Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question

Britain and the Launching of the Armenian QuestionAuthor(s): Robert F. ZeidnerSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Oct., 1976), pp. 465-483Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162505 .

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 7 (1976), 465-483 Printed in U.S.A.

Robert F. Zeidner

BRITAIN AND THE LAUNCHING OF THE

ARMENIAN QUESTION

In August 1894, as if by prearranged signal, a series of Muslim attacks on the

Gregorian1 Armenian subjects of the Porte broke out in eastern Anatolia and

spread gradually, province by province, throughout most of Asiatic Turkey. These

disorders raged sporadically for two years until finally, in August 1896, they culminated in a similar assault on the Gregorian Armenian community of Istan-

bul, beneath the very windows of the embassies of the Great Powers. European estimates place(l the total of Armenians kille(l thlroughlout this period at between

250,000 and 300,000 men, women, and children, an(l ro percent of the entire

Armenian pop)ulation of the Ottoman Empire.2 Tle Great Powers were outraged. The presses of the West bristled with indig-

nant appeals for immiiediate action against the Porte to relieve the sufferings of its

1 The Gregorian (or Apostolic) community was by far the largest of the four Armenian minorities. The other, smaller groups were Catholic, Eastern Rite (Greek Orthodox), and Protestant. The latter groups did not escape harm entirely; they too suffered, but mildly in comparison with their Gregorian compatriots. The three smaller communities enjoyed the protection of the Great Powers; and, thus, the Ottoman Government apparently took pains to spare them-to deny the Powers a pretext for intervention. Tlle actual attackers, on the other hand, occasionally lacked sophistication in differentiating among Armenians of different sects. See Sidney Whitman, Turkish Mlemories (New York, I914), pp. 20-21; Sir Charles N. Eliot ("Odysseus"), Turkey in Europe (London, I908), p. 408.

2 Rev. Edwin M. Bliss, Turkey and the Armenian Atrocitics (New York, I896), pp. 368- 481; J. Rendel Harris and Helen B. Harris, Letters from the Scenes of the Recent Massacres in Armenia (London, I897) passim; Paul Cambon, Correspondance, 1870-1924, Vol. I (Paris, 1940), pp. 389-398, 405-423; Sir Edwin Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople (New York, I916), pp. 144-I69; Victor Berard, La Politique du Sultan, 4th ed. (Paris, I900), passim; Abraham Hartunian, Neither 7To Laugh nor To FWeep, A Memoir of the Arimenian Genocide, trans. Vartan Hartunian (Boston, I968), pp. 10-26; George H. Hepworth, Through Armenia on Horseback (New York, I898), passim; Eliot (Turkey in Europe, pp. 405-413) and Whit- man (Turkish Me,mories, pp. 10-35) contain descriptions of these events based on the memoirs and letters of interested observers, both in the provinces and in Constantinople. A more detailed survey of casualty estimates is available in Louise Nalbandian, The Armenian Revo- lutionary Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), p. 206 n. 54. The total Armenian population of the empire was about 2.6 imillion. For documented analyses of the Armenian

population and its distribution throughout the Ottoman Empire, see Esat Uras, Tarihte Erneniler ve Ermtcni Meselesi (Ankara, I950), pp. 13I-147; Garo Chichekian, "The Arme- nians since the Treaty of San Stefano: A Politico-Geographical Study of Population," The Armentian Reviewe, XXII, 2-82 (Spring I968), 42-49; Sarkis Atamian, The Armenian Com- munity (New York, 1955), pp. 43-46; William L. Langer, The Diplomtacy of Imperialism, Ir890-I902, Vol. I (New York, 1935), p. I47 n. 3.

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466 Robert F. Zeidner

Armenian subjects.3 Close uniformity of pattern in the execution of these massacres

and the apparent care taken to spare Armenians of the Eastern Rite (Greek Ortho-

dox) and of the Catholic and Protestant faiths4 from harm convinced the Powers

that the entire affair had been planned and ordered by the Porte or the palace, or both.5 Moreover, foreign and native witnesses had reported Ottoman troops- especially units of the newly formed Kurdish irregular cavalry (the famous

Hamidieh regiments) 6-and police assisting the mobs in their bloody business.

Reactions among diplomats in the capital and among other subject Christian

peoples in the Balkans were so fraught with terror and anxiety that the Russian

government considered a quick seizure of Istanbul and the Straits on the pretext of restoring order.7

This was the first great agony of the Armenian Question, purportedly the work of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The Young Turk regime unleashed the final two at-

tacks against all Armenians, regardless of faith, in I909 and 1915.8 The purpose of

this paper is not to examine the circumstances of any of these early attempts at

3 For examples, see The Duke of Argyll, Our Responsibilities for Turkey (London, I896); W. E. Gladstone, The Earl of Meath et al., "The Massacres in Turkey," The Nineteenth Cen-

tury Review, XL (I896), 654-680; Diran Kelekian, "La Turquie et son Souverain," ibid., pp. 689-698; Wilfred Scawen Blunt and E. F. Du Cane, "Turkish Misgovernment," ibid., pp. 838-848; Malcolm MacColl, The Sultan atnd the Powers (London, New York, Bombay, 1896).

4 The Catholic Armenians enjoyed the formal protection of France and Austria-Hungary. Russia looked after the small Orthodox sect. See text of the Treaty of April 28, I649, in J. C. Hurewitz, ed. and trans., Diplomacy iin the Near and Middle East: A Diplomatic Record, 1535-1914 (Princeton, I956), p. 24; also, Treaty of Kiuiik Kaynarca, July IO/21, I774, in ibid., pp. 54-60.

5 Count Chedomille Mijatovich, The Memoirs of a Balkan Diplomat (London, I917), pp. 82-83; N. V. Tcharykov, Glimpses of Higjh Politics through War and Peace, 1855-1929

(New York, 1931), p. 226. Whitman (Turkish Memories, pp. 61-62), on the other hand, ab- solves the sultan of any blame. For a balanced assessment of culpability in the massacres, by a keen student and observer of Hamidian Turkey, see Eliot, Turkey in Europe, pp. 391-414.

6 These units were raised in eastern Turkey during late 1890 or early I891 for the alleged purpose of maintaining order along the Russian and Persian frontiers. See ibid., p. 392; Whitman, Turkish Memories, pp. 73, 109, I45-I55; The Times (London), April 4, I89I, p. 5 (this source henceforth cited as LT) ; and Sir William A. White (British Ambassador to the Porte) to the Marquis of Salisbury (British Prime Minister), Feb. 24 and March 13, I89I, in Great Britain, House of Commons, Sessional Papers, ed. Edgar L. Erickson, Readex Micro- print Edition (New York, I967), 1892, Vol. XCVI, pp. I9, 25 (this source henceforth cited as BSP).

7 Count A. I. Nelidoff (Russian Ambassador to the Porte) to N. P. Shishkin (Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs), Sept. 6/I8 and Nov. I8/30, I896; Count S. Y. Witte

(Russian Finance Minister) to Nelidoff, Nov. 24/Dec. 6, I896, as summarized in Leona W. Eisele, A Digest of the Krasnayi Arkhiv: Red Archives, Vol. II (Ann Arbor, 1955), p. 62; E. J. Dillon, The Eclipse of Russia (New York, I918), pp. 231-244. Even the U.S. Senate, on Dec. 3, I894, resolved to request details and causes of the massacres from President Cleve- land, as reflected in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-I897, Vol. IX (New York, 1917), p. 557.

8 Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Abdul Hamid'in Hattra Defteri, ed. tsmet Bozbag (Istanbul, I960), pp. I30-133. For authoritative, eyewitness accounts of the events of I909 and 1915-22,



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Britain and the launching of the Armenian question 467

violence but to trace the genesis of the Armenian Question as an international issue during the incubation period of the Armenian Revolutionary Movement, roughly I877-I890.

The dean of contemporary Ottoman historians, Professor Enver Ziya Karal, has declared that the Armenian Question did not exist before the ascension of Abdul Hamid II (1876). Even the Albanian and Arab national issues, Karal asserts, had surfaced as separate and distinct facets of the greater Eastern Question before the middle of the nineteenth century.9 This is not to suggest that a sense of national

identity had not existed among the dispersed Armenian subjects of Turkey, Russia, and Persia at an earlier date. Several Armenian kingdoms had flourished in the Trans-Caucasus area and in Eastern Asia Minor from about the fourth

century B.C. until conquered by the Arabs in A.D. 639. The Bagratid dynasty man-

aged to reestablish a measure of independence for Armenia from 886 until Byzan- tium annexed it in 1045; and it was overrun shortly thereafter by the first major wave of Seljukid Turks to penetrate Anatolia. Armenian refugees from the east then created a "New Armenia," centered on Cilicia, but this tenuous state was absorbed by the Egyptian Mamluks in I375.

Even after assimilation into the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries, the Armenians of Anatolia retained a form of unified administration and

representation through the theocratic system of government (the millet system) adopted by the Turks for the control of their subject peoples. By the mid nineteenth

century, however, the hierarchy of the Gregorian millet had become corrupt to the point that the patriarch and his senior functionaries had allied themselves with the Porte to suppress and fleece their flock. Although the Armenian National Constitution of I860 (actually ratified by the Porte in I863) did much to ameliorate this situation-at the instigation of the growing Armenian intelligentsia of Con-

stantinople-the moneyed amlira class retained influence in the governing of the tillet far in excess of its relatively small numbers; and a vast hiatus of mutual

understanding, much less sympathy, continued to separate the urban Armenian element from the peasantry, until the "back to the provinces" movement gained considerable momentum following the Berlin Congress of T878.10

see Herbert Adams Gibbons, The New Map of Europe (New York, I914), pp. 190-194; Helen Davenport Gibbons, The Red Rugs of Tarsus: A Woman's Record of the Armenian Massacres of I909 (New York, I917), pp. 103-I7I; Hartunian, Neither To Laugh nor To Weep, pp. 43-205; J. A. Zahm, Fronm Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon (New York, 1922), pp. 205-213; Arnold J. Toynbee, The Armeniian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation (London, I915), passim; Henry Morganthau, Ambassador Morganthau's Story (Garden City, I918), pp. 293-384; and Stanley E. Kerr, The Lions of Marash, Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (Albany, I973), passim.

9 Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanlh Tarihi, Vol. VIII (Ankara, 1962), p. 126. For primary sources on the same issue, see James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat (London, I896), pp. viii, 445; J. H. Skene, Anadol: The Last Home of the Faithful (London, 1854), pp. 353, 357.

10 For authoritative, dispassionate, and well-documented surveys of early Armenian history and of the antecedents of modern Armenian nationalism, see Hrand Pasdermadjian, Histoire



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Moreover, relative geographic isolation from the mainstream of events and

thought in Europe had simply prolonged the embryonic phase of nationalistic

development among the Armnenians of Anatolia. Although the Armenian "Dias-

pora" had been in progress for over a millennium by the advent of the nineteenth

century, the disastrous Ottoman wars in the Balkans and the Trans-Caucasus

region following the tturn of that century (the Serbian and Greek struggles for

independence, the Russo-Turkish W\ar of 1828-29, the Crimean War and the

Russo-Turkish Wrar of 1877-78), plus the subsequent consolidation of an inde-

pendent Bulgarian state, did much to dimlinish the Armenian proportions of the

total Ottoman population in Eastern Anatolia. Not only did many thousands from

the Armenian community emigrate to the cities of the empire-and to Trans-

Caucasian Russia-to escape the depredations of the untamed Kurdish tribes of

the East the Porte, in turn, attempted to pacify its unruly eastern provinces by

settling there hordes of Turkish refugees from the Balkans, and Muslim Circas-

sians andi Lezghians from the Trans-Caucasus.11 In short, by 1878 the Turco-

Armenians (lid not constitute a clear imajority of the total polulation in any of

the six Anatolian provinces where the bulk of them lived.12 This fact alone prob-

ably sufficed to stifle separatist ambitions and to relegate the Armenians to a

d(e I'Armn;ia depuis les origines jusqut'au Traitc de Lausanne (Paris, 1949); A. 0. Sarkissian, History of the lArlcmnianl) Question to 1885 (Urbana, I938); Nalbandian, Arm1cnian Revolt-

tionary Movement, pp. 1-89; Vahain M. Kurkjian, , History of Armenia (New York, I959); Claude Cahen. Pre-Ottomian Turkey, trans. J. Jones-Williams (New York, i968), passim; and Atamian, Armenian Community, pp. 1-63. For assessments of the functioning of the millet

system in the late nineteenth century, see M. A. Ubicini, Letters on Turkey, ed. and trans.

Lady Easthope, Vol. II (London, I856), letters iv-vii; Roderic H. Davidson, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, l856--I876 (Princeton, I963), pp. 12-19; Bliss, Turkey, pp. 303-309. For the text of the Armenian National Constitution, see H. F. B. I.ynch, Ar,menia: Travels and

Studies, Vol. II (London, 1901), pp. 445-467. Article LVII of the constitution allowed the

provinces only 40 deputies in the National General Assembly, whereas the clergy and lay Armenian (Gregorian) of Constantinople received 20o and 80 deputies, respectively. Thus, the

Gregorian inhabitants of the capital alone-about I5o,000 souls-became the "tail that wagged the dog." With respect to the "back to the provinces" movement, see n. 23 below.

11 F. Dubois de Montpereux, Voyage autour du Caucase (Paris, 1839-43), II, 263-265; James Brant, "Journey through a Part of Armenia and Asia Minor," Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, VI (1836), 201 ; R. Wilbrahim, Travels in the Trans-Caucasian Prov- inces of Russia (London, I837), pp. 294, 314; Janmes Brant, "Notes of a Journey through a Part of Kurdistan," Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, X (1840), 344; Robert Curzon Zouche, Armenia: A Year at Erzeroom, antd on the Frontiers of Russia, Turkey, anid Persia

(New York, I854), pp. I88, 2IO; Austen Henry Layard, Discoveries armtong the RuiJns of Niueveh and Babylon (New York, 1853), p. II; Frederick Millingen, fW'ild Life among the Kurds (London, I870), pp. 36, 104-IO6, 264; William M. Ramsay, Impressions of Turkey dur-

ing Twelve Years' Wanderings (London, I897), pp. 110-II4. After I878, it is highly probable that the Porte viewed the settlement of Muslim refugees in the eastern provinces as a deterrent to separatist plotting and uprisings among the Armenians there. By that date the Porte had seen over seventy-five years of such activity among its subject Christian peoples in the Balkans.

12 White to Salisbury, May 26, I89g, in BSP, 1890-1891, Vol. XCVI, pp. 498 ff. Both Otto-

man and British estimates placed the Armenians of all faiths at about 35 percent of the total

population in the provinces of eastern Asia Minor. See n. 2 above.



Britain and the launching of the Armenian qutestion 469

"least favored" position among the various Christian minorities of the Ottoman

Empire in the eyes of the Great Powers. Meanwhile. from 1830 to 1847, the Porte had employed its new, Westernized

army to sub(lue the rebellious Kurds-and thils brought to most of eastern Asia Minor almiost thirty years of relative freedom from tribal terror. The successes of this camplaign were confirmed by greatly relduce(l Armenian emigrations fron- the eastern Ilrovinces (during the Crimean War and the opening months of the Russo- Turkisll War of 87,7-78.1: Although occasional Kurdish outrages against the Christian mninorities of tle East continued to occur, the Armenian peasants tlere

appeared to be resigned to their lot until 1877.14 Furtliermore, they were relatively prosperous and content. Even in the many farmn villages of Asia Minor, where life was least pleasant for all subjects of the Porte, the Armenians enjoyed im-

munity fronm nmilitary conscription and thus were free to look after their own interests. Their Muslim neighbors, on the other hancd, lived in constant dread of tle sultan's conscription officers, an(l many of tlhemn were forcibly carried away to serve long and arbitrary terms of military duty, fighting in the nunerous civil and

foreign wars which rocked the empire throughout the nineteenth century. Strangely enotugh, Armenians and Turks got along ratlher well until 1877, especially at the

village level, despite the second-class citizenship impose(l on the former by the elite of the latter.15

Although the Armenians labored under a number of civil disabilities (forbidden to bear arms, to ride a horse, to hold certain public offices, and to wear certain articles of clothing), they prospered greatly in the cities of the empire. Ali Vehbi

Bey, a private secretary to Abdul Hamid, claimed that they held one-third of all state positions on the civil list. These positions included those of cabinet minister, provincial governor, ambassador, and principal assistant to Muslim cabinet minis- ters. Moreover, Armenian bankers, imerchants, and entrepreneurs controlled shares

13 William Francis Ainsworth, Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamlia, Chal- dea, and Armenlia, Vols. I, II (London, I842), passim; Zouche, Armenia, pp. 80, 94; Charles McClumpha et al., eds. and trans., Essays, Speeches, and Mem7oirs of Field-Marshal Contt Hfelmuth. von Moltke, Vol. I, (London, I893), pp. 278-287. Concise sketches of the Kurdish wars of the nineteenth century are available in Arshak Safrastian, Kurds and Knzrdistan (London, I948), pp. 49-60; V. Minorsky, "Kurds," Encyclopaedia of Islam, II, 1147-II48.

14 Friedrich Parrot. Jolurney to Ararat, trans. W. D. Cooley (New York, 1846), pp. 97-98, 230-231; Milli,ngen, Wild Life, p. 262; Bryce, Transcaucasia, pp. 336, 344, 464; Pears, Forty Years, p. 153; Charles B. Norman to LT, Oct. 1, 1877, p. 10; Norman, Armenia and the Campaiqgn of 1877 (London, 1878), pp. 329 ff.; David G. Hogarth, A Wanidering Scholar int the Levant (New York, I896), p. I49; Ramsay, Imjpressions of Turkey, pp. I90, 207-209, 215; Noel Buxton and Rev. Harold Buxton, Travels and Politics inz Armenia (London, I914), pp. 36-37. The Armenian uprisings at Van, Zeytiin, Mus, and Erzurum during the years I860- 1863 are notable exceptions and occurred under extraordinary circumstances. See Nalbandian, Armenian Revolutionary Moz,vemnct, pp. 65-79, for documented outlines of these events.

15 Layard, Discoverics, pp. I3-I6, 20; Cyrus Hamlin, Among the Turks (New York, i878), p. 334; Buxton and Buxton, Travels, pp. viii, 19; Hogarth, WFandering Scholar, p. 149; Eliot, Turkey in Europe, pp. 396-397, 401.



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of imperial trade and industry far out of proportion to their numbers. Thus, the

upper strata of the Armenian community had little interest in revolt or upheaval during the nineteenth century despite the sufferings of their rural brothers in

eastern Asia Minor. Even there life was relatively good and secure until, as sug-

gested above, the outbreak of war between Turkey and Russia in I877.16 The war precipitated a general collapse of order, such as it was, in the eastern

provinces of the empire. Masses of Muslim Circassian and Kurdish nomadic tribesmen took flight in the wake of Russia's advancing armies in the Trans-

Caucasus area, passing into Asia Minor il great disorder. The Muslim elite of the

Ottoman government naturally felt a deep obligation to grant haven to these

tribesmen. Their forebears had been loyal Ottoman subjects before the advance of

Russia beyond the Caucasus barrier (commencing in T803). On the other hand, Ottoman administrative and defensive organization in the eastern provinces had

long since proved too weak to resist the frontier maraudings of the tribes. This

sudden mixture of masses of nomads with the sedentary Armenian farmers and

tradesmen of the frontier provinces nevertheless wrought great upheaval in the

security of life and property. The resultant milieu mirrored the contemporary struggle for the fencing of grazing lands in the American West. The invading nomads generally bore armis as part of their occupational gear. They were unruly and thus usually pastured their flocks in regions wliere local authority was weak or

lax.

The remoteness of the Trans-Caucasus area from both Istanbul and St.

Petersburg made for equally remote interest, and means, for the maintenance of

order there in the councils of both powers concerned. Thus, the Armenians, un-

armed and inexperienced in the military arts, suffered every description of outrage.

They saw their crops stolen, burned, or trampled by livestock. Tribesmen violated

or carried away their women. During winter the nomads even drove them from

their homes and villages. To make matters worse, the Circassian and Kurdish

tribes already living in eastern Turkey, encouraged by the collapse of local authority,

joined in this sport. Murder, robbery, and rape became commonplace events in the

Armenian towns and villages, and especially so along the roads between them.

Ottoman authorities were too preoccupied with the prosecution of the war to

bother with the mniseries of their Armenian subjects. The Russian Army, however,

gradually restored order to many areas as it slowly pressed into the easternmost

16 Ali Vehbi Bey, Penscdes ct Souvenirs de l'Ex Sultan Abdul-HamZid (n.p., n.d.), p. 12;

Turk Tarih Kurumu Library, Ankara, Atif Hiisni (Hiiseyin) Bey, Abdulhamid'in Hatiralarz

MSS, Box IX, No. 14; Ismail Kemal Bey, The Memoirs of Ismiiail KeIal Bey (London, I920), p. 2I; Ramsay, Imipressions, p. I67; Whitman, Turkish Memories, p. I9; Andreas D. Mordt-

mann, Stamlbul und das imoderne Tiirkenthtu (Leipzig, I877-I878), I, I29-131, 141, I77-I79; Murad Efendi (Franz von Werner), Tiirkische Ski-zcn, Vol. II (Leipzig, 1877), p. 72;

Abdolonyme Ubicini and Pavet de Courteille, Etat present de l'Esmpire Ottomani (Paris, 1876), p. 87; G. G. B. St. Clair and C. A. Brophy, Twelve Years' Study of the Eastern Question (London, I877), pp. I25-134.



Britain and the laulnching of the Arm-enian qtuestion 471

provinces of Turkey. Moreover, the Russians, in occupying much of eastern Turkey, set up a more enlightened regime for Muslim and Christian alike than either of them had recently known at the hands of the Porte. Thus, the Armenian villagers and townsmen had cause for discontent with their Ottoman masters when Russia offered peace at San Stefano in March of I878.17

Meanwhile, other, more subtle forces had long been at work to gradually infect all Christian minorities with Western ideals of government by the consent of the

governed. Western Christian missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, had been

pouring into the Ottoman Empire since 1820. Their numbers had swelled to several thousands by the advent of war with Russia. Frustrated initially in their efforts to win converts among the Muslim peoples of the Empire, they promptly reconcentrated their attention on the task of imlproving (so they apparently thought) the level of life among the Christian communities. Many British, Ameri- can, and German missionaries (levoted their labors to the Gregorian Armenians.18 The results were chaotic for the patriarchate. The olscurantist hierarchy of the

Gregorian minority naturally opposed the mlissionaries. The latter posed a grave threat to the authority and vested interests of the formner. Thus, the Patriarchate, in order to strike terror in the hearts of its adherents, restored to summl ary excom- munication of those who kept company with the missionaries. The excommunicated elements sought refuge with their newfound benefactors, and a splinter Armenian

community was soon born: the Protestant Armenian sect, under the formal protection of Great Britain.19 The large Gregorian group remained, to the end of the

Empire, the only Christian minority without foreign guardianship. Although the WTestern missions began modestly with elementary Bible lectures

and readings, they soon expanded to establish literacy classes for their unschooled communicants in rural areas. Formal primary schools followed. The consequent development of a complete mission educational system climaxed in the founding of Robert College, in Istanbul, in I86i. In the meantime, the zeal of the missionaries and the generosity of their sponsors in the \est had also yielded hospitals, normal schools, and even Protestant seminaries in the remote provinces of Asia Minor. On the cliplomatic scene in Istanbul, the burgeoning of their missions soon swamped the British and American embassies in the mere business of routine assistance and protection. The missionaries, on the other hand, made

17 Capt. Henry Trotter (British Consul at Erzurum) to Salisbury, Nov. 13, and Dec. 28, 1878, in BSP, 1879, Vol. LXXX, pp. 458, 466; Sir A. H. Layard (British Ambassador to the Porte) to Salisbury, June I2 and July I, 1879, in ibid., pp. 547-548, 559; LT: April 4, I877, p. io; June II, I878, p. 10; Aug. 31, I878, p. 10; Sept. 24, I878, p. 6; Oct. I5, 1878, p. 4; Pears Forty Years, p. I53; Bryce, Transcaucasia, pp. I37-I39, 343-346, 349, 428-429; Ramsay, Imlpressionls, p. 205.

18 See n. 4 above. 19 Bliss, Turkey, pp. 302-3II ; Ubicini, Letters, II, 206-208; Noel Verney and George Damb-

mann, Les puissances Otrangcres dains le Levant (Paris, I900), pp. 31-I45; Hamlin, A4mong the Turks, pp. 24, 29 ff., 37 ff.; George Washburn, Fifty Years in Constantilople (Boston and New York, I909), pp. I-50.




diplomatic negotiations witli the Porte difficult through vociferous, and frequently

exaggerated, representations in support of the grievances of their congregations. Thus, the missions lprovided a setting, in the forms of both intellectual atmosphere

and physical facilities, for the incubation of daring and ambitious ideas and for

the hatching of dangerous plots within their flocks.20

The intellectual leavening of the Ottoman Armenians and, for that matter, of

all Armlenians in general during the nineteenth century was by no means restricted

to the Protestant segment. Early involvement of Armenians in the trade of the

Orient had contributed both to the Armenian "diaspora" and to the growth of a

prosperous commercial class amnong them. By the turn of the century, thriving colonies of Armienian merchant-bankers had emerged across a broad span of the

Old \Vorld, extending frolm ILondon to Calcutta and beyond. Moreover, the gradual

displacemient by Armenians of the Plhanariote Greeks from domlinance in the

trade of the Ottomanl Empire, following the Greek War of independence, wit-

nessed rapid growth and increasing wealth within the a;mira and Armenian petite

bourgeoisie classes of Istanbul an(d Izmir.

Thus, Armeniian contacts with tlhe West expanded apace, and the continuing

diaspora of Armenians fromn Turkey gained force through a growing flow of

Armenian youtlh to institutions of higher learning in Christian Europe (particularly to Paris, London, Geneva, Venice, Vienna, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Dorpat). A concurrent expansion of Armenian philanthropic activity in both Turkey and

Russian Trans-Caucasia soon yielded exclusively Armenian institutions of learn-

ing, in addition to the seminaries of long standing, both in Europe and the home-

land. In the latter area, the sclhool systems of all Armenian sects enjoyed simiilar

growth and improvement. One school after another opened until, in I866, there

were thirty-two schools for boys and fourteen for girls in Istanbul alone.

Like other "backward" peoples, the Armenians were seized with a veritable mania

for edutcation and information. The first Armenian language newspaper appeared in Izmir during 1839; and, within the next twenty-five years, Istanbul alone saw

the pul)lication of fourteen mnore.-1

20 Bliss, Turkey, pp. 311-323; Washburn, Fifty Years, pp. 76-88; Mary Patrick Mills, A Bosphorus Adventure (Palo Alto, 1934), pp. 28 if., 62 ff.; Bryce, Transcaucasia, PP. 466- 470; Lloyd C. Griscom, Diplohmatically .S'peak in (New York, 1940), PP. 134-135; Edmund Hornby, Aiutobiography (London, 1928), pp. I24-125. Layard had foreseen nationalist plotting within the missionary folds, as reveale( in his l)iscovecries, pp. 348-350. Whitman, Turkish

1Memories, p. 120, reported 621 Protestant schools, serving more than 27,000 students, in Asia Minor (luring his investigatory tril) through the "Armenian" provinces in 1896.

21 Ibid.; Pears, Forty Years, p. 151 ; Jacob Burckhardt, Die Zcit Constantine's des GrosseiL

(Basel, I853), p. 125. With tIle forJmation of a formal Protestant millet in 1849, animosity between the Gregorian Patriarchate and thle Armenian Protestants gradually dwindled; and Gregorian students soon began to attend the missionary schools throughout Turkey. For more detailed discourses onI these developments, see Nalbandian, A4rmeniant tRe,olutionary Move-

lmerit, pp. 30-40, 48-66; Atamiail, Armncian Community, pp. 70-91 ; Leon D. Megrian, "Ar- menian Life and Thought in the Ottoman Empire between 1839-1863," The ArmenJian Revicw,

XVI, 3-63 (Sept. 1063), 33-39; and Ara Caprielian, "H. Ajarian and his 'The Role of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire'," ibid., XXI, 3-83 (Sept. I968), 51---58.



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Meanwhile, on the international political front, Turkish Armenian hopes for relief from hardship in the provinces-even for autonomy on the order of that

granted the Christian Maronites of Lebanon in I86o-rose when General Skobeleff, tle Russian commander at San Stefano, granted an audience to the Gregorian Patriarch, Narses Varjabelian, during the peace negotiations started there to end the war of 1877-78. As a result of Armenian grievances presented by Varjabedian, Russia wrote into Article XVI of the peace pact a demand for sweeping reforms in the rule of Christian minorities in the eastern provinces as a condition for her withdrawal therefrom. Although Britain and Austria-Hungary, in pursuit of their traditional policies of blocking Russian expansion toward the Mediterranean Sea, quickly intervened to abrogate the Treaty of San Stefano, the Armenians found new assurance when the powers invited an unofficial delegation from the

Gregorian Patriarchate to attend the subsequent Congress of Berlin, convened in mid-1878 to forge a new peace treaty.22

The Treaty of Berlin, signed on July 13, 1878, disappointed the Armenians

sorely, however. It provided for the inmmediate withdrawal of Russian troops from eastern Turkey, in (leference to British demands. Although the powers did not

reject the issue of relief for the beleaguered Armenians, they successively diluted the stringent provisions of Article XVI of the San Stefano agreement to produce Article LXI of the new pact. The latter article obliged the Porte to pursue reforms andI security for its Christian subjects in Turkish Armenia under the supervision of the Great Powers. But the nature of this supervision remained undefined. The new treaty failed, moreover, to set up any sort of administrative machinery for such supervision. Thus, it appeared that the Porte, noted for lethargy and for tolerant disinterest toward the plight of the Armenians, stood free to reform or to

neglect its eastern provinces as it saw fit.23

British public opinion, long conditioned to sympathy for the Armenians by the

22 Abdul Hamid, Deftcr, pp. II9, 14I; Sir Edwin Pears, The Life of Abdul Hatlid (New York, I917), p. 218; Minasse Tcheraz (an Armenian delegate to the Congress of Berlin) to LT, n.d., in LT, April 6, I890, p. 6. A copy of the Armenian petition, presented to the Great Powers at the Berlin Congress, is available in Antoine de La Jonquiere, Ifistoire de l'Empire Ottomanl (Paris, I881), pp. 39-44.

23 The text of Article LXI of the Treaty of Berlin is reproduced in Hurewitz, Diplomlacy, p. 190. For the personal observations of a contemporary Ottoman bureaucrat (and historian) involved in the implementation of the treaty, see Ali Fuat Tiirkgeldi, Mcsail-i Muhizmmiln-i Siyasiyye, Vol. II (Ankara, 1957), pp. 86-87. The leader of the Arrmenian delegation, Gre- gorian Archbishop Mekertitch Khrimian (Khrimian Hairig), explained the failure of his lelegation, and its mission at Berlin, to his congregation in Constantinople in his famous "Sermon of the Iron Spoon." This sermon is reproduced in toto in A. Asvadzadrian, "Armenia before the Revolutionary Movement," The Armenian Review, XVI, 2-62 (May I963), 55-56. In short, Khrimian told his flock that Armenia, in contrast with the Christian states of the Balkans, did not win autonomy from the Porte because no Armenian blood had been shed in the cause of freedom. He went on to say that the only hope to gain autonomy lay in sending masses of educated Armenian youth to the provinces-to raise the spirit, economic welfare, and political awareness of the Armenian peasantry. This sermon marked the de facto launching of the "back to the provinces" movement among the urban element of Turco-Armenians.



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oratory and writings of liberals,24 might well have cried out at such a result (and so might articulate Armenians) were it not for a separate, more binding arrangement concluded between Britain and Turkey during the negotiations at Berlin.

This engagement, the Cyprus Convention of June 4, 1878, awarded to Britain a

loose form of stewardship over eastern Anatolia and possession, but not owner-

ship, of Cyprus.25 Britain, on the other hand, undertook to defend Turkey from

attack by Russia. The two contracting parties had withheld publication of this arrangement until

the Berlin deliberations closed. The Armenians were jubilant. They had found, so

they apparently believed, a champion at last in Britain.26 Her appointment, more-

over, of roving military consuls for Anatolia, in the fall of I878, further convinced

the Armenians that Britain aimed to put teeth in the flaccid terms of Article LXI.

The consuls were charged with touring the provinces, hearing the complaints of

Christian subjects, observing the activities of Ottoman governors-and of the

Kurdish tribes-and, finally, with reporting conditions to their ambassador in

Istanbul. He, in turn, was to maintain pressure on the Porte for the implementation of the reforms contracted in Article LXI.27

Meanwhile in Russia, Prince Loris Melikof, an Armenian himself and recent

commander of Russian forces in the Trans-Caucasus campaigns, succeeded to the

post of interior minister. He raised Armenian hopes in Turkey to yet a higher level

by proposing the establishment of an independent Armenian state, to consist of

the Armenian territories then divided among Russia, Turkey, and Persia.28 The

coincidence of British interest in pacification and reform for Asia Minor and the

24 Such as James Bryce, the Dukes of Argyll and Westminster, the Earls of Meath (Reg- inald Brabazon), Carnarvon (Henry H. Molyneux), and Selborne (Roundell Palmer). See their letter to LT in LT, July I5, I878, p. 7. Also see index of H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce (Viscount Bryce of Dechmolt, O.M.) (New York, 1972) for entries regarding their speeches and writings in support of Armenian reforms.

25 For the text of the Cyprus Convention, see Hurewitz, Diplomacy, pp. I87-I89. For an exhaustive, well-documented narrative of the negotiations within and between the governments of Britain and Turkey in the conclusion of this pact, see Dwight E. Lee, Great Britain and the Cyprus Convention Policy of I878 (Cambridge, I934). Tiirkgeldi's impressions of the negotiations and copies of documents involved are in his Mesail, II, 93-II4, 338-342.

26 Henry C. Barkley, A Ride through Asia llinor antd Armejnia (London, 1891), pp. 137, I54, 244, 28I; Ruben Khan-Azad, "Hai Heghapoghaganie Houshertz" (Memoirs of an Armenian revolutionary), Hairceik Amrosakir, V (June I927), 60-72. Khan-Azad was one of the founding members of the Hunchakian revolutionary movement.

27 "Return of Recent Consular Appointments in Asia Minor," in BSP, 1879, Vol. LXV,

pp. i ff.; Capt. A. F. Townshend, A Military Consul in Turkey (London, I9IO), pp. 7, 42-43,

73, I02-I03, II7-I I8, 219-220; Ramsay, Impressions, p. I43; Trotter to Sir Edward B. Malet

(British Charge d'Affairs at the Porte), Diyarbakir, April 24, 1879, No. 32; Trotter to

Clayton (British Consul in Diyarbakir), Erzurum, July 24, I879, F.O. I95/I211; and Layard to Lord Kitchener (a military consul), Tarabya, Aug. 23, I879, F.O. 195/I234: cited in Lee, Great Britain and the Cyprus Convention, pp. I55-I56; also, Barkley, A Ride, pp. IOI-I02, 280.

28 Dillon, Eclipse of Russia, p. 75; Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, Russia antd Asia (New York, I933), p. 202; Martin Shatirian, "The Founders of the A.R.F. on National Indepen- dence," The Armenian Review, XI, 2-42 (July I958), 98.



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Melikof proposal, however, marked the high tide of Armenian expectations from the Great Powers. A sudden confluence of many conflicting events on the international scene during the years I878-I885 doomed the realization of reform in Turkish Armenia, much less the creation of an Armenian state.

First, in Istanbul, Sultan Abdul Hamid in early I878 abruptly suspended the Ottoman Constitution drafted under his liberal prime minister, turned out his

progressive cabinet, and commenced the centralized despotism that character- ized the balance of his reign.2" Then at St. Petersburg, the "liberal" Tsar Alexander II met death in I88I at the hands of narodniki assassins, and his suc-

cessor, Alexander III, promptly reversed his predecessor's enlightened approach to government, following the trail blazed by Abdul Hamid. Of more immediate

significance, Alexander III dismissed Loris Melikof and canceled his Armenian

project. Worse yet for the nascent nationalist movement then underway among Russian Armenians, the new tsar next launched programs of Russification against all his non-Russian minorities.30

France, during this interim, added a sour note to Ottoman-Great Power rela- tions when, in i88I, she assumed a protectorate over Tunis without so much as a murmur of intent to the Porte. The following year Britain comipounded Abdul Hamid's growing suspicions toward the MWest when, on the pretext of securing European investments and residents, she unilaterally occupied Egypt after sup- pressing the Arabi Pasha rebellion there.31 The Great Powers in concert had meanwhile waged a long, frustrating diplomatic battle with the Porte, 1878-1882, for the implementation of several sensitive frontier adjustments in the Balkans

(Turkey's borders with Montenegro, Greece, and Serbia) sanctioned by the

Treaty of Berlin.32 Finally, the great Bulgarian Crisis of i885-I888 and the

subsequent crises in Crete and Macedonia threatened the Powers with war in the Balkans and thus conspired with preceding events to push the pot of Armenian reform to a back burner on the stove of European diplomacy. There the Armenian

pot simmered until it exploded in I894. The year I886 marked a decisive pivot in the embryogeny of the Armenian

Question. The liberal regime of Gladstone in Britain, which had sporadically sup- ported the cause of Armenian reforms during the years I88o-i886, yielded to the

Turkophile Conservatives under Salisbury. The network of British military consuls in Asia Minor, thwarted by the wiles of Abdul Hamid, had proved to be

unproductive and was abandoned in I885.33 Abdul Hamid had won the allegiance

29 Pears, Forty Years, pp. 1o7 ff., 114 ff.; Patrick, Bosphorus Adventure, pp. 8i ff. 30 Lobanov-Rostovsky, Russia and Asia, pp. 202-203; Lynch, Armenzia, I, 459 ff. and 467

ff.; Shatirian, "Founders of the A.R.F.," pp. 94-95. 31 Abdul Hamid, Defter, p. 139; Col. Husamettin Ertiirk, lki Devrin Arkasi (Istanbul,

I957), p. I2; Washburn, Fifty Years pp. 171-175. 32 For the personal observations of Turkgeldi on these issues, see his Mesail, II, 93-191;

copies of the many notes exchanged are in ibid., pp. 338-387. 33 Sir Telford Waugh, Turkey: Yesterday, To-day and Tomlorrow (London, 1930), p. 30;



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of Bismarck in (liscouraging further concerted action by the Great Powers on be-

h1alf of Turkish Armenians.34 A kaleidoscopic search for alliances had meanwhile

cominenced among the Great Powers for the preservation of a balance of strength in Europe. Rising suspicions among the Powers and their increasingly conflicting

inmperial and commercial interests in the OttomanI Empire thus rendered joint action on almost any issue there improbable.

The problem of Muslim tribal lawlessness in Eastern Anatolia, although not

nlearly as intense as during the war of 1877-78, persisted.3a More significant, the

continuing intellectual awakening among the Armnenians of all confessions in both

Turkey and Russia lhad generated a nationalistic literary renaissance throughout all of "Greater Armenia." This mnovement did mnuch to raise the sensitivities of the

Armenians of eastern Asia Mlinor-and of Armelnians everywhere-to the op-

pressions of the Kur(ls. The leaders of tlese communities meanwhile realized that

the plight of the Turkisll eastern provinces had fallen behind the shadows of Egypt and Bulgaria in the councils of Europe. On the other hand, the Armenians of both

Turkey and Russia had long since come to expect substantial assistance for the

improvenment of Ottomlan rule from the W\est. Although somewhat disillusioned by

ap)arent lack of interest for theml in the capitals of the Powers, both groups persisted in the belief that their best lmeans of salvation lay with Britain and the

"progressive" nations on the Continent.36 The principal source of disagreement between Russo-Armenian and Turco-Armenian activists revolved around their

choices of method for attracting that salvation. Nevertheless, both groups resolved

to act rather than to wait any longer upon the pleasure of the Powers.37 The leadership) of the Russo-Armenian community had already resorted to

revolutionary scheming in the Trans-Caucasus region. They chose as their first

objective the political awakening and independence of Ottoman Armenia-to be

followed by revolutionary expansion of that state to include the Armenian prov-

Washburn, Fifty Years, p. I53; Pears, Forty Years, p. I53; and Col. Sir Charles Wilson (Chief Military Consul) to Layard, Nos. 41 and 42, April 12, i88o, F.O. 78/3129; Lord Tenterden (British Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs), Memoranduim, May 25. i88o, F.O. 363/5, cited in Lee, Great Britain and the Cyprus ConTention, p. 157.

34 Abdul Hamid to Kaiser Wilhelm I (telegram), Sept. 15, I880, in Tiirkgeldi, Mesail, II, 380-381; German Foreign Office (unsigned), General Directive for the conduct of German

policy in the Near East, Friedrichsrtu, Nov. 7. 188o, in Johannes Lepsius et al. eds., Die Grosse Politik der Europdiischle Kabinettc, I871-I914, Vol. VI (Berlin, 1926), p. 20; Earl Granville (British Foreign Secretary) to the British Ambassadors at Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Rome, Jan. 12, I88I, and Lord Odo Russell (British Ambassador to Berlin) to Granville, Jan. 28, I88I, in BSP, 188I, Vol. C. pp. 750, 773.

35 Trotter to Salisbury, Nov. I3, 1878. in BSP, 1879, Vol. LXXX, p. 458; Memorial from the Armenian Patriotic Committee of London to Lord Salisbury, London, March 27, I888, in LT, April 3, I888. p. 8; Washburn, Fifty Years, p. 153; A. Locher, Wffith Star and Crescent (Philadelphia, I890), pp. 437-573; Ramsay, Imprcssions, pp. 204-212.

36 Eliot, Turkey in Europe, p. 398; Barkley, A Ride, pp. I37, I54, 244, 281. 37 Lynch, Armenia, I, 219-223, 270-276; Washburn, Fifty Years, pp. 200-201; Bliss,

Turkey, pp. 335-336; Abdul Hamid, Defter, pp). 130-I32; and Ertiirk, Iki Devrin, Arkasi, pp. 40-41.



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inces of Russia and Persia. The internal security forces of the new tsar, however, had expanded concurrently in size and vigilance in his Trans-Caucasian domains. The plotters, thus driven lunderground in Russia, prematurely chose to commence terrorist activities in eastern Turkey where local authority was notoriously lax and inefficient. They lhad long observed in disgust the docility with which their

Ottomnan brothers stubmitted to the oppression of the tribes. This situation they determined to correct. Specifically, they proposed to provoke through terrorism an Armeneian crisis in Turkey sufficient in scale to arrest the attention and sympathy of the Powers-and thus to force intervention.38

The urban elite of the Ottomani Armenians, on the other hand, opposed such extreme mieasures. They viewed terrorism and consequent Turkish reprisals as

grave threats to their vested interests; they remmbered the fate of the Phanariote Greeks of the Ottoman Empire and shuddered. Whereas the revolutionaries advo- cated Armenian independence as the only solution to all Armenian problems in

Turkey, Russia and Persia, the Armenian urban elite in Turkey hoped simply to

gain relief for the eastern provinces. This urban group, encompassing the hierarchy of the patriarchate and many, p)owerful banking and commercial families, naturally wislhed to preserve their favored positions within Ottoman society. Hence, they argued for patience and for a subtle program of appeals to public opinion in the West to generate international pressures on the Porte. Both groups, revolutionaries and urban elite, nevertheless agreed that known Armenian sympathizers among influential liberals in the West should be exploited. Both factions acted to stimulate these sympathizers.39

Thus, the continuing diaspora of articulate Armenian nationalists and students from Turkey gradually produced activists and pamphleteers in London, Man- chester, Paris, MIarseilles, Vienna, and Brussels. The Armenian colony in London grew large enough by Christmas of 1885 to found a formal Gregorian congregation there.40 The Armenian promotional schemes of this congregation were largely conducted by the Armenian Patriotic Committee of London, under the chairman- ship of Garabet Hagopian. a product of Robert College. His committee served both as an Armenian propaganda agency and as a coordinating center for the activities of smaller grotips located in the other cities mentioned above. The London center circulated a newspaper, Haiasdan, providing in English and Armenian a slanted and exaggerated view of the woes of Turkish Armenians. Meanwhile in Marseilles, Mlekertitch Portugalian41 prolduced a similar journal for French consumption:

38 A point of considerable controversy among students of the Armenian Question. 39 See n. 37 above; also, Shatirian, "Founders of the A.R.F.," pp. 93-107. 40 LT, Jan. I9, I886, p. 7; Abdul Hamid, Defter, pp. 130-I32. 41 Portugalian had been an educational organizer (and political activist) for the Gregorian

Patriarchate in the Van region. The Porte banished him in I885. For an outline of his activities in Turkey and France, see Nalbandian, Armenian Revolutionary Movement, pp. 90-107. He published an anthology of his journal in I890: "L'Armzenie" ie Housharar (Marseilles, 1890).



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L'Arzmenie. Both organs were widely disseminated in Turkey, behind the backs of Ottoman authorities, of course, and kept the Armenians there in a constant state of agitation.42

Two different British governments during I886, that of Gladstone (February to

July) and the subsequent regime of Salisbury, felt parliamentary pressure for new initiatives in Istanbul to urge Armenian reforms.43 In the long run, how-

ever, the frequent changes of cabinets (and parties in power) in London throughout the years I877-I886 proved to be the undoing of Armenian attempts to sway White- hall. Whereas Hagopian and his staff had probably pinned their hopes to the Liberals, the Conservatives under Salisbury came to power in July I886 and remained in office until August of 1892, a critical period in the development of the Armenian revolutionary movement in Turkey. By coincidence, instructions from Gladstone (via his foreign secretary, Lord Rosebery) in June of i886 to renew overtures at the Porte for Armenian reform cost Sir Edward Thornton (British ambassador in Istanbul since 1884) his job when Salisbury succeeded to the premiership in July.44 Hence, Thornton's replacement, Sir William A. NWhite,

understandably followed a cautious path in addressing the Porte on Armenian affairs.45

Salisbury, on the other hand, had long since become an "old hand" in the

42 LT, April 23, I888, p. 8; White to Salisbury, May 28 and Dec. 8, I888, and Salisbury to White, March 29, I889, in BSP, I889, Vol. LXXXVII, pp. 163, I90-191, 205; LT, Feb. 14, I889, p. 5; George Pollard Devey (British Vice Consul at Van) to Col. Chermside (British Consul at Erzurum), July 6. I889; Chermside to White, Sept. 14, I889, in BSP, I890, Vol. LXXXII, pp. 9-II, 27-28; Patiguian (one of Hagopian's colleagues in London) to Koulak- sizian (an activist in Van), April 25, I889, and Portugalian to Koulaksizian, April 27, I889, in ibid., pp. II-I3; Devey to Clifford A. Lloyd (British Consul in Erzurum), Jan. 2 and Aug. I9, I890, and White to Salisbury, April 5, I890, in BSP, I890-I89I, Vol. XCVI, pp. 463, 487, 534. Also, Joseph von Radowitz (German Ambassador to the Porte) to Gen. Leo von Caprivi (German Chancellor), Aug. I, I890, in E. T. S. Dugdale, ed., German Diplomatic Documents, I87I-I914, Vol. II (New York, I929), pp. I09-I0.IO

43 Lord Rosebery (British Foreign Secretary) to Sir Edward Thornton (British Am- bassador to the Porte), No. 2I8, July 6, I886, F.O. 78/3866, and Thornton to Lord Iddesleigh (British Foreign Secretary), No. 428, Aug. 24, I886, F.O. 78/3874, cited in Colin L. Smith, The Embassy of Sir William White at Constantinople, I886-189I (Oxford, 1957), p. 44.

44 Salisbury is reported by his daughter (and biographer) as having said, upon resuming office in I886: "They [the Liberals] have just thrown it [British influence at the Porte] away into the sea, without getting anything whatever in exchange" (Lady Gwendolen Cecil, The Life of Robert Marquis of Salisbury, Vol. II, [London, I92I], p. 326. See also Iddesleigh to White, Private, Aug. 27, I886, cited in Smith, Embassy of William White, p. 45; and LT, Aug. 30, I886, p. 6.

45 White to Salisbury, No. 397, Secret, Aug. 9, I890, F.O. 78/4277, cited in Smith, Embassy of William White, p. I07. White indeed faced a dilemma: whereas his predecessor had been recalled for supposedly squandering British influence at the Porte on Armenian philanthropy, his consular officers throughout Turkey were old veterans of the Levantine Consular Service and, no doubt, still resented the calumny heaped on them by Parliament during the Bulgarian Crisis of I875-I876 for their alleged Turcophilism. A well-documented study of this issue is contained in Gordon L. Iseminger, "The Old Turkish Hands: The British Levantine Con- suls, I856-76," Middle East Journal, XXII (I968), 297-3I6.



Britain and the lauznching of the Armenian question 479

diplomacy of the Eastern Question, despite its many complexities, by the advent

of the mid-I88os. As indicated above, he viewed the support of Armenian reforms

at the Porte by Thornton in I886 as the cause for the utter loss of what little influ-

ence Britain retained there after the occupation of Egypt in 1882. Moreover, Salis-

bury then had his own "Armenian Question" in Ireland! British advocacy of

Armenian autonomy could destroy his domestic position on Irish home rule. Thus, he was generally antipathetic to the advances of Hagopian and his collaborators.

Meanwhile, Hagopian submitted frequent appeals to the British press for sup-

port of his cause.46 Through his efforts, plus those of his liberal allies in Parlia-

ment, coverage by The Timles of the Armenian Question rose from a mere I4

articles throughout I886 to 6i during the next year, and finally to 122 in I890.47 Whereas these statistics might suggest greatly increased activity among Armenian

agents in Turkey, or among the Armenian minorities and their Kurdish oppres- sors, repeated, on-the-scene investigations in Kurdistan-Armenia, in response to

queries from Salisbury, revealed, until mid-I89o, that Eastern Anatolia was, if

anything, more tranquil than usual.48 In April of I888 Hagopian took to addressing "open letters" to the British gov-

ernment, and to Salisbury in particular. Salisbury, in turn, felt obliged by public opinion and its echoes in Parliament to put on a show of cabinet interest in the

plight of the Armenians. This he achieved by relaying to White, in Istanbul, the many allegations received at Whitehall pertinent to Armenian complaints. Salisbury merely asked White for verification or denial of the circumstances cited, without requiring that direct overtures be made to the Porte for redress or for the

implementation of the long-delayed reforms.49 On the home front, meanwhile, Salis-

bury managed to resist exhortations from Parliament and the public for unilateral British intervention in Turkey on behalf of the Armenians. He simply argued that the wording of Article LXI of the Treaty of Berlin provided only for joint super-

46 For examples, see LT: April 3, I888, p. 8; April 23, I888, p. 8; May 22, i888, p. 5; June I4, I889, p. 7; Aug. 28, I889, p. 14; Sept. I2, I889, p. 5; Oct. I7, I889, p. 13.

47 See entries under "Armenia & Armenians" plus appropriate entries under "Turkey" in Palmer's Index, Times Newspaper (I886-I890) (London, I887-I891).

48 Radowitz to Caprivi, Aug. I, I89O, in Dugdale, German Diplomatic Documents, II, 109-

IIo; A. C. Wratislaw (British Consul at Harput) to White, Aug. IO, I888; Devey to Cherm- sid, Jan. 9, I889; Salisbury to White, March 29, I889, in BSP, I889, Vol. LXXXVII, pp. I67-I68, 20I, 205; White to Salisbury, Sept. I4, I889, in BSP, I890, Vol. LXXXII, pp. 21-

24; White to Salisbury, Feb. 24 and April 5, I890; Wratislaw to White, Aug. 30, I890, in BSP, I89o0-891, Vol. XCVI, pp. 482, 487, 535; Hogarth, Wandering Scholar, pp. 148-I49.

49 F.O. (Julian Pauncefote) to Hagopian, London, March 27, i888; Salisbury to White, March 29 and July 25, i888; Archbishop of Canterbury to Salisbury, May I4, i888; Evangeli- cal Alliance to F.O., June 29 and Nov. 26, I888; Hagopian to Salisbury, London, June 27, I889, in BSP, I889, Vol. LXXXVII, pp. 152-153, 158, 164, i66, i86, 229; Salisbury to White, Aug. I4, I889; White to Salisbury, Sept. 30 and Oct. 4, I889, in BSP, I890, Vol. LXXXII, pp. I7, 29-31; Devey to Lloyd, Jan. 2, 1890; Salisbury to Fane (British Charge d'Affairs in Istanbul), July I8 and 23, I89o; Salisbury to White, Aug. 12 and I9, 1890; Lloyd to White, July 3I, 1890, in BSP, I89o0-891, Vol. XCVI, pp. 463, 517, 519-520, 525-527.




vision by all of the signatory powers of such reforms as the Porte engaged to under-

take and to report. He added, moreover, that the Treaty of Berlin had superseded

tle Cyprus Convention since the former agreement was concluded after the

latter.50

The number of parliamentary inquiries referred by Salisbury to \White kept

pace with growing press interest and swelling public sentiment-some of it no

loubt the result of Hagopian's paradiplomatic efforts. Such inquiries had bur-

geoned so much by M:lay of I89o that White reported a new, inform-al procedure

arranged with the Porte for more rapid investigation of them.51 Happily for

Salisbury, precious few of the many, many alleged incidents he sent to White for

confirmation were substantiated. The gross exaggerations of the Armenian agents in London, plus the sheer difficulty of oltaining correct knowledge of violent events

in the East, enabled the prime minister to confront Armenian partisans at home

from a position of strength.52 He, at least, could claim to quote from the direct

observations of relatively impartial "old lands" in eastern Anatolia. The great bulk of foreign consular offices throughout the Ottoman Empire-six of them in

eastern Asia Minor alone-were British. So. by keeping critics of his Armenian

policy on the defense, Salisbury managed to silence demands for British inter-

vention at the Porte. He subsequently hoped to restore British influence in Turkey and foresaw in unilateral intervention only ultimate harm for major British inter-

ests in the Near East.53 As the leader of an imperial system ruling more Muslim

peoples than even the Ottoman sultan, Salisbury recognized the dangers of cham-

pioning Christian causes in Turkey.

The other powers all managed to stand even more aloof from the Armenian

Question thanl did Britain under Salisbury. After several rebuffs from him in

1887-88, the Armnenian comnuittees in Europe despaired of British support against

the Porte and resolved to make urgent representations to France for assistance.54

Nothing apparently canle of this project if it wvas ever launched in earnest. There is

a nagging void concerning the Armenian Question in French diplomatic docu-

ments before 1894, but it seems plausible to speculate that the issue invoked little

50 F.O. (Julian Pauncefote) to Hagopian, London, March 27, i888, and Salisbury to Arch-

bishop of Canterbury, May 21, I888, in BISP, I889, Vol. LXXXII, pp. I 52, I61-162; Salis- bury, Speech before the House of Lords, June 28, I889, summarized in Atnnual Register, I889

(London 1890), pp. I46-147; LT, May 24, i888, p. 5. 51 White to Salisbury, May 26, I890, in BSP, I89O--I89I, Vol. XCVI, p. 500. 52 Documents cited in n. 42 above contain examples of inquiries which brought sharp denials

from WVhite or his consular officers. Wlhite to Salisbury, Sept. 13, I890, in BSP, I890-I891, Vol. XCVI, p. 536, cites the extreme lifficulties involved in getting accurate information of incidents in the Near East.

53 Radowitz (citing Wrhite) to Caprivi, Aug. I, I890, in Dugdale, German Diplomatic Doc- ue mcnts, II, 109-I0; Salisbury, Speech before the House of Lords, June 28, I889, summarized in Annual Rcgister, I889, pp. 146-147; LT, May 24, i888, p. 5.

54 Ibid.



Britain and the lannching of the Armenian question 481

interest in France as long as it did not interest Britain, her chief rival in the Near

East.55

Russia, of course, had a large, turbulent Armenian community in her Trans-

Causasian provinces. She had been attempting to absorb all of her many non-

Russian peoples through rigorous programs of Russification. She had also been

wooing the Porte constantly since the British entry into Egypt (1882). Thus, the tsar remained understandably silent on the Armenian Question. In 1890, his

minister of foreign affairs, Nikolai de Giers, summarized the Russian position on

the Armenian Question: "Russia has no reason to wish for a second Bulgaria."56 Of the three remaining powers signatory to the Treaty of Berlin, Italy was com-

pletely preoccupied with her new adventures in East Africa; and Germany and

Austria-Hungary, llaving narrowly avoided war with Russia during the Bulgarian Crisis of 1887-88, were reluctant to challenge the tsar in his Trans-Caucasian

provinces.57 Hence, the diplomatic stage was set for general Great Power indifference when

the Hunchakian Revolutionary Federation began to flex its muscles in Turkey in 1889-90. This group, the first major Armenian revolutionary league to initiate

terrorist activities against the Porte, was founded in (Geneva, in I887, by Marxist

Russo-Armlenian stu(lents and nationalists. In I889 its members began to infiltrate the school systemls of the Gregorian Patriarchate and of the foreign missions. They next smuggled in arms, disseminated seditious literature, and bombarded Salisbury (via Hagopian) with allegations of atrocity when a few of their agents were caught flagrante delicto by Turkish police.58

When the Porte, in a show of concern for the safety of its Armenian subjects,

, Radoxvitz to Caprivi (reviewing the history of the powers' involvement in the Armenian Question), Aug. 3, I890, in Dugdale, German Diplomatic Documents, II, III. Despite the establishment of two committees in France (Paris and Marseilles) and the publication there of L'Armcniec, France was (lisinterested in Armenia, as reflected by the contents of Ministere des Affaires 2tirangeres, Documents Diplomatiques Francais, I871-1914, Ire Ser. (Paris, 1930- 1955), Vols. VII and VIII, for the period Jan. i, i888-Aug. 28, I891. These sources contain only one brief dispatch on the issue. This document, Laboulaye (French Ambassador in St. Petersburg) to Ribot (French Foreign Minister), Sept. 21, I890, outlines the position of Russia vis-a-vis Armenian autonomy-without giving even a hint of the French position-at ibid., VIII, 247.

5i Count Pourtales (German Charge d'Affairs in St. Petersburg) to Caprivi, Sept. I5, I890, in Dug(lale, (Germani Diplomatic Documcnts, II, 112.

57 Radowitz to Caprivi, Aug. 3, I89o, in Lepsius et al., Die Grosse Politik, IX, 191-192. For a documented analysis of Great Power involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas area during the late i88os, see G. P. Gooch, History of Modern Europe, I878-1919 (New York, 1923), pp. 115-i55.

58 For a personal account of the founding and exploits of the Hunchakian movement, by one of its charter members, see Avetis Nazarbek, Through the Storm: Picturcs of Life in Armcuia (London, I899), passim; also, Khan-Azad, "Hai Heghapoghaganie Houshertz," /Haircuik Aimsakir, Vols. V, VI (1927-1929), passim. For a documented history of the movement, see Nalbandian, Armenian Revolutionary Movement, pp. 90-I3I.




brought a notorious Kurdish bandit chieftain of Anatolia (the infamous Musa Bey) to trial in November of I889, the Hunchakians whipped up Armenian feelings of

outrage and willingness to protest openly at his subsequent acquittal (June 1890). Thus, Hunchakian strength first came to light in Istanbul in July of I890 when activists precipitated a major riot among some five hundred Armenian

peasants who had come from the eastern provinces to testify at or to observe the trial. The rioters confronted their patriarch, about to conduct mass in his cathedral, and demanded that he immediately lead them to the palace and present their

grievances to the sultan himself. When the patriarch tried to temporize, they assaulted him violently. Troops in the neighborhood of the cathedral had been alerted to the unusual gathering; they promptly intervened and rescued the

patriarch in the nick of time. Wholesale arrests and a massive investigation by Turkish security police followed quickly on the heels of these events. The Porte

subsequently managed to allay the concern of the Great Power ambassadors

through a speedy, open and orderly trial for the defendants and through obvious

clemency in awarding punishment to those convicted of misbehavior. Sir William

White, a long-time resident in the Ottoman Empire and a veteran observer of the

Istanbul scene, registered shock and disbelief at this new, unprecedented boldness in the actions of the Armenian minority.59

Meanwhile, suspicions of subversion among its Armenian subjects had already taken root in the councils of the Porte.60 In response, Abdul Hamid's famous internal security agency, the secret Hafieh, initiated a campaign of sudden searches and seizures in Armenian churches, schools and homes, both in Istan- bul and in the provinces. One such raid, in June 1890, gave the Hunchakians an

opportunity to stage a full rehearsal for the cathedral riot in Istanbul the

following month. In Erzurum, the principal city of Turkish Armenia, Hafieh and

other Ottoman officials conducted a dawn search of the Gregorian cathedral on

June 20tll. Although this measure reportedly failed to reveal any indications of

revolutionary activity among the Armenians of Erzurum, Hunchakian agents ex-

ploited the occasion to arouse the Armenian quarter of the city with wild stories of

alleged Turkish desecrations against the holy relics of the cathedral. Outraged Armenian youths assaulted the bishop as the search entourage departed the build-

ing, and the entire Armenian community closed shops, offices, and schools in

sullen protest. Hostile responses from the Muslims of the city unleashed two days of Muslim-Armenian rioting and looting. Local Ottoman authorities, however, dis-

played normal restraint in promptly restoring order and in dealing mildly with

59 LT, July 29, I890, p. 5, and July 30, I890, p. 5; White to Salisbury, Aug. i, I890, with enclosures, in BSP, I890-I891, Vol. XCVI, pp. 522-524; Lloyd to White, Aug. 21, I89o, in

ibid., pp. 532-533; White to Salisbury, Aug. 21, 1890, in ibid., p. 526. For the memoirs of a participant in the cathedral riot, see H. Jangulian, Notes on the Armencian Crisis, Vol. III (Constantinople, 1913), passim.

60 Eliot, Turkey in Europe, p. 392; Lynch, Ar?tmenia, II, 423-424; Tcharykov, Glimipses of High Politics, p. 226.




arrested Armenians. Thus, in Erzurum, as in Istanbul one month later, Turkish officials succeeded in convincing the representatives of the Powers of their concern for the safety of the Armenian community.61

In July and August of 1890, two major fires broke out mysteriously between the Armenian and Jewish quarters of Istanbul. More than a thousand homes were thus destroyed. Finally, on the following September 3d and 4th, Armenian arsonists reduced one-half of the major port city of Salonika to ashes. More than sixteen thousand persons were made homeless, and the total damage was esti- mated at imore than one million pounds sterling !62

Thus, the Armenian nationalists had clearly shown their hand to the Porte by the close of the summer of I890. But they had miscalculated seriously in laying their plans: they still lacked a champion among the Powers. It would appear that

they had counted heavily on the survival of the Gladstone government of I886, or failed to understand the two opposing points of view on the Eastern Question then

prevalent in Britain. Salisbury, of course, was wed to the Palmerstonian approach: the protection of Turkey against Russian encroachments into the Balkans or into the Mediterranean area. Moreover, he remained deadlocked with France over British rights in Egypt and thus was uncertain of his options in the eastern Medi- terranean Sea. The most he could do for the Armenians and other oppressed Christians of Asia Minor, he felt, and in fact did, was to encourage German economic penetration of the area with the hope that the Germans would exercise a

"civilizing" influence on the Porte.63 This stopgap measure came too late for the pacification of Asia Minor. Abdul

Hamid had already had enough of Armenian plotting; he had also learned from the actions of the Powers during the past thirteen years that they would not intrude in his affairs on behalf of the Armenians. Late in 1890 or early the next year he began to recruit his famous Hamidielh the Kurdish irregular cavalry.64 Thus, the Armenian Question was launched on its way to a new era.

University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah

61 White to Salisbury, Nov. Io, I890, with enclosures, in BSP, I89o-I891, Vol. XCVI, pp. 544-558; Fane to Salisbury, June 22, 1890, with enclosures, also June 23, 24, 27, I890, in ibid., PP. 505-509; Lloyd to Fane, June 20 and 28, 1890, in ibid., pp. 5II-5I6.

62 LT, July 14 and I6 and Aug. 6, I890, p. 5 (in each issue); LT, Sept. 5, 6, 8, 12, I890, PP. 3, 5, 3 and 7, and 8, respectively. See Stephen Bonsai, Heyday in a Vanlished World (New York, I937), pp. 286-289, for an account of a fantastic, chance meeting between the author and the plotters of the Salonika fire.

63 Waugh, Turkey, pp. 30-32; Pears, Forty Years, p. 137; Eliot, Turkey in Europe, p. 414. 64 LT, April 4, I891, p. 5; White to Salisbury, Feb. 24 and March 13, I89I, in BSP, 1892,

Vol. XCVI, pp. I9, 25. Meanwhile, to allay any fears or suspicions among the Powers, Abdul Hamid had staged

several spectacular acts of reconciliation between himself and his Armenian subjects in late December I890 and January I89I, as described in White to Salisbury, Jan. I9, I89I, in ibid., p. 6; LT, Dec. 26, I890, p. 9, and Dec. 30, I890, p. 4.



Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question

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