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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2020
This article is an historical ethnography of the popular conceptualizations of crowd behavior during the pogroms against the Armenians in the Ottoman East in 1895–1896. It draws on contemporary sources like official telegrams, governmental reports, letters of American missionaries, and Armenian periodicals to show that observers with otherwise highly conflicting views described the structure of the event in the exact same way: as an outcome of sinister deception. Without exception, all parties told some story of deception to explain the violent attacks of the Kurdish semi-nomadic crowds on the Armenian neighborhoods of the city of Harput. The article analyzes these cases of disguise, deluding, and inculcation to reveal how contemporary observers theorized crowd behavior in general and the atrocities they witnessed in particular. They did not perceive violence as an index of social distance or deep societal divisions. On the contrary, they described a world in which Armenians and Muslims lived a shared life, and where one attacked the other only when deceived. Methodologically, the article lifts barriers between intellectual history and social history on behalf of an historical ethnography of people's theories about their own society.
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54 PMOA, DH.EO, 293, 5 Dec. 1895.
55 Altıntaş, “Crisis and (Dis)Order,” 253.
56 Vartenie, Yestere (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901), 158, 178, 193. I am grateful to Burak Onaran for providing me with an electronic copy of this book from Germany.
57 For examples, see Ahmet Kolbaşı, 1892–1893 Ermeni Yafta Olayları (Merzifon-Yozgat-Kayseri) (İstanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, 2011); Dilşen İnce Erdoğan, Amerikan Misyonerlerinin Faaliyetleri ve Van Ermeni İsyanları (1896) (İstanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, 2008), 271–376; Ahmet Halaçoğlu, Bir Ermeninin İtirafları (1895 Maraş ve Zeytun Olayları) (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, 2007), 48–49.
58 Altıntaş, for example, takes the disguise and deceptive behavior of Hampartsum Boyajian as a fabrication of Zeki Pasha, even though some Muslim as well as Armenian peasants testified along the same lines before the commission. Altıntaş, “Crisis and (Dis)Order,” 259–80. In fact, even the way a sentence about disguise is structured may raise suspicion about the authenticity of the case. For example, that “The culprits were said to be government soldiers dressed as Kurdish nomads” (my emphasis) leaves the impression of referring to a hearsay, even if that is not intended by the author. Miller, “Rethinking the Violence,” 97.
59 Verheij, “Diyarbekir,” 122–23.
60 The tendency to take as fabricated the unwanted details in the documents has even led Selim Deringil, in his work on Armenians’ conversion after the massacres of 1894–1896, to accept the high frequency of “voluntary” or “without pressure” in the archival texts as evidence of the opposite, namely conversion by force. Deringil, “‘Armenian Question,’” 354.
61 Allen letter to “dear Brothers …,” Harpoot, 14 Nov. 1895, the archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission [ABCFM], reel 695.
62 Ibid.
63 H. N. Barnum letter to J. L. Barton, Harpoot, 29 Apr. 1896, ABCFM, reel 696. See also Barnum's letter to Rev. J. K. Brown, Harpoot, 13 Nov. 1895, ABCFM, reel 696.
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65 Letter from H. N. Barnum, Harpoot, 15 Sept. 1896, ABCFM, reel 696.
66 “Facts Regarding a Massacre at Sassone,” 1895, ABCFM, reel 694.
67 Hagop Parejamyan, Kharperti Godoradzen: 1895 Hogdemper 30 (Boston: n.p., 1916), 22. I am grateful to Marc Mamigonian for referring me to this book, and to Ohannes Kılıçdağı for providing me with an electronic copy from the Harvard University Library.
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71 PMOA, Y.PRK.ASK, 109/61, 17 Jan. 1896. See also Abdullah Pasha's second report, which closely follows Zeki Pasha's arguments: PMOA, Y.PRK.ASK, 109/69, 25 Jan. 1896.
72 H. N. Barnum letter to J. Smith, Harpoot, 23 Jan. 1891, ABCFM, reel 695.
73 H. N. Barnum letter to J. Smith, Harpoot, 13 Mar. 1891, ABCFM, reel 695.
74 Ibid.
75 H. N. Barnum letter to J. L. Barton, Harpoot, 28 June 1895, ABCFM, reel 696.
76 In 1898 Barnum wrote, “The revolutionary sentiment never gained any foothold here. Before the troubles in 1895 two young men came from America, and began to stir up other young men, but they found little sympathy and left. I reported them to the Vali, and they were frightened.… If there was a single revolutionist in all this region I failed to hear of him.” Letter to Dr. Hepworth, Turkey, 26 Jan. 1898, ABCFM, reel 696.
77 C. R. Allen letter to J. Smith, Van, 10 Feb. 1891, ABCFM, reel 695.
78 PMOA, Y.A.HUS, 344/141, 12 Jan. 1896.
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82 Ibid. (original underlining).
83 Ibid.
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