1 - The British and the Ottoman Armenians

Summary

The creation of the Balkan States by Russia during and after the 1877–8 War was a manual of rebellion for Armenian nationalists. That war had cemented the demographic predominance of Christian groups in the Balkans by killing or expelling Muslim minorities. However, in Bulgaria the Christian Bulgarians had always been a majority; the war only increased their relative proportions. The situation in the Eastern Anatolian region claimed by Armenian nationalists was quite different. For them, the difficulty was demographic. In the Erivan Province of Russia, they made up slightly more than 50 per cent of the population, but in the provinces that they claimed in Ottoman Eastern Anatolia, they were a minority in every province. Militarily, Armenians could not have stood even against the local Muslims, much less the Ottoman army. Their only hope was to elicit the help of the European Powers – to follow the example of Bulgaria.

The strategy of the Armenian nationalist revolutionaries in the 1890s was cold-hearted. Russian military attack had created Bulgaria. Armenian nationalists knew that similar European intervention was the only path to the creation of an Armenia. There would have to be massacres of Armenians, followed by European intervention. As in Bulgaria, the Muslim population would have to be dispensed with, either by death or forced exile. It was a callous plan, sacrificing both Muslims and Armenians to nationalist goals.

The revolutionaries who devised the plan were not native to the Ottoman Empire. Some small and unsuccessful Armenian rebel groups had existed in Southeastern Anatolia, but significant Armenian rebellion only began at the end of the nineteenth century with two new organisations founded in Europe and the Russian Empire – the Hunchaks and Dashnaks.

Hunchak Rebellion

The Hunchaks (the Hunchakian Revolutionary Party), who were to take the lead in revolt in the Ottoman Empire, were founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1887 by students from the Russian Empire. Theirs was avowedly a terrorist organisation, as declared in their party platform. Attacks on Muslims, followed by revenge massacres of Armenians by Muslims, and European intervention was always their plan . Conditions in Eastern Anatolia were ripe for rebellion: poverty, poor government administration, and control of Armenians by Kurdish landowners provided a number of dedicated followers, never close to a majority of the Armenians, but enough to further the Hunchak plan.