"Starving Armenians": America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After [Hardcover]

Merrill D. Peterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 2004

The persecution and suffering of the Armenian people, a religious and cultural minority in the Ottoman Empire, reached a peak in the era of World War I at the hands of the Turks. Between 1915 and 1925 as many as 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and children died in Ottoman Turkey, victims of execution, starvation, and death marches to the Syrian desert.

In "Starving Armenians," Merrill Peterson explores the American response to these atrocities, beginning with the initial reports to President Wilson from his Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, who described Turkey as "a place of horror." The West gradually began to take notice. As the New York Times carried stories about the "slow massacre of a race," public outrage over this tragedy led to an unprecedented philanthropic crusade spearheaded by Near East Relief, an organization rooted in Protestant missionary endeavors in the Near East and dedicated to saving the survivors of the first genocide of the twentieth century. The book also addresses the Armenian aspirations for an independent republic under American auspices; these hopes went unfulfilled in the peacemaking after the war and ended altogether when Armenia was absorbed into the Soviet Union.

Part of a generation who were admonished as children to "remember the starving Armenians," Peterson went to Armenia in 1997 as a Peace Corps volunteer and became fascinated by the country's troubled history. The extensive research he embarked upon afterwards revealed not only the scope of the people's hardship and amazing resilience; it located in the American effort to help the Armenians a unique perspective on our own nation's experience of the twentieth century. "Starving Armenians" is an eloquent narrative of an all but forgotten part of that experience.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The principal actors in this book are Americans whose triumphs and failures emerge as deeply emblematic of the American spirit and character. The kind of challenge and dilemma that Americans faced as to how to respond to the agony of the Armenians is still with us: to what extent should morality and humanitarianism enter into American diplomacy and foreign policy?.

(Vigen GuroianLoyola College, author of Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination )

About the Author

Merrill D. Peterson, Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Virginia, is the editor of the Library of America edition of the writings of Thomas Jefferson and author of numerous books, including Lincoln in American Memory and John Brown: The Legend Revisited.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press (April 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813922674
• ISBN-13: 978-0813922676
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #868,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > History > Asia > Armenia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Some facts often omitted in writing on Armenian Genocide", February 25, 2007

By 

Russell A. Rohde MD "Owl" (West Covina, California USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: "Starving Armenians": America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After (Hardcover)

"Starving Armenians: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After: by Merrill Peterson, ISBN: 0-8139-2267-4 (2004) Univ. VA Press, HC 178 pgs., 22 illustrations, plus Notes 10 pgs., Index 7 pgs., 6 1/8" x 8 3/4"

Peterson, both historian & published writer, gives a meaty synopsis of Henry Morgenthau's reporting & observations while Ambassaor to Turkey & follows this with 5 chapters entitled: 1. Awakening, 2. Genocide, 3. Near East Relief (NER) in War & Peace, 4. Chaos, Carnage & Survivors, and 5. The Great Betrayal - he concludes with an enticing Epilogue.

Of the now numerous books covering the Armenian Question, Massacres & Genocide - Peterson's is one of the better written & researched chronicles of those events; he provides a good detailed accounting of the NER. In the chapter "The Great Betrayal" he pulls no punches in detailing the machinations behind the overtly indifference of various allied powers on their impotency & failure to taken any military or meaningful political actions; the US resorting instead to basically encourage & promote the US populace to render humanitarian aid via NER & later, its "greatest asset",the "International Golden Rule Sunday" (1924-1931). Standard Oil (New Jersey) under the Rockefeller empire, induced the State Department to use its influence to permit it access to Mesopotamia (Iraqi) oil reserves alongside the Anglo-Persian Company (British) which is akin to BP.

Concluding remarks on immigration quotas, & Turkey's denials of their complicity in the Ottoman massacres, AG, etc. including several scandulous attempts to deny AG through contrary teachings in several American universities are aptly detailed. Peterson presents some important detailed factual information lacking in other treatises.

24 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lessons from yesterday for today, July 8, 2004

By 

Salvatruco (Durham, NH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: "Starving Armenians": America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After (Hardcover)

Professor Merrill has written a fascinating book with many lessons. Instructive is the way oil politics at the 1923 Lusanne Conference got in the way of a European response to the national and humanitarian consequences of the Armenians' 20 previous years of suffering Turk inflicted "crimes against humanity" (the word genocide hadn't been coined, but crimes against humanity had been identified at the Versailles Conference). Now the west wants to use human rights to cover the military drive to the middle east oil spigot, thus an instructive irony.
I had experience in Central America in the late 1970s and early 1980s and comparisons with congregationalist ministers in 19th century Armenia and Catholic liberation theologians in Central America are relevant. Also, in both cases the indigenous peoples were wiped off of the map of fertile lowlands and condemned to infertile highlands. The human rights response was similar too with the congregationalist Near East Relief organization comparable to the widespread Catholic church support of Caritas, the Paulists, or others for Central American indigenous peoples under seige.
Also, here in the US Armenian success stories are legion. My family boasts relatives of the Colombosian family, famous for their Colombo yogurt. The Colombosian family lost extensive 1st generation family in the genocide. They continue to support the establishment of the Armenian holocaust museum in Washington DC, among other efforts.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mitchell peddles paid propaganda, December 30, 2005

By 

Nick (Tampa, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: "Starving Armenians": America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After (Hardcover)

Mr. Mitchell shows his true colors by citing the discredited Heath Lowry in denying the Armenian Holocaust. Mr. Lowry is a paid agent of the Turkish gov't. See The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 27, 1995, p.A44, "Critics Accuse Turkish Government of Manipulating Scholarship," by Amy Magaro Rubin. See also The New York Times, May 22, 1996, "Princeton Is Accused of Fronting for the Turkish Government," by William H. Honan. You will find similar "reviews" of books on the Armenian Holocaust by Mitchell and others, if indeed they are not the same person. For example, see Mitchell's 8 almost-identical reviews of books on this subject--just click "See all my reviews." They're simple cut-and-past jobs. And it doesn't matter whether Mitchell is his real name (perhaps he's David Irving). His reviews, whatever his real name, are simply pure propoganda. I wonder how much he got paid for his efforts.