Review of Richard Hovannisian ed., The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies

Hannibal Travis, Villanova University School of Law

Abstract

This is a review of The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies (Richard Hovannisian ed., New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006). This volume stands as an important achievement in the field of comparative genocide studies, as well as commanding the attention of scholars of Middle East Studies. The subjects addressed include the cleansing of virtually all Christian communities from Anatolia as a result of widespread massacres over three decades; the complicity of some European and American leaders in these events; the rise of total war along Prussian lines in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, and its prosecution throughout Anatolia from 1914 on; and the influence of proto-Nazi ideology on late Ottoman leaders and the propaganda they created. The editor of this book, and the contributor of a sophisticated introductory essay, is Richard G. Hovannisian, a professor of Armenian and Near Eastern History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A conference commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, held at UCLA in 2005, inspired the essays collected for the volume. The emphasis in Part I is predominantly on philosophical approaches to the history and nature of genocide, specifically regarding when an episode of genocide begins; whether it arises from a dehumanization of its victims or an assertion of its perpetrators’ overwhelming power by inflicting maximum degradation on victims; and whether genocide gives rise to any moral obligation to preserve the targeted culture, or to transform the perpetrators’ culture. Part II discusses literary, artistic, musical, and cinematic depictions and commemorations of the Armenian genocide. Part III addresses education, with particular attention to the difficulty confronting teachers of history who want to devote class time to genocide education despite the constraints imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. In Part IV, Anahit Khosroeva gathers diverse sources to support the conclusion that the Ottoman military and its Kurdish allies massacred tens of thousands of Assyrians in 1895 and, in the decade after 1914, between half and two-thirds of the 500,000 to 750,000 Assyrians living in Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Persia. Also in Part IV, Speros Vryonis, Jr. supplies wrenching details of the experiences of Greek civilians enslaved by Ottoman and Turkish forces, and subjected to large-scale bayoneting and shootings, death marches, and the intentional spreading of dysentery. Part V turns to the future of Turkish historiography, and the prospects for Armenian-Turkish reconciliation.