Research Guides: The Armenian Genocide: Getting Started

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Armenian Genocide

Justifying Genocide by Stefan Ihrig
ISBN: 9780674504790
Publication Date: 2016-01-04
The Armenian Genocide and the Nazi Holocaust are often thought to be separated by a large distance in time and space. But Stefan Ihrig shows that they were much more connected than previously thought. Bismarck and then Wilhelm II staked their foreign policy on close relations with a stable Ottoman Empire. To the extent that the Armenians were restless under Ottoman rule, they were a problem for Germany too. From the 1890s onward Germany became accustomed to excusing violence against Armenians, even accepting it as a foreign policy necessity. For many Germans, the Armenians represented an explicitly racial problem and despite the Armenians' Christianity, Germans portrayed them as the "Jews of the Orient."

The Armenian Genocide

Meds Yeghern - Մեծ Եղեռն

From 1894 through 1896, massacres of Armenians by the Ottomans occurred under the leadership of Abdul Hamid II. This had the effect of partly alienating several Western Great Powers, most notably Britain, which had long supported Turkey in the Great Game against perceived Russian encroachment. This was one of the first occasions when outside powers made human rights a direct concern in their foreign policy. There were also follow-up Cilician pogroms in 1909. From 1915 through 1917 a second and far greater genocide against Armenians by the Ottomans took place. This was mainly a response to Armenian volunteers enlisting in fair numbers in anti-Turkish units fighting in support of the tsar’s armies, and to several massacres of Turks inside Russian-occupied Ottoman territory by an Armenian provisional government that had been proclaimed there in April 1915. The sultan’s forces reacted with genocide of some 700,000 Armenians from 1915 to 1917. That is a consensus estimate by regional specialists: the actual numbers remain hotly disputed by both communities, with Armenian sources usually asserting a death toll in the range of 1.5 million and some Turkish sources denying the events even occurred. Whatever the precise number, it was large and the attending civilian suffering was enormous. Some of the victims were simply murdered, but most died during forced marches or from gross neglect after being herded into concentration camps set up in the Syrian Desert. For decades, Turkey officially denied the extent (and even the fact) of the carnage, causing deep contention with—and lasting bitterness among—Armenians.

"Armenian Genocide." Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002.

Use this guide as a starting point for research on the interdisciplinary areas that collectively make up the field of Armenian studies.

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Armenian Genocide

Revolution and Genocide by Robert Melson; Leo Kuper (Foreword by)
ISBN: 0226519902
Publication Date: 1992-10-15
In a study that compares the major attempts at genocide in world history, Robert Melson creates a sophisticated framework that links genocide to revolution and war. He focuses on the plights of Jews after the fall of Imperial Germany and of Armenians after the fall of the Ottoman as well as attempted genocides in the Soviet Union and Cambodia. He argues that genocide often is the end result of a complex process that starts when revolutionaries smash an old regime and, in its wake, try to construct a society that is pure according to ideological standards.