VanVleet 1 Victoria VanVleet Professor Brian Miller History 391 November 22 th, 2016 Research Project: Armenian Migrants and Refugees For the last one hundred years, the Armenian people have existed as a diaspora spread around the world. This is due to the fact that in 1915 the Ottoman Empire began a campaign with the intention of ethnically cleansing the nation of all Other. The Armenians have long held a position of Otherness in the world. Being a Christian people in a Muslim empire, sharing a religion, but not a cultural history with a northern neighbor, and appearing white, but having traits of the Oriental has made the Armenian people exist are cultural and racial borderlands. In this paper, I am going to look at the migration of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire to Western Europe, with a focus on the United States, between the years of 1890 and 1915. In a time of expanding international awareness, I will use the case of the Armenians to demonstrate the pick-and-choose nature of humanitarian aid here in the west, a problem that exists to this day. I am looking at the Armenian case because it is one of the first with the involvement of the American Red Cross. I am also looking at how the status of being seen as white by the United States affects their status as refugees. Europe was not the only place affected by the new concept of nation coming out of the French Revolution. Soon those new ideas spread to the Near East on the way to the rest of the world. In the five-hundred years before this spread of nationalism, the Armenians had been under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Armenians were treated as an Other group within
VanVleet 2 the empire for being Christians in a Muslin state, they did have some protection because they were a monotheistic people. 1 This, coupled with the fact that the people of the Caucasus region were highly mobile, meant that there were no rigid ethnic boundaries. The people at this time were loyal to their religious and local leaders rather than to the idea of a nation-state as we see today. However, when the French ideas of nationalism reached the Armenian people, their view of self began to change. They started to view themselves not as an ethnoreligious community as they had done in the past, but as a secular nation with a shared language, culture, history, and a territorial homeland. 2 This rise in nationalistic thought brought about a call by Armenian leaders for new civil rights legislation that would make the people of Armenia equal under Ottoman law. This movement was supported by evangelical churches and missionary organizations in Britain and the United States. 3 Missionaries had for a long time been going to the Ottoman Empire to convert the people to Christianity. While there they had formed a kinship with the people of Armenia and began to push the Armenian agenda in their own nations. This resulted in the United States and British governments developing an interest in the statehood of Armenian even though they did not have any direct stakes in the outcome. 4 At the same time, during the 1890's thousands of Armenian men were leaving the Ottoman Empire to work in the United States of America. The Ottoman Empire had a long history of migrant workers within its borders. Every year Kurds and Armenians would travel to more coastal regions to do seasonal labor. The Ottoman economy depended on this highly 1 J. Okoomian, Becoming White: Contested History, Armenian American Women, and Racialized Bodies, MELUS 27, no. 1 (2002): 215 2 Ibid., 216. 3 A. Wilson, In the name of God, civilzation, and humanity: The United States and the Armenian massacres of the 1890s, Le Mouvement Social 227, no. 1 (2009): 28 4 Ibid., 30.
VanVleet 3 mobile workforce. 5 The problem arose when migrant workers started looking beyond the empire's borders to work at higher paying jobs in the western world. In an attempt to stop the loss of their workers to foreign employers the Ottomans expanded upon their internal passport system. This internal passport system had developed in the sixteenth century to regulate travel within the empire. The holder of such a passport must be granted one by their local political or religious leader and presented it to authorities upon arrival at their intended destination. In the early days, the passports were mainly used to regulate travel to Istanbul and maintain social order in the capital. 6 This system was an attempt by the empire to keep track of it's diverse and ever changing population. The reality of the situation, however, was that the government did not have enough manpower to keep the system operating effectively. It also proved very difficult to enforce. As such, in the late 1880's and early 1890's Armenians headed illegally to America were able to easily bypass the regulations by just boarding ships that were making stops in other Ottoman ports before heading to European countries. 7 From there the migrants would head to America. The government had no way of knowing if the people got off in the empire as intended or stayed on the ship until it was far too late. In an attempt to stop this officials started to demand a monetary insurance policy that these migrants would go to their intended destination and not to America. These policies included making the migrant check into official channels or have their relatives face a fine on their behalf or requiring a cash guaranty from all non-muslim Anatolian migrants seeking a 5 D. Gutman, Armenian Migration to North America, State Power, and Local Politics in the Late Ottoman Empire, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 1 (2014): 177 6 D. Gutman, Armenian Migration to North America, State Power, and Local Politics in the Late Ottoman Empire, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 1 (2014): 178 7 Ibid., 179.
VanVleet 4 passport. In June of 1891, these new requirements were put in place across the empire by the grand vizier. 8 Soon after, reports starting coming out showing the failings of this new regulation. Who was to be the one collecting the money? Was it the sending city or the receiving one? What authority did the receiving city have to guarantee arrival of migrants? None of these questions were answered in the grand vizier's requirements. With no one knowing who should collect the money, the regulations were ineffective and migrants continued to leave illegally. As the years passed, the internal passport system became abandoned as a way of stopping illegal migration to the United States. As a supplement to the internal passport system, coastal cities began upping their harbor surveillance. Up until the early 1890's port cities other than Istanbul had no capacity to function as border control centers. 9 It took until the mid-1890's for the Ottoman Empire to start heightening border security at its secondary ports. At the same time, an advanced smuggling operation had emerged to move migrants bound for Europe and the United States. The boatman would set up illegally ports outside the coastal cities, allowing for a bypass of the surveillance measures in place. 10 There was also the fact that even if the officials were able to catch people attempting to leave illegally, the punishments for such actions were either unforeseeable, in the cases of being banished back to your hometown, or too lenient, in the cases of small fines for intended smugglers. 11 (Gutman 183) This was never fixed because the smugglers were boatman that were still central in the operations of port cities. During this time, the migrants were mainly young, single men that had the ability to 8 Ibid., 179. 9 D. Gutman, Armenian Migration to North America, State Power, and Local Politics in the Late Ottoman Empire, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 1 (2014): 182 10 Ibid., 180. 11 Ibid., 183.
move freely. 12 Like all of the other migrant groups we have studied in this class, they sent VanVleet 5 money back to Armenia and had the intention of returning after accumulating wealth. 13 The United States was chosen as the primary destination because of its job opportunity as compared to the economically floundering Ottoman state. The presences of American missionaries in Anatolia were also a contributing factor. America was also a popular destination for those seeking protection under the United States flag. Once naturalized in the United States they could return to the empire to pursue Armenian independence goals under American protection. 14 The makeup of immigrants traveling to the United States from Armenia was going to change very soon. In an attempt to bring about stability in the crumbling Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdul Hamid II revived the Pan-Islamism ideology in the nation. As a result, massacres of Christian Armenians began in the Ottoman interior in 1894. By the end of 1895, it is estimated that 80,000 to 100,000 Armenians had died in the massacres so far. (Wilson 30) Meanwhile, in the United States, word of the tragedies was reaching newspapers through telegraphs from missionaries in the area. 15 The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had been sending missionaries to the Ottoman Empire since 1819. 16 All of this resulted in missionaries being the main source of information on the ground for the public as well as lawmakers. The Armenian massacres of the 1890's are an important marker in the history of humanitarian aid by the United States. Before this point, American humanitarian aid had been up 12 A. Wilson, In the name of God, civilzation, and humanity: The United States and the Armenian massacres of the 1890s, Le Mouvement Social 227, no. 1 (2009): 31 13 D. Gutman, Armenian Migration to North America, State Power, and Local Politics in the Late Ottoman Empire, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 1 (2014): 176 14 A. Wilson, In the name of God, civilzation, and humanity: The United States and the Armenian massacres of the 1890s, Le Mouvement Social 227, no. 1 (2009): 31 15 Ibid., 32. 16 Ibid., 30.
VanVleet 6 to small committee efforts thrown together for an individual international crisis. During the 1890's humanitarian reformers became more organized and elected officials began to look at the role the United States federal government could play in international humanitarian aid. 17 At this time Protestant missionaries and Armenian nationals joined forces with former abolitionists, woman suffragists, and newspapermen to bring the condition of the Armenians to the attention of the citizens of the United States. On the positive side, this brought about international attention to the crisis at hand. On the negative side, that attention did not amount to any actual reform in the Ottoman Empire on the behalf of the Armenian people. There is also the matter in which American activists worded the problem that has caused the Armenian people to struggle with self-identity in the United States; I will talk more about this later in this paper. To further aid for the Armenian cause the ABCFM sat down and devised a plan on how to present the Armenian people in the United States. What came about was that the United States had a duty to intervene in order to save the Christian Armenians because of familiar religious ties. Somehow the Armenians were unique in the world for their long-standing devotion to Christ and exactly the same as the Protestants in America. 18 This confusion in the narrative comes from when the when the missionaries went over to bring back faith to the nominal Christians of the East. By the time of the Hamidian massacres, however, these nominal Christians became devout believers that were people of Caucasian blood just like the average American. Not only had Protestant missionaries been able to clean the influence of the Other from the Armenians faith, but also their race. The Protestants must have been using bleach. 17 Ibid., 27. 18 A. Wilson, In the name of God, civilzation, and humanity: The United States and the Armenian massacres of the 1890s, Le Mouvement Social 227, no. 1 (2009): 34
VanVleet 7 This action on the behalf or Armenia created the context for the United States getting involved in the actions of other countries in the century to come. It sets the tone that America as a Christian nation had a duty to intervene on the part of other Christian nations around the world. 19 Out of the 1 million dollars raised for the Armenian cause, 600,000 came from the United States alone while the remaining 400,000 came from Britain and all the European nations combined. This fact centered in the American mindset that they must be involved in humanitarian efforts everywhere, however, the government would only do so in times of political interest. This is what happened later in the 20th century, when the United States got involved in countries in order to stop the spread of Communism. As a result of the Hamidian massacres, many Armenian families fled to the United States and the nations surrounding the Ottoman Empire. The massacres finally died out in 1897. By 1899 the Sultan prohibited any more Armenians from leaving the empire. Emigration would resume under the Young Turks revolution in 1908 and be shut down at the start of World War I. Between 1890 and 1914, during times when the Armenian could leave, 70,982 immigrated to the United States. 20 After the First World War, America attempted to become an isolationist nation. It also created stricter immigration reform, resulting in only 26,146 Armenian refugees arriving between the two World Wars. 21 Still, this number was leagues above the numbers of Armenian refugees that some western countries were let in. In the inter-war period, France accepted 63,000 refugees, while Britain accepted only 200 of the total 300,000 to 400,000 Armenians that fled. 22 In Britain, they were not even defined as refugees because none were allowed to enter [the] 19 A. Wilson, In the name of God, civilzation, and humanity: The United States and the Armenian massacres of the 1890s, Le Mouvement Social 227, no. 1 (2009): 42 20 D. Lang, The Armenians: A people in exile. London. Unwin Paperbacks. (1988): 125 21 Ibid., 126. 22 T. Kusher and K. Knox, Refugees in the age of genocide: Global, national and local perspectives during the twentieth century. Portland, OR; England: F. Cass. (1999): 71
VanVleet 8 country unless they had some means. 23 Taking into account that it is estimated that 1.5 million people died at the hands of the Ottomans, not being defined as a refugee and being denied the recognition of the experiences you when through have an impact on a person. 24 Next, I will look at how the status of refugee and the portrayal of the Armenians by the ABCFM affect their ability to exist as a diaspora in the United States. Like all the immigrant groups that we have studied this semester, the first wave of Armenians in America found it difficult to fit into society. They did not speak English and they did not understand the culture in America. 25 Soon they made themselves known as hard workers and joined in on the factory industry in the United States. They also started to establish their own business. At this time in the United States, you were either defined as white or black (encompassing everyone that did not fall into the white category). This binary definition of race in the United States causes trouble for the Armenians, who had been presented as a white Christian minority in the Ottoman Empire during the 1890's massacres. This position of privilege did not reflect the struggles and persecution they had to go through under Ottoman rule. The territory of Armenia is on the geographic and cultural borders to the West. The very nature of its location causes problems in defining its people's racial status in the United States. However, two different courts proceeding at the turn of the 20th century, legally defined the Armenian people as white within the United States. This was done to exclude other Asian groups from the category of whiteness. 26 However, in order to obtain this privileged status, the Oriental differences in the Armenians had to be erased. Effectively they had to become defined 23 Ibid., 72. 24 D. Lang, The Armenians: A people in exile. London. Unwin Paperbacks. (1988): 125 25 Ibid., 126. 26 J. Okoomian, Becoming White: Contested History, Armenian American Women, and Racialized Bodies, MELUS 27, no. 1 (2002): 218
VanVleet 9 as European Christian. 27 This racial categorization became even more complicated with the introduction of new Armenian immigrants after the Second World War. At this time the first wave of refugees had established themselves in America, becoming integrated into the culture. 28 This second wave faced all the same problems that the first wave originally had but also came from countries with an Arab majority that they had fled to during the Armenian Genocide. Now the question arose whether these new Armenian immigrants were tainted by the countries they had fled to. There is also the fact that although for the most part Armenians were defined as white when they got in trouble with authorities or economic trouble, those individuals were referred to as Black Armenians. 29 The Armenian diaspora located in the United States now faces a unique problem. After generations of persecution in the Ottoman Empire, coming to America offered a chance to be part of the privileged racial class, the only cost is the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. For the first generation of Armenian refugees, it was not so much a concussion chose to relinquish their past struggles as the wanting to escape the pain in the memories and experiences. 30 Many second and third generation Armenian Americans say that They just didn't want us to know what they went through when talking about their parents and grandparents reductions or inability to talk about the experiences. 31 People interviewed describe parents waking up screaming in the night from dreams and physical scars on their bodies from the experiences. Like all of the groups that we have looked at in class, the women act as cultural carriers who made a 27 Ibid., 220. 28 D. Lang, The Armenians: A people in exile. London. Unwin Paperbacks. (1988): 127 29 Ibid., 127. 30 M. Manoogia, A. Walker. And L Richards, Gender, Genocide, and Ethnicity: The Legacies of Older Armenian American Mothers, Journal of Family Issues 28, no. 4 (2007): 586 31 Ibid., 577.
VanVleet 10 commitment to inform later generations of the struggles they went through. 32 Other women, however, a growing minority, prefer to define themselves as Americans first. 33 Although this results in a loss of cultural heritage it frees the individual from being defined by the tragedies of the past. In conclusion, my research into the treatment of Armenian refugees in the United States brought about some interesting interactions with the ideas of race in America. At the time when the people of Armenia began to develop an idea of nation, they were persecuted for fears that they would revolt. American Christian missionaries rallied for aid for these Christian brethren which resulted in the first large-scale humanitarian aid organized by the United States government. All of this is intermingled with the downfall of an empire that tried desperately to hold itself together by forbidding emigration of its subjects. It is easy to see how in all this confusion, the Armenian diaspora might struggle with defining itself with its host nation. 32 Ibid., 585. 33 Ibid., 596.
VanVleet 11 References Gutman, David. 2014. Armenian Migration to North America, State Power, and Local Politics in the Late Ottoman Empire. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 1: 176-190. Kushner, Tony, and Katharine Knox. 1999. Refugees in an age of genocide: Global, national and local perspectives during the twentieth century. Portland, OR; England: F. Cass. Lang, David M. 1988. The Armenians: A people in exile. London: Unwin Paperbacks. Manoogian, Margaret M., Alexis J. Walker, and Leslie N. Richards. 2007. Gender, Genocide, and Ethnicity: The Legacies of Older Armenian American Mothers. Journal of Family Issues 28, no. 4: 567-589. Okoomian, Janice. 2002. Becoming White: Contested History, Armenian American Women, and Racialized Bodies. MELUS 27, no. 1: 213-237. Wilson, Ann M. 2009. In the name of God, civilization, and humanity : The United States and the Armenian massacres of the 1890s. Le Mouvement Social 227, no. 1: 27-44.