![The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce [Uncensored Edition]](/uploads/books/bc54cf0a99183acdd9cf91b0781f0a44.jpg "The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce [Uncensored Edition]")
The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce [Uncensored Edition]
edited and with an introduction by Ara Sarafian
London: Gomidas Institute, 2005, 2nd ed.
xxii + 677 pp, map (insert),
ISBN 1-903656-51-6, hardback,
UK£45.00 / US$70.00
To order please contact books@gomidas.org
"This work emerges from Ara Sarafian’s examination as documentation of a
high order." —Times Literary Supplement
"Meticulous testimony and
eye-witness accounts of Turkish mass-slaughter, organised rape and
ethnic cleansing." —The Independent (London)
In
1916 the British Parliament published a "Blue Book" that identified the
events of 1915–16 as a systematic effort to exterminate the Armenian
people. The Blue Book has been one of the most solid and influential
sources on the Armenian Genocide. A critical, uncensored edition, edited
and with an introduction by Ara Sarafian, was published by the
Gomidas Institute in 2000. The work is not out in an expanded second edition, as well as a Turkish translation.
Viscount James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee were commissioned to prepare the Blue Book, which is formally known as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916. Toynbee carefully compiled and verified dozens of eyewitness accounts from different parts of the Ottoman Empire. These accounts provided the basis for Bryce’s brilliant thesis on the Genocide, published while the crime was still in progress.
The book includes eyewitness accounts from United States consular and missionary sources, as well as the testimony of German, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Greek, Kurdish, and Armenian witnesses.
The original publication was full of blanks: the names of many people and places were obscured in order to safeguard sources still in the Ottoman Empire. The names remain obscured in facsimile editions that have been published over the years. Now Sarafian has restored the obscured names.
In his introduction, Sarafian takes issue with the repeated assertions of Turkish nationalist authors, who claim that the Blue Book was a British propaganda fabrication. He demonstrates the intellectual pedigree of the work. He shows exactly how testimonies were collected, authenticated, and then used in the book.
Generations of official historians of Turkey, such as Enver Zia Karal (Ankara University), Salahi Sonyel (British historian and public activist), Ismail Binark (Director of Ottoman archives, Ankara), Sinasi Orel (director of a much publicized project on declassifying documents on Ottoman Armenians), Kamuran Gurun (former diplomat), Mim Kemal Oke, Justin McCarthy, and others have cited the Blue Book and have insisted that it lacks credibility. More recently, the Turkish Grand National Assembly has joined in the attack, and called the work a British wartime fabrication - demanding a retraction and apology from the British Parliament.
Sarafian has located Toynbee’s original manuscript, Toynbee’s correspondence with his sources, and most of the original reports, which were copied and sent to London. They can still be found at the Public Record Office (Kew), Bodleian Library (Oxford), National Archives (Washington, D.C.), Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), and the Houghton Library (Cambridge, Mass.) He has established that the compilers were meticulous in their verification of sources.
According to the Times Literary Supplement (London), "This work emerges from Ara Sarafian’s examination as documentation of a high order. . . . Sarafian convincingly rebuts the claims that there was any falsification, or that any of the documents was one-sided British propaganda."
Lord Avebury of the British House of Lords has welcomed the publication of this critical edition of the Blue Book. Excoriating the present-day British government for refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide, "ostensibly for a lack of evidence," Lord Avebury notes that "the British Foreign Office itself published such evidence as early as 1916. . . . Ara Sarafian should be commended for making a critical edition of The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire available to the public."
Toynbee, who went on to be a major historian in his own right, was deeply moved by his research on the Genocide. In his 1967 memoir, Acquaintances,Toynbee wrote: "My study [of the Armenian Genocide] . . . left an impression on my mind that was not effaced by the still more cold-blooded genocide, on a far larger scale, that was committed during the Second World War by the Nazi.
"Any great crime—private or public, personal or impersonal—raises a question that transcends national limits; the question goes to the heart of human nature itself. My study of the genocide that had been committed in Turkey in 1915 brought home to me the reality of Original Sin," Toynbee concluded.
Viscount James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee were commissioned to prepare the Blue Book, which is formally known as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916. Toynbee carefully compiled and verified dozens of eyewitness accounts from different parts of the Ottoman Empire. These accounts provided the basis for Bryce’s brilliant thesis on the Genocide, published while the crime was still in progress.
The book includes eyewitness accounts from United States consular and missionary sources, as well as the testimony of German, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Greek, Kurdish, and Armenian witnesses.
The original publication was full of blanks: the names of many people and places were obscured in order to safeguard sources still in the Ottoman Empire. The names remain obscured in facsimile editions that have been published over the years. Now Sarafian has restored the obscured names.
In his introduction, Sarafian takes issue with the repeated assertions of Turkish nationalist authors, who claim that the Blue Book was a British propaganda fabrication. He demonstrates the intellectual pedigree of the work. He shows exactly how testimonies were collected, authenticated, and then used in the book.
Generations of official historians of Turkey, such as Enver Zia Karal (Ankara University), Salahi Sonyel (British historian and public activist), Ismail Binark (Director of Ottoman archives, Ankara), Sinasi Orel (director of a much publicized project on declassifying documents on Ottoman Armenians), Kamuran Gurun (former diplomat), Mim Kemal Oke, Justin McCarthy, and others have cited the Blue Book and have insisted that it lacks credibility. More recently, the Turkish Grand National Assembly has joined in the attack, and called the work a British wartime fabrication - demanding a retraction and apology from the British Parliament.
Sarafian has located Toynbee’s original manuscript, Toynbee’s correspondence with his sources, and most of the original reports, which were copied and sent to London. They can still be found at the Public Record Office (Kew), Bodleian Library (Oxford), National Archives (Washington, D.C.), Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), and the Houghton Library (Cambridge, Mass.) He has established that the compilers were meticulous in their verification of sources.
According to the Times Literary Supplement (London), "This work emerges from Ara Sarafian’s examination as documentation of a high order. . . . Sarafian convincingly rebuts the claims that there was any falsification, or that any of the documents was one-sided British propaganda."
Lord Avebury of the British House of Lords has welcomed the publication of this critical edition of the Blue Book. Excoriating the present-day British government for refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide, "ostensibly for a lack of evidence," Lord Avebury notes that "the British Foreign Office itself published such evidence as early as 1916. . . . Ara Sarafian should be commended for making a critical edition of The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire available to the public."
Toynbee, who went on to be a major historian in his own right, was deeply moved by his research on the Genocide. In his 1967 memoir, Acquaintances,Toynbee wrote: "My study [of the Armenian Genocide] . . . left an impression on my mind that was not effaced by the still more cold-blooded genocide, on a far larger scale, that was committed during the Second World War by the Nazi.
"Any great crime—private or public, personal or impersonal—raises a question that transcends national limits; the question goes to the heart of human nature itself. My study of the genocide that had been committed in Turkey in 1915 brought home to me the reality of Original Sin," Toynbee concluded.