2017/07/05 by Donald Bloxham · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics
paper · doi:10.4324/9780203786994-3
openalex publication_date 2017/07/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Despite growing scholarly consensus on the fact of the Armenian Genocide, widespread divergence of opinion remains on the circumstances in which it developed. As in the historiography of the Nazi “final solution of the Jewish question,” issues of when and why (and even if) a decision was made to destroy the Ottoman Armenian community during World War I still divide academics. Some historians choose to place the genocide in a continuum of Armenian victimization beginning with the 1894-96 massacres of about 100,000 Armenians during the reign of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II (1876-1908/ 09). Some also emphasize the character of Muslim-Christian relations in the “Turkish-Armenian polarization.” The weight of scholarly opinion is perhaps on the side of the view that a chauvinistic “Young Turk” nationalism developing between 1908 and 1915 was the primary determinant in the genocide, while accepting the significance of the 1894-96 massacres in illustrating the precarious position of the Armenians in Ottoman society by the late nineteenth century. Even accepting the shorter timeframe, there is still no unanimity on exactly how an ideology of exclusivist nationalism was translated into the most extreme practice conceivable. Was, for instance, the wartime decision to deport Armenians an inevitable consequence of the policy of the empire’s rulers in the years prior to the war? Or conversely, did such a decision emerge unpredicted out of a combination of factors unique to the circumstances of war?