The burning Tigris : the Armenian genocide and America's response / Peter Balakian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Balakian, Peter, 1951-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Armenian Genocide, 1915-1923.

Armenian Genocide, 1915-1923--Foreign public opinion, American.

Genocide--Turkey.

Genocide.

Turkey.

Human rights.

Physical Description:

xx, 475 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : HarperCollins, [2003]

Summary:

In this groundbreaking history of the Armenian Genocide, the critically acclaimed author of the memoir Black Dog of Fate brings us a riveting narrative of the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rarely seen archival documents and remarkable first-person accounts, Peter Balakian presents the chilling history of how the Young Turk government implemented the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I. And in the telling, he also resurrects an extraordinary lost chapter of American history.

During the United States' ascension in the global arena at the turn of the twentieth century, America's humanitarian movement for Armenia was an important part of the rising nation's first epoch of internationalism. Intellectuals, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save the Armenians. The Burning Tigris reconstructs this landmark American cause that was spearheaded by the passionate commitments and commentaries of a remarkable cast of public figures, including Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Stone Blackwell, Stephen Crane, and Ezra Pound, as well as courageous missionaries, diplomats, and relief workers who recorded their eyewitness accounts and often risked their lives in the killing fields of Armenia.

The crisis of the "starving Armenians" was so embedded in American popular culture that, in an age when a loaf of bread cost a nickel, the American people sent more than $100 million in aid through the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities and its successor, Near East Relief. In 1915 alone, the New York Times published 145 articles about the Armenian Genocide.

Theodore Roosevelt called the extermination of the Armenians "the greatest crime of the war." But in the turmoil following World War I, it was a crime that went largely unpunished. In depicting the 1919 Ottoman court-martial trials, Balakian reveals the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide confessing their guilt -- an astonishing fact given the Turkish government's continued denial of the Genocide.

After World War I, U.S. oil interests in the Middle East steered America away from the course it had pursued for four decades. As Balakian eloquently points out, America's struggle between human rights and national self-interest -- a pattern that would be repeated again and again -- resonates powerfully today. In crucial ways, America's involvement with the Armenian Genocide is a paradigm for the modern age.

Contents:

Part I The Emergence of International Human Rights in America: The Armenian Massacres in the 1890s

1. A Gathering at Faneuil Hall 3

2. "There in the Woods" 13

3. Yankees in Armenia 23

4. The Sultan and the Armenian Question 35

5. Killing Fields: The Massacres of the 1890s 53

6. Humanity on Trial: Clara Barton and America's Mission to Armenia 63

7. Walking Skeletons 81

8. "The Tears of Araxes": The Voice of the Woman's Journal 93

9. The Ottoman Bank Incident and the Aftermath of the Hamidian Massacres 103

10. "Our Boasted Civilization": Intellectuals, Popular Culture, and the Armenian Massacres of the 1890s 117

Part II The Turkish Road to Genocide

11. The Rise of the Young Turks 135

12. Adana, 1909: Counterrevolution and Massacre 145

13. The Balkan Wars and World War I: The Road to Genocide 159

14. Government-Planned Genocide 175

15. Van, Spring 1915 197

16. April 24 211

Part III American Witness

17. The Ambassador at the Crossroads 219

18. The News from the American Consul in Harput 225

19. Land of Dead 241

20. From Jesse Jackson in Aleppo 251

21. "Same Fate": Reports from All Over Turkey 265

22. America's Golden Rule: Working for Armenia Again 277

Part IV The Failed Mission

23. Wilson's Quandary 299

24. The Rise of a New Turkish Nationalism and the Campaign Against Armenia 319

25. Turkish Confessions: The Ottoman Courts-Martial, Constantinople, 1919-1920 331

26. The American Mandate for Armenia 349

27. The New U.S. Oil Policy in the Middle East and the Turnabout on the Armenian Question 363

Epilogue: Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide and U.S. Complicity 373.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [441]-453) and index.

ISBN:

0060198400

OCLC:

51653350