By Ronald Grigor Suny

Beginning in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks all started deporting and killing thousands of Armenians within the first significant genocide of the 20th century. by way of the tip of the 1st global struggle, the variety of Armenians in what could turn into Turkey were diminished via 90 percent—more than 1000000 humans. A century later, the Armenian Genocide is still arguable yet really unknown, overshadowed by way of later slaughters and the chasm keeping apart Turkish and Armenian models of occasions. during this definitive narrative heritage, Ronald Suny cuts via nationalist myths, propaganda, and denial to supply an unequalled account of while, how, and why the atrocities of 1915–16 have been committed.

As it misplaced territory in the course of the conflict, the Ottoman Empire was once turning into a extra homogenous Turkic-Muslim country, however it nonetheless contained huge non-Muslim groups, together with the Christian Armenians. The younger Turk leaders of the empire believed that the Armenians have been inner enemies secretly allied to Russia and plotting to win an self sufficient country. Suny indicates that the nice majority of Armenians have been honestly dependable matters who desired to stay within the empire. however the younger Turks, steeped in imperial nervousness and anti-Armenian bias, grew to become confident that the survival of the country relied on the removal of the Armenians. Suny is the 1st to discover the mental components in addition to the foreign and household occasions that helped result in genocide.

Drawing on archival files and eyewitness debts, this is often an unforgettable chronicle of a cataclysm that set a sad development for a century of genocide and crimes opposed to humanity.

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In the early fifth century CE a cleric named Mesrop, later known as Mashtots and beatified as a saint, created an alphabet to record their language and translate the Bible. Almost immediately his fellow priests and monks began recording what they understood as the prehistory of their people: the eponymous hero Hayk, who defeated the giant Bel and after whom the people—Hay in their own language—and their country—Hayastan—were named; and their first kings, including Armen after whom outsiders borrowed the name Brought to you by | Duke University Authenticated Download Date | 12/9/15 12:44 PM Armenians Armenian.

Under this pact Christians and Jews could practice their religion, maintain their churches and synagogues, and largely control their own affairs as long as they recognized the superiority of Islam, paid the special poll tax (cizye), and obeyed the state authorities. The Christian churches and their hierarchies, like the institutions of the Jews, were part of the imperial structure. For centuries, right up to the 1870s, the sultans ruled over more Christians and Jews than Muslims and were able to do so precisely because they had effective imperial institutions that delegated power to obedient servitors of the regime.

23 The efforts of these empires, ultimately aborted by the catastrophe of World War I, were attempts at a kind of imperial refurbishing aimed at creating a political community that was Brought to you by | Duke University Authenticated Download Date | 12/9/15 12:42 PM Empire multinational or multireligious rather than a single ethnic nation along with a more modern state able to confront the challenges of representation, popular mobilization, and the bureaucratic efficiency of Western nation-­states.

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