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Deception and Violence in the Ottoman Empire: The People's Theory of Crowd Behavior during the Hamidian Massacres of 1895

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2020

Ali Sipahi Open the ORCID record for Ali Sipahi [Opens in a new window]
Ali Sipahi*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Özyeğin University, Istanbul
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

HarputArmenian Massacresdeceptioncollective violencecrowd behaviorhistorical ethnographyanthropology of fakesimpostersGustave Le Bon
Type
Social Lives of Categories
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 62 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 810 - 835
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History

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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.

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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.

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62 Ibid.

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64 O. P. Allen letter to H.G.O. Dwight, Harpoot, 26 Nov. 1895, ABCFM, reel 695.

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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