early nineteenth century were mostly students seeking to complete their education. The first such student was Khachik Oskanian. He arrived in New York in 1834, earned a degree in journalism, and became a reporter for the New York Herald.³ He lived in New York City, integrated, and welcomed other students, including Kristapor Seropian (or Der Seropian), who arrived in 1842 and invented the dye used in the manufacture of U.S. dollars.⁴ In 1854, there were about twenty Armenians living in the United States, and seventy in 1870. Most settled in New York, Boston, and surrounding areas.⁵ Some fought for the Union in the Civil War. Khachadour Garabedian served as a navy sailor for the Union, and has been celebrated by Armenian Americans for fighting the Confederates.⁶ Other Armenians, medical students in particular, treated the wounded on the front.

From the 1870s onward, Armenian immigration to the United States intensified for economic and political reasons relating to the persecution of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Many of these migrants initially came from the Kharput region, in the heart of Asia Minor, where U.S. missionaries were present and active, but Armenians flocked to America from all parts of the Ottoman Empire and, marginally, the Russian and Persian Empires, settling primarily on the East Coast. An early group of Armenians also made their way West in the early 1880s, settling in Fresno, California, which remains an emblematic Armenian stronghold in the United States today. In the 1880s, about 1,500 Armenians, mostly men, immigrated to New York and the Boston area. The factories of Worcester, Massachusetts, particularly attracted them. The first Armenian church in the United States was built there in 1891, the second in Fresno in 1900.⁷ At the end of the nineteenth century, although they were few in number, Armenians were well settled in America, in small organized communities. This trend was confirmed with the arrival of many immigrants in the last years of the nineteenth century, and strengthened in the early twentieth century.

The 1890s were extremely difficult for the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. They were victims of the Hamidian Massacres of 1894–1896, carried out by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, named the Red Sultan in reference to these massacres. Some 200,000 Ottoman Armenians perished, officially in retaliation for activism in some Armenian circles to emancipate the Armenian people of the Empire.⁸ These massacres aroused the indignation of world public opinion and weakened the Armenian nation, whose members were shocked and traumatized. Many Armenians emigrated or, for those who were already on European or American soil, brought their relatives to join them, despite the reluctance of the Ottoman authorities to allow this emigration⁹—reluctance that may seem paradoxical because they regularly persecuted the Armenian population. Armenians emigrated to various countries, with high numbers to the United States, which became a first choice destination. Between 1895 and 1900, an average of 2,500 Ottoman Armenians arrived on U.S. soil annually. Tens of thousands more arrived in the following years. In 1910, the Armenian American population rose to 51,950.¹⁰ On the eve of the genocide, it was estimated at 60,000.¹¹ These figures are small when compared to the entire U.S. population or to other ethnic groups, such as the Irish or Italians, but this immigration created solid Armenian communities. Armenians settled in cities on the East Coast, in Fresno, and progressively in the Midwest, with a concentration in Chicago, Illinois, Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Racine, Wisconsin. The communities benefited from the arrival of women and children. Places of worship, community centers, grocery stores, and cafes developed in areas where Armenians were numerous. Although many still hoped to return home—and some did so—Armenians integrated into American society.

This integration was not always smooth. Bigotry and racism plagued Armenians […], especially in areas where they were numerous, notably in places like Fresno, California, or Boston, Massachusetts. Armenians were restricted from joining certain clubs and organizations, excluded from living in certain areas, even after such discriminatory land covenants were declared illegal, and constrained in the professional education and their professional practice.¹² Armenians sometimes suffered more specific racism in a society often encumbered by orientalist clichés, less widespread in the United States than in Europe at the time, but still present, which portrayed Armenians as greedy, treacherous, or cowardly, similar to the caricatures of the Jews at the time, to whom they were often compared.¹³ As early as 1909, in the racialized political and social context of the era, the federal courts, in In re Halladjian, found that Armenians were white and not Asian, which was intended to limit discrimination against them and, above all, make it possible for them to be naturalized.¹⁴ This decision was challenged in 1928 by the Ministry of Labor, which opposed the naturalization of Tatos Cartozian, an Armenian immigrant, on the grounds that Armenians were not white. The federal courts agreed with the defense and closed the debate on the issue.¹⁵ This categorization as white, albeit disputed, was important in many ways, not least because it meant that Armenians, who were Christian,¹⁶ could assimilate into the dominant Anglo-European population.

AMERICAN MISSIONARIES, ARMENIA, AND THE ARMENIANS

Christianity probably facilitated the relations between Armenians and Americans when Armenians decided to emigrate to the United States, but these relations were also strengthened in the old country, because American Protestant missionaries were very active in the Ottoman Empire and developed a privileged bond with Armenians. American Protestants were not the only missionaries active in the region; they worked alongside European Catholics and Protestants, but they quickly spearheaded the movement. The development of their activities worldwide took place in the context of the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, corresponding to a period of strong renewal of the Christian faith in the United States. Most of their activities were led by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), created in Boston in 1810 at the instigation of the highest political and economic circles of the country. Elias Boudinot and John Jay, two Founding Fathers, were the first presidents of this organization. John Quincy Adams, also a Founding Father and the sixth president of the United States, was among the organization’s early directors.¹⁷

The ABCFM sent its first missionaries to British India, then to other parts of the world, but quickly focused on the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, and at the time part of the Ottoman Empire.¹⁸ When the first missionaries arrived on Ottoman soil in the early 1800s, their objective was to convert Muslims to Christianity. The task proved difficult—under Ottoman law, Muslims were not allowed to convert. This failure led the missionaries to focus on the Greek population and the Armenians,¹⁹ who were Christian but faithful to degenerate Churches of the East, as they were sometimes described in the West.²⁰ Ultimately, 90 percent of the activities of American missionaries in the Ottoman Empire up to WWI targeted Armenians.²¹ The missionaries, many of whom were doctors, founded churches, orphanages, nurseries, and dispensaries. By the end of the nineteenth century, the assets of American missions on Ottoman soil were estimated at four million dollars.²² Many of their activities were located in Eastern Anatolia, still referred to as Armenia by global institutions and politicians, such as acting Secretary of State William F. Wharton, who cited in March 1893, the persons and property of American citizens in Armenia.²³

Missionaries also focused on education and created schools. The ABCFM opened its first school in the Ottoman Empire in 1824, in Beirut. Many others followed across the empire. According to the ABCFM, in 1914 there were 473 American elementary schools, fifty-four secondary schools, eleven high schools, including Robert College (1863) and the American College for Girls in Constantinople (1871), Euphrates College in Kharput (1878), Anatolia College in Merzifon (1886), and four theology schools. A total of 32,252 students attended these institutions in 1914,²⁴ down from more than 55,000 in 1911.²⁵ Some years, the overall budget for these schools was estimated at $500,000.²⁶ Ottoman Armenians constituted the bulk of the students and many teachers, in a credible educational system; Euphrates College was (and still is) commonly known as the Armenian College, and courses were frequently given in Armenian. English was taught alongside history, literature, mathematics, economics, philosophy, and other subjects. Beyond education, the objective of this vast project was to offer a Protestant education to the younger generations of the empire’s Christian populations, and to familiarize them with Anglo-American culture,²⁷ with the deliberate objective of changing the political and social landscape of the empire.²⁸ A significant number of Armenians learned about American culture and some converted to Protestantism. A few Armenian students, among the best ones, were sent to the United States through Protestant networks, to complete their education and training.

Strong links were forged between the missionaries and the Armenians during these years, and these sustained contacts had an important impact on Ottoman Armenian society of the time. They accompanied its renaissance in the nineteenth century and its aspirations for greater freedom and democracy, incompatible with the rigidity of Ottoman society or the autocratic practices of power within the empire. The Ottoman authorities perceived the Missions, both Catholic and Protestant, as interfering.²⁹ The Armenian Apostolic Church and the elites of the Armenian Ottoman community also often disapproved of these developments, which represented a potential threat to their own leadership. On the contrary, the missionary movement constituted a valuable geopolitical tool for U.S. diplomacy, which consistently supported it: "missionaries, both male and female, from the colleges of New England, were the vanguard of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. They brought […] the torch of American democracy and Protestantism to the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, encouraged the creation of the Armenian Evangelical Church and the Protestant Millet³⁰ (1850).³¹ It was also seen as an effective instrument for U.S. economic interests. The Ottoman Middle East was poorly understood by Americans, and missionaries were often financially supported and accompanied by American merchants and entrepreneurs who collected valuable information in the process, often passing it on to the U.S. authorities.³² The Armenians of the empire became valuable allies in this enterprise because they knew the field" well and were particularly active in the Ottoman economy. The exchanges between missionaries and Armenian spheres led to real proximity and a degree of interdependence.

THE U.S. AUTHORITIES, THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, AND THE TREATMENT OF THE ARMENIANS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

This proximity also contributed to the premises of a pro-Armenian or Armenophile movement in the United States, which failed to fully overcome some negative stereotypes against Armenians, admittedly not its primary objective, but which became important and popular. The Armenophile movement peaked during the genocide and immediately after. While the Armenians living in America organized associations, and Armenian political parties (the Armenakan,³³ Hunchak,³⁴ and Dashnak³⁵ parties) opened chapters in the United States in the end of the nineteenth century, many American intellectuals became increasingly interested in the Armenians, who were perceived as a small, capable, and deserving Christian nation, a sort of Yankees of the Orient,³⁶ in the words of some observers of the time. They came to be considered as a discriminated group and, after the Hamidian Massacres of 1894–1896, a martyred nation.³⁷

U.S. federal authorities remained particularly cautious at the time. On several occasions, the U.S. Congress discussed the fate of the Armenians, and voted, in 1896, a Concurrent Resolution denouncing the recent appalling outrages and massacres of which the Christian population of Turkey have been made the victims. This resolution further stated that Congress will support the President in the most vigorous action he may take for the protection and security of Armenian citizens in Turkey.³⁸ Yet, the U.S. Executive did not react or condemn the first massacres of 1894. Secretary of State Richard Olney considered that [o]f those massacres the Department of State has little trustworthy information³⁹ and that the information provided by the press was totally exaggerated.⁴⁰ The United States was not an acknowledged major geopolitical player in the Ottoman Empire and had never been involved in the protection of its Christian minorities, contrary to France, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Therefore, many considered there was no absolute urgency for Washington to get involved in the Armenian question. The presence of Protestant missions raised concerns about the Armenian massacres, but the relatively fragile position of the missions encouraged Washington to remain on good terms with Constantinople. Promising trade relations with the empire, which rose from about $1.4 million in 1862⁴¹ to $7.5 million in 1900,⁴² and the desire to be a more active player in international relations and to find its place in Middle Eastern geopolitics, also prevented the United States from challenging the Ottoman Porte. Although relatively minor, the diplomatic activity of the United States in the Ottoman Empire had intensified, with an American delegation in Constantinople founded in 1882, and fifteen American consulates or consular agencies on Ottoman territory at the end of the century, including Sivas, Kharput, and Erzurum, in the Armenian provinces.

Thus, the Cleveland administration opted for prudence and restraint on the Armenian issue and sought to spare the Ottoman authorities, while President Cleveland’s successor, William McKinley, increased the pressure on them slightly. His concern was not so much to support the Armenian populations, but to defend the interests of his country in a rapidly changing region where Europeans were particularly active. American diplomacy strove to obtain compensation for the losses sustained by Protestant missions in the 1894–1896 massacres, although it never considered asking for indemnification for the Armenian victims.⁴³ It obtained about $90,000 for the losses of the missions from the Sultan, who, through this settlement, recognized the responsibility of the Ottoman State in the violence but saved face by claiming that the sum paid to the Americans was intended for a warship to be built in the United States.⁴⁴ Other than this, Washington’s diplomatic involvement in Ottoman affairs remained insignificant in the following years, although there were hints that Washington might assert itself more on the Ottoman political and geopolitical scene. In 1903, the United States tried—unsuccessfully—to obtain most favored nation status from the Ottoman Empire,⁴⁵ and the American delegation in Constantinople became an embassy in 1906.⁴⁶

Overall, U.S. policy toward the Ottoman Porte in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was dominated by restraint, and sought to maintain constructive relations with the authorities of Constantinople. Noninterventionism was central to this strategy, and the Monroe Doctrine was explicitly cited by U.S. authorities to justify their inability to intervene in favor of Ottoman Armenians.⁴⁷ They sometimes insisted that, contrary to their European counterparts, they were not bound to guarantee the safety of Ottoman minorities, as they were not signatories of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, which encouraged the Porte to undertake measures to guarantee the safety and well-being of Armenians living in the Eastern provinces of the empire. The main objectives of the United States were to defend U.S. commercial interests—obtaining land concessions and subsequent rights to exploit its resources became an important goal for the United States⁴⁸—and the interests of the American missionaries. These objectives were incompatible with support for the Armenians. In 1906, the U.S. administration even provided information to the Sultan on Armenian activism in the United States, financial transfers between Armenian Americans and their Ottoman compatriots, and their activities within the empire.⁴⁹

This policy of maintaining good relations with the Ottoman authorities, affirmed by the U.S. Executive, continued throughout the following years, even when the Union and Progress Party, also called the Young Turk Party or the Young Turks, came to power in 1908 by overthrowing Sultan Abdul Hamid, and that new massacres against the Armenian populations were committed. After the Adana⁵⁰ Massacres in Cilicia, in April 1909, where about 30,000 Armenians were massacred in a few days,⁵¹ the Taft administration expressed empathy for the Armenians but made it clear it would not intervene directly to prevent further violence. In response to a letter and petition from the Armenian Evangelical Alliance to the president after the Adana Massacres, Huntington Wilson, acting secretary of state, explained: While the Government of the United States […] deems itself […] precluded from any consideration on its part of a question of intervention in the present circumstance […], the sentiments of this Government and its earnest desire that the Armenians shall possess absolute security of life and property are common knowledge to the concert of great powers.⁵² One may note that, prior to this, President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration denounced the massacres of Armenians of 1894–1896, and implied that the United States could have intervened to prevent them,⁵³ but did little to oppose others, on a smaller scale, that occurred during its mandate (1901–1909). President Taft’s administration, famous for being the main promoter of dollar diplomacy⁵⁴ pursued the established policy. Violence against Armenians by the Ottoman authorities was well known, and the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896 were mentioned in U.S. State Department publications,⁵⁵ but the priority was to advance U.S. interests and maintain the best relations possible with Constantinople. Thus, in 1909, the year of the Cilicia massacres, the United States exported $84,574 in firearms to the Ottoman Empire and $38,466 in pistol and rifle cartridges; the following year exports of cartridges reached $105,950.⁵⁶ This policy was not approved by everyone in the diplomatic sphere. The ambassador to Constantinople in 1909–1910, Oscar S. Straus, condemned it, insisting on the role of the newly created Near Eastern Affairs section of the State Department, which grew quickly and gained influence.⁵⁷

THE U.S. MEDIA AND THE ARMENOPHILE MOVEMENT OF THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The strongest American denunciations of the treatment of the Ottoman Armenians, and the strongest political and humanitarian support for them, came from U.S. civil society. The Hamidian Massacres had a considerable international impact, and in the United States the media reported massively on them. Major newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times, the Christian Observer, the Spectator, the Boston Herald, the Daily News, the Nation, and the Chicago Tribune, regularly published articles and editorials, often on the front page, describing and denouncing the treatment of Armenians by the Ottoman authorities.⁵⁸ An editorialist from the Raleigh News and Observer wrote in 1894 about the massacres in Sasun (an area populated mostly by Armenians): Not since the darkest days of the Middle Ages have such horrible inhumanities shocked the world.⁵⁹ In December 1896, a pastor published an article in the Outlook titled The Armenian Question, in which he described the violence against Armenians as the most cruel, the most barbarous religious persecution the world has ever seen.⁶⁰ The New York Times agreed and may have been the first to use the term holocaust to describe contemporary violence against human beings, in a December 1895 article, Another Armenian Holocaust.⁶¹

Media interest in the fate of the Armenians accompanied that of American civil society. During the 1890s, several organizations were founded at the initiative of U.S. Armenians and committed American intellectuals. In 1893, in Boston, the Friends of Armenia (later the United Friends of Armenia), was created by Garabed Papazian, and Isabel and Samuel Barrows, directors of the weekly Christian Register. In 1895, in Washington, the Phil-Armenic Association, later the Armenian Relief Association, and then the powerful National Armenian Relief Committee, was founded by Hrant Kiretchjian. It was based in New York, was close to the New York Board of Trade and the ABCFM,⁶² and was supported by Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, Josiah Brewer, a Supreme Court Judge, and banker and businessman Jacob Schiff,⁶³ a leader of the American Jewish community. From its creation, it received significant donations, including financial support from the Rockefeller family.⁶⁴ The primary goal of these associations, which played a unifying and centralizing role for many smaller groups, churches, and Armenian support committees, was to provide aid, on the ground, for the victims of the massacres, to inform U.S. public opinion of the fate of the Armenians, and to try to influence the United States’ policies on Armenia and the Ottoman Empire. Their emergence and rise were enabled by the investment of various segments of the American elite (religious, intellectual, political, feminist, industrial, progressive, etc.), together with that of the nascent Armenian American community.⁶⁵

While this well-founded support for Armenians influenced the political sphere only slightly (despite some success with the Congress), it collected between $600,000 and $1,500,000 from many organizations, in favor of the Armenians.⁶⁶ Wealthy and other Americans donated money, clothing, blankets, and food. In its magnitude, its cross-cutting character, and because major figures of different American political, militant, and intellectual spheres participated (including abolitionist Lloyd Garrison Jr. and feminist activist Alice Stone Blackwell), this movement had considerable impact on public opinion. It also facilitated mobilization for Armenians as they faced the greatest catastrophe in their history, the genocide of 1915.

2 • THE UNITED STATES AND THE MASSACRES OF 1915

The massacres of 1915