Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order

301 Pages·2019·2.658 MB·English

by  Charlie Laderman

Sharing the Burden
OXFORD STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY
James j. Sheehan, series advisor
THE WILSONIAN MOMENT
Self- Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism
Erez Manela
IN WAR’S WAKE
Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order
Gerard Daniel Cohen
GROUNDS OF JUDGMENT
Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth- Century China and Japan
Pär Kristoffer Cassel
THE ACADIAN DIASPORA
An Eighteenth- Century History
Christopher Hodson
GORDIAN KNOT
Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order
Ryan Irwin
THE GLOBAL OFFENSIVE
The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-
Cold War Order
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
MECCA OF REVOLUTION
Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order
Jeffrey James Byrne
SHARING THE BURDEN
The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo- American Visions of
Global Order
Charlie Laderman
Sharing the Burden
The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention
and Anglo- American Visions of Global Order
CHARLIE LADERMAN
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Laderman, Charlie, author.
Title: Sharing the burden : the Armenian question, humanitarian intervention,
and Anglo- American visions of global order / Charlie Laderman.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019. |
Series: Oxford studies in international history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019006333 (print) | LCCN 2019017260 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190618612 (updf) | ISBN 9780190618629 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190618605 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Armenian massacres, 1915– 1923. | Armenian question. |
World War, 1914– 1918— Territorial questions— Armenia. |
Intervention (International law) | United States— Foreign relations— 20th century. |
Great Britain— Foreign relations— 20th century.
Classification: LCC DS195.5 (ebook) | LCC DS195.5.L33 2019 (print) |
DDC 956.6/2 0154— dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/ 2019006333
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
CONTENTS
Introduction: The Armenian Question 1
1. The Origins of a Solution 16
2. The Rooseveltian Solution 48
3. The Missionary Solution 80
4. The Wilsonian Solution 111
5. The American Solution 140
6. Dissolution 169
Conclusion 198
Acknowledgments 209
Notes 213
Bibliography 255
Index 277
v

Sharing the Burden
Figure 0.1 The Armenian question in Asia Minor, 1895, Bodleian Library, D30 114.
Introduction
The Armenian Question
Probably Armenia was known to the American school child in 1919
only a little less than England. The association of Mount Ararat and
Noah, the staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the
Mohammedan Turks, and the Sunday School collections over fifty
years for alleviating their miseries— all cumulate to impress the name
Armenia on the front of the American mind.
—Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of
Adventure (1951)
The Armenians and their tribulations were well known throughout
England and the United States. This field of interest was lighted by the
lamps of religion, philanthropy and politics. Atrocities perpetrated
upon Armenians stirred the ire of simple and chivalrous men and
women spread widely about the English- speaking world. Now was the
moment when at last the Armenians would receive justice and the right
to live in peace in their national home. Their persecutors and tyrants
had been laid low by war or revolution. The greatest nations in the hour
of their victory were their friends, and would see them righted.
—Winston Churchill, The World Crisis: The Aftermath (1929)
The First World War was the foundational crisis of the twentieth century. It was
the “calamity from which all other calamities sprang,” as historian Fritz Stern put
it.1 The conflict precipitated the collapse of international order, prompting the
downfall of empires and provoking the displacement of entire populations. The
world had never before witnessed death and destruction on this scale. Almost
ten million combatants were killed and millions more were permanently dis-
abled. Yet even among this carnage, Theodore Roosevelt was adamant that one
atrocity was unique in its horror. The former president would declare unequivo-
cally in 1918 that “the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war.”2 On
the other side of the Atlantic, Lord Robert Cecil, the British undersecretary for
foreign affairs, went even further, stating, “without the least fear of exaggeration,
that no more horrible crime has been committed in the history of the world.”3
1