156. The Armenian Genocide - Pt. 1

I'm your co host today, Madeline. It's me. It's all you. Sorry, guys. Don't apologize. Never take up space. I you know, I am manspreading today all over your fucking internet connection. Uh I'm ready for it. Yeah. I'm actually really excited about this topic because I was telling you I somehow know nothing about this. Yes. Right. Large or medium population.

Like one of the largest Armenian populations per capita in the country. I live one block from Glendale. You live one block from Glendale. Also very large Armenian population. You hang out in East Hollywood sometimes. I listen to System of a Down religiously growing up.

And yet you know not like you I know nothing about the Armenian genocide. Would you big gap in my knowledge? Let me ask you a question. What do you know about like Armenians? Just like generally. System of it down, as I mentioned. Uh-huh. I think that might be it. Um the foods I remember we had a at food fair days at school growth. Like beer rocks, ramajun stuff like that. Yeah. That's about it.

Uh this is I like there have been several times when we did the UFW episode where you were like, Oh yes, I know nothing about the like grape boycotts. Oh yeah. And like the history of the UFW and I was like Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok

Just living somewhere does not make you an expert on its politics. And I tell people this all the time. You can't just pluck a random person from a place and be like they're now an expert on their where they grew up.'Cause if I grew up in Fresno and I know nothing about the grape protests and I know nothing about the Armenian genocide. This is proof. Are you even from Fresno? Did you grow up under a rock? No, I did not. I grew up on on Olive Street.

Or Clinton Street. Pretty close to like Little Armenia or whatever it's called in Fresno like this is a f that I feel like I associate that more with like over by Edison High School as like the like Armenian neighborhood. But

That's great. Like I know. Yeah. Enough. Yeah. I'm missing it. And this is why I always say, you know, we like to do this thing, like listen to ex voices. It doesn't mean shit because sometimes you grew up somewhere and you don't learn anything about it. And I will say this is a like a good imperative. If you move to a place Uh, I think it is incumbent upon you to become the most nerdy person about that fucking place, to read every fucking book, to like

you know, when a new book comes out o about the place, you're the first in line to get it. Okay. Well you did that with LA, so I can't call you a hypocrite and I will say I did that with Atwater Village. I know a fair amount about the history of Atwater Village. It's uh Which is featured in my book. I talk about it. It's a fucking I like it is a n you know, it makes whatever especially if you move to like a large city, it makes whatever sort of like fuck you transplant.

energy people come at with l come to you with uh a little like a little admitted. A little bit, you think so? I think so'cause it's like, oh no, I I don't regard like have you seen that fucking show I Love LA? It is it's atrocious. It's so bad. It's an atrocious I can't watch it either. I get cringed out. And I don't get cringed out by much. It's like You know, I I think we've all met that person in LA.

On the west side usually, but now they've all migred to Silver Lake. They're crazy. Exactly. And it's accurate. The thing is it is accurate that is a certain type of person in Silver Lake now and it is effective. Yeah, and I was like I you know, and I think it is trying to do girls for Gen Z. I think that's what trying like uh It doesn't like it doesn't at least give you access to a different Los Angeles.

No. Which I find really frustrating. Wasn't that the main critique for girls? Full disclosure, I never watched girls, but I read a lot of the critiques of girls and people were like, How do you have a show in Brooklyn and you're not showing any anybody who's not white? Yeah. I mean I think like the like I want to watch the I Love LA girls and boy uh roll up on like an East LA Latina one day.

Just like go go to a punk rock show in the backyard of a place and like Carson. Yeah, and I just wanna see what happens. Yeah. I I wanna you know I want them to to venture too far east of the LA River and meet some people who are not shy about telling them what they think about.

Maybe go south. Maybe go south. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. This is what they really need because this is not a real LA experience. Do you remember? It's a very curated, obnoxious LA experience. A certain type of person I hate So do you remember when I was an like when I did that like event bartending thing at the fashion festival in Slossen? I do remember this, yes. And you were very, very creeped out to see active sweatshops. Yeah, I mean, well I like I like

I knew that there were sweatshops. It was very funny to have like a like sustainable fashion conference that I was bartending at for like where it was like I think Madonna's daughter sang or some shit. Oh, okay, Lola. apparently. Okay, yeah. It was a whole fucking thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was friends with Kick It. Oh, okay. Yeah. But this was like I just remember like people walking into Slossen or like walking around Slossen'cause I had to be in Slossen and just being so freaked out by

Where they're the reality of LA. Yeah. And I was like, Yeah, last year this was held at the Fred Siegel and Westwood. That makes more sense. This I feel like you gotta go back there. Yeah, I really do. I think that these people need to recolonize the West Side. At least we understood when they were there.

Uh, you know, I think that's what needs to happen. Uh they've they've migrated to northeast LA. I like I'm somebody where I would not move in to Silver Lake or Echo Park because I still am more in the loss of if you guys are from LA, there used to be this giant painting of the Virgin Mary on the back. by the parking lots in Echo Park, um above the trash cans. And when that got painted over, I was like, this neighborhood has been killed. It does have and like I think

You know, most cities have this eventually, right? Like the feeling that you are in a mall that is designed for someone like you and me. But like but like why couldn't afford to buy anything there. But like right like aesthetically it's like they had like a mood board when they designed all of Echo Park, all of Silver Lake and they were like, natural wine.

uh d you know, poor over coffee, single origin threatening. Right. Doc Martin's Yeah. Yeah, it does everything the end goal of gentrification is to turn everything into a mall where I can't afford shit. It's a one big outdoor mall that has taken over your city. I can't afford any of the shit. I don't need any of this shit.

And they remove everything usable from a neighborhood. I did you know, like I t what's the the Canyon coffee or whatever? Yeah. Oh, that would be gonna be snarl. I did go like several months ago. I went on a fucking date there and like the There are very few circumstances well, there are actually many circumstances where I just become a bumbling asshole who doesn't know how to like occupy space. I think that's me a candy and coffee too. Also candy and coffee

has gone through several iterations of being different vegan food places. Mm-hmm. Before it was a vegan food place that I liked. Before that it was another vegan food place that I liked. That were like kind of like nineties vegan, like kinda Not restaurant groupy. Mm-hmm. You know? Um so that makes candy coffee extra offensive to me.

Oh, I love there's a cafe by me, the worst coffee in the fucking world, but it has 90s cafe energy. Uh so I just go that I go there all the fucking time because I'm like, I got it. This is the people yearn for an overstuffed chair and some weird chalkboard and like and And maybe like an open mic night with acoustic guitar. And books that have been like left behind by patrons that are laid out. Maybe uh the owner's friend makes

Jewelry that is being sold in the corner. This is what the people are in for. There used to be vegan places like this in in West Hollywood. Actually West. And it was called Elderberries. Mm-hmm. And it was a community resource center. And nobody that worked there knew how to make food because it was like a collective and they were just a bunch of hippies. I it took like an hour and a half for them to make a sandwich.

And the coffee was not that good. Uh but the vibe was immaculate. And I used to go there with my ex group. And I this is I think vibe. Kind of the thing. Right. Like I think you should like vibes over food. Right. This is my like I will go for like mediocre food if the vibes are right. And the vibes for me are nineties coffee shop. Yeah.

And that's this thing though. We yearn for authenticity. Mm-hmm. Especially as AI gets more popular, this highly polished curated look, we hate that. We are yearning for something real. I mean I do some oh God, on New Year's Eve I was at a friend of mine's house and she was telling me that she was like uh Well sh she was like,

having an existential crisis and asking Chat G BT for advice Oh, you don't want to do that. Like while doing yoga. Oh, you don't want to And I was like that will send you straight into AI psychosis. And I was like which I was like maybe like I think

And in any case. Okay, so here's the fucking plan for today. Anyway, we're not actually talking about AI or how the people yearn for authenticity or nineties coffee shops. We are actually talking though about a place You know, th David and I should know about because of our home. So we're talking about things that feel homey and real to us. And uh We're talking about the Armenian genocide and we are not from Armenia. But we are from places with large Armenian population.

And today we're actually not going to talk about like this is going to be a several part thing. I've planned it that way. So today we are going to walk right up to the massacres that happened in the eighteen nineties and then next week we will be He's talking about the massacres, the Young Turk movement, and the genocide. Okay. Gotcha. I'm so ready for this. I'm excited to finally learn. So Madeline, I sent you a speech by your favorite guy, uh Hitler. Hitler.

No. Uh can someone's gonna clip that for sure. They're gonna be like Madeline Pendleton's oldest friend said their favorite guy was Hitler. Yeah. Can you read the third paragraph, the one that starts our strength? Yeah. Uh so this is an a Hitler speech on August twenty-second, nineteen thirty-nine. Uh essentially this is him announcing the invasion of Poland. Okay. So he says.

Our strength lies in our quickness and in our brutality. Genghis Khan has sent millions of women and children into death, knowingly, and with a light heart. History sees in him only the great founder of state. as to what the weak Western European civilization asserts about me, that is of no I have given the command and I shall shoot everyone who utters one word of criticism. I believe him. Yeah. I mean he he was true to his word.

Uh, for the goal to be obtained in the war is not that of reaching certain lines, but of physically demolishing the opponent. I also unfortunately believe. And so for the present, only in the East, I have put my death head formations in place, with a command relentlessly and without compassion, to send into death many women and children of Polish origin and language. Jesus Christ.

Uh only thus can we gain the living space that we need. Oh my Uh who, after all, is today speaking about the destruction of the Armenians? And this was so the destruction of the Armenians was relatively recent memory for Hitler in nineteen thirty-nine. It started in nineteen fifteen and went to about nineteen eighteen. That is very, very recent. Also, hot take. Fuck this guy. Real Jodeg Hitler sucks. Like this is horrible. Uh you know, obviously.

Yeah. So the funny thing uh well, not funny. The an important thing to know about the Armenian genocide is that to this day in 2025 it is in t it is still contested. Uh, Joe Biden was actually the first president to acknowledge that the Armenian genocide happened. Oh. Uh he you know, like in twenty twenty one, right before he uh Uh went off this mortal co mortal coil.

At least electorally. Oh yes. I was like, did he actually die? Oh So he said the American people honor all those Armenians who perished and the genocide that began one hundred and six years ago today, we honor their story, we see that at Pain, we affirm the history, we do not uh it Uh, we do this not to cast blame, but to ensure that what happened is never repeated, which I have to point out that as he was saying that. It was being repeated in Palestine. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Uhhuh. Uh

Uh so it's actually pretty historic. And in fact, Erdogan every year on the anniversary of the beginning of the genocide. uh sends a letter to the patriarch of the Armenian Church, which I also sent you. Can you pull that up? Yes, yes, yes. Alright. Armenian Patriarch of Turkey. Distinguished members of the Armenian community.

I salute you with affection and respect. The solidarity among our citizens continues to grow stronger during these difficult times we are going through, together with the entire world. I pray to my Lord that we will reach the future in a more united manner, and with stronger feelings of unity and solidarity.

I remember with respect the Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives under harsh conditions of the First World War, which caused the world's peoples to suffer great sorrows, and offer my sincere condolences to their grandchildren. On this occasion, I wish Allah's mercy upon the Ottoman citizens who passed away during that painful period.

We have under no circumstances allowed even a single citizen of ours to be otherized or discriminated against because of their faith or identity, and we never will. It is the common objective of all of us to build the future all together by gaining strength from the past only for friendship and the same higher level of humanity. Oh higher ideal of humanity. We are all aware of the circles working to create hostility out of the past by ignoring our unity that emerged from the bosom of Anatolia.

While we desire and work for a future full of unity, prosperity, and tranquility, it is our most important wish that the circles that aim for the opposite are not allowed. With these thoughts in my mind I once again remember with respect and mercy the Ottoman Armenians whom we lost during the First World War. Okay, so just For like uh to sum up Oh also Erdogan is the president of Turk. Yes. For anybody not uh which is the successor state

If the Mat Madeline said we have to do this very basic. Turkey is the successor state to the Ottoman Empire. Yes. Yes, there are people who think going to Turkey is the same as like going to Israel. Istanbul, not Constantinople. Yes. Yes. Yes. People some people are like f nobody should be going to Turkey. It's I mean and Erdogan is like a right wing freak, but I just do sum up the principal th like the message of this letter. Uh Armenians were lost.

during the First World War as a consequence of the war. There was not a like a Concerted campaign. to massacre mil like a million and a half Armenians. No,'cause what he's saying is if if you said that, you would just be uh somebody Who is in a circle that aims to be the opposite of unity, prosperity, and tranquility amongst those people? Yeah. And you would not be allowed.

Yeah. So he's basically saying anybody who's trying to turn us against each other, um, by maybe talking about bad things we did.

is a liar and a loser and you shouldn't fucking listen to them. And in the nineteenth century there was so one thing that it is important to recognize, and this is going to become a theme as we talk today, is that the

Ottoman Empire was failing throughout the 19th century, and it was an age of nationalism, right? And so the Ottoman Empire, which Can like like, was a different kind of state that was essentially a multi ethnic and multi religious state that l allowed for relative and subordinate independence for different ethnic minorities within the community.

like, was finding itself on the back foot A because it was losing a bunch of fucking trade deals, Britain and France and Germany had to come in to keep uh Parts of the Caucasus in the Ottoman Empire's control all because they didn't want Russia to have it, because in an echo that will be repeated now, uh, that would mean Russia would have access to the Black Sea and the Crimean, which gave it it access to trade routes going to the Mediterranean. Got it. Okay. Uh same shit different.

Century. Yeah. But like the the thing that is important to know is that at the same time that the Ottoman Empire is cons is like f kind of falling apart, all of these nationalist movements pop up. There are Balkan nationalist movements, there are uh Greek nationalist movements, there is an Armenian national movement. And so I think we should start. Who are the Turks? Great question. Who are they? Uh

They're t they're the people who now they are the Turkish They are th yes. They they are the people now that we say are from Turkey. This they're these sentences are what they're Turks in philosophy would be called And I'll let it. Brilliance. They say brilliant announcements. They say nothing new.

So the original Turks uh were tribes of people who originated in Siberia and Central Asia and spoke oak one or another Turkic language. Having converted to Islam in the tenth century, e. these Turkic speaking tribes migrated westward, and in ten seventy one the Sejuk Turks, led by Alp Asian

and defeated the Byzantine army at uh Manzikert, uh near Lake Van, which Lake Van is going to become very important. This is in Anatolia. Okay, which is the home like the ancestral home of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire. Okay. The Turks took Constantinople and ended the thousand-year Ur Byzantine Empire after a series of defeats of European armies.

The Turks revised their territorial ambitions and they kind of like they got up to Vienna at one point and they were like, I think we're good. We we might be overextended a little bit. Got it. Uh so the Ottoman Empire was a quote composite state ruled by the family of Osman, two kinds of differences were institutionalized. There was a vertical distinction between ruling institutions in ordinary subjects and horizontal distinctions among the various religious c communities. So what this

So the Ottoman Empire is what the Turks created w they were like, We're traveling through the land, we're tribes, we're taking everything. And then the end result of them being like, Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine was the Ottoman And in the period that we are mostly covering, this uh constitutes like large parts of what is it like extends through the Balkans and the Caucasus. uh parts of North Africa, uh and on the eastward border borders uh uh Persia or modern day Iran. Yes. Uh and Azerbaijan. Um

Uh where were we? So this constituted what is usually called the millet system, whereby state power emanated from Constantinople, but the multi-ethnic empire was largely governed at a local level by representatives of the local community.

So right, if you are Armenian, uh and like you are governed at a local level by the Armenian patriarch. Got it. Right. And if you're Greeks, same thing. Uh Um, what this meant in practice was that the ethnic and religious minorities within the Ottoman Empire were often excluded from state power where uh uh given status was that was subordinate, but tolerated. Jews that had been expelled from Spain, for example, settled in the Ottoman Empire after fourteen ninety two.

Okay, and then they would get their own kind of Jewish community, yeah, their own patriarch, and they'd have to answer to Constantinople, but they would have some relative autonomy. Yeah. Mostly because I'm guessing the empire was so expansive, Constantinople was like, We don't have time to micro jewel. Yeah.

Uh so the millets were creations of the Ottoman state headed by various religious leaders within the empire formalized in the nineteenth century, the grand rabbi, for example, from eighteen thirty five onward and the patriarchs of the Greeks and the Armenians.

And so, Madeline, who are the Armenians? Uh it's simple, David. There are people from Armenia. Yes. They speak our meeting. Okay, you know how every time you pick a topic, I make fun of you relentlessly for doing the from time immemorial where I think we You have to. You need the historical analysis. Yes, I recognize that, but every now and again I'm like

I feel like, you know, the Thus Spake Zarathustra song that's in like two thousand one a Space Odyssey where like the chimps are like beating their things and looking at the like obelisk. Uhhuh. I feel like we should just have that music play at the beginning. I mean, I think that would be fair. I think this is what people need to expect from us. When we say deep dive, we're doing a deep dive. I mean this is

I feel like you will get a basic understanding. So oh I like deep dive is relative. Okay, okay, okay. You will get six to eight hours of understanding of this topic by the time we are done. And I hope, like the big hope is that it impels you to go read a book about the topic. That's always that's like kind of the goal is like hey man, go read more. Yeah.

Uh, this is like you have kind of the lay of the land. So, oh uh the Armenians are kinda it's like the like uh Chinese and some other sort of ethnic populations where they have a history that goes back to like time immemorial. Yeah. Uh so they were a people living in Anatolia area, a kind of mountainous steppe region of present-day Eastern Turkey, and they're mentioned in Herodotus, uh who believed them to be descendants of Balkan nomads. What's Herodotus?

He was an ancient Greek historian. Oh great. Okay. Yeah. Uh uh and Xenophon, who also from like classical Greek times, wrote a kind of personal history of his like time in the military called the Anabases. Uh uh and he somewhat famously like was like their Super or cool. They're super nice and they gave me really good beer. Oh, all right. He likes to party. Yeah. Xenophone. Okay.

So in the fifth century of the common era, so that's all fourth century BCE. Like this is real fucking like The Armenians are mentioned from way back when So we're gonna jump ahead because we can't just dies. Yeah. Oh, there we I you know what, I'm gonna mention this now. Uh, there is a really funny thing when like sort of eighteenth century like the be like the first beginnings of Armenian nationalism come about and they're starting to write

the first like people are starting to write the first histories of Armenia that are not like totally m magic. Uhhuh. Right. Like there's a lot of the early ones are like myth a lot like Right. Right. Uh one uh like one uh Armenian historian was like, yeah, one of the early Armenian leaders actually invited Jesus to Armenia to escape being crucified.

Oh, is that real? No. Oh, I'm like, cool story. I mean, there's like you know, at various points uh histori or like early Armenian sort of nationalist historians when they're sort of coming up with It's more folklore. Yeah. Yeah. When when people people tell their history, it's very folklore.

So, uh, in the fifth century of the Common Era, a cleric named Mesrop con instructed an Armenian alphabet in order to transcribe the Bible into Armenian. Meserop and other Armenian clerics began transcribing as well a folk history of the Armenians after the creation of the Armenian alphabet, Moses uh Koronatsi he wrote The History of Armenians, which traces the origins of the Armenians to a hero hike, uh, which is in Armenian, that is the n name for Armenians. Oh okay.

uh who defeated the Babylonian giant Bell. Again, th we're in the realm of material. In three hundred one CE, uh King Tiridades the third adopted Christianity, making the Armenian church earlier than either the Roman or the Byzantine churches. Uh. So Armenian like the Armenian church claims to be like the longest, like the oldest consistent

church. Which if you are one of those like right wing guys who's decided to like convert to some sort of church now or whatever. David's saying go Armenian. Go Armenian. Go Armenian church.

Ah um In the seventh cent century, Arabs under the early Muslim Rashadun Caliphate invaded Armenia, though they didn't really establish an empire there, merely established a few trading outposts, but in ten seventy one the Sejuk Turks won a battle, Manzikert, which we talked about earlier, against the Byzantine Empire, subjugating the Armenians, and finally in the fifteenth century the Ottoman Turks completed their conquest of Armenia.

Okay, so after the fifteenth century onward we're in pretty familiar territory. We have like an identifiable people with a language and a history who exist both within the territorial boundaries of an empire that conquered them, as well as diaspora communities springing up all over Europe. Uh i it's around this time that the familiar picture of Armenians as industrious traders and merchants starts.

Is that familiar? I feel like this is This is what people think? Right. I told I texted you I was like, there are gonna be a lot of like uh very friendly jokes about oh AMG Mercedes going at fifty miles an hour Urth or the Americana and Glendale. Yes, that is which feels That is very Glendale. That uh and feels very Glendale Armenian community to me. We love them. Yeah, we love them. This is you know, it is Uh made in good humor. It is uh uh yeah.

So ooh, it's around th this time th that like you get the trader thing and even Emmanuel Kant remarked that a c a certain commercial spirit of a p peculiar store namely of wandering on foot foot from the borders of China to the coast of Ghanai in order to buy and sell. So this is when Kant was not having his servants strap him down so that he didn't have impure thoughts at night. Or act on his impure thoughts.

Uh very normal. He if you'll find that you need to be strapped down at night to not act on your impure thoughts, I just want you to know very normal. You should Don't feel weird about that at all. That is so normal, that's the most normal thing. Maybe act on it.

I'm just saying every now if you act on them, you're gonna go to hell. Is that what you want? Do you want these people to go to hell? These good people? I mean I'm just gonna be eternity. They they're putting themselves in hell every night apparently.

Uh so the principal political institution at this point i is the Armenian Church, which was divided between its supreme patriarch, the Catholicos, uh atjmias miatsin, excuse me, uh in the Persian in Wap Pyre, as well as Catholicos in Sis, Agtamar, and Ganza. Sar please forgive me for my butchering of the Armenian language. Uh Constantinople also in Jerusalem, which one of the things I don't know if you've been paying attention to some like the Machado v uh Jerusalem thing I've noticed.

The what's the Machado Machado's like, Oh, we're gonna take control of Venezuela and then we're gonna move our embassy right to V Jerusalem. I mean that's Israel. Oh boy. No, I mean there is to this day a very large Armenian Christian community in Jerusalem. Really? Yeah. Uh in fact my old car mechanics used to like were uh born in a monastery in Jerusalem. They're Armenian Christians. Interesting. Um but in the past few years there have been scattered stories about settlers.

it w kinda wantin' that that land yeah that is uh Armenian. Yeah. Right. So it's a like That makes sense.

I uh By the eighteenth century Armenians in their ancestral homeland were on the verge of extinction, which in the era in which the first inklings of nationalism were taking form, sparked a renewed interest in the preservation of Armenian identity. This mostly came from diaspora communities in Europe, especially in Venice and Vienna.

uh and in Madras, which is uh modern day H and I India, where the first Armenian newspaper was published, uh uh Simeon Are Vantsi and influential Catholicos began uh uh to propose the concentration of Armenians around the Sea of Edjmiatsin.

in order to preserve their identity, and Madras, meanwhile, the merchant class began advocating for an elective republic won through struggle against the Ottomans and Persian Empires. Right. They're having a bourgeois revolution. So they well this is they're just a The people are talking about it and they're like, you know, they're trying to figure out how to

Like how to preserve the one of the oldest cultures in like what we would now call the Middle East. Right. Right. Uh So it's around this time that uh Mikhail Chamchin and published the Haylod's Bet At Mut Yun, ex again, please forgive me for my butchering of Armenian. Uh a three volume work that attempted to tell the story of Armenians as an organic whole as opposed to sort of like a myth a lot. Like the Bell the Byzantine giant he's got.

In one passage, Jamchi recounts that Abgar, the tall, muscular king of the Armenians, was said to have written to Christ. Inviting to him to his kingdom to avoid the wrath of the Israelites. Okay, so we're still doing some form of folk, but more of a secular folk. It's not

like uh also the tall, muscular king of the Armenians. And this is also every You ca when you read about Armenians today and when you read Herodotus, when you read like the Anabasis, whatever, there's a lot of like, dude, they're so

Okay. So everybody thinks Armenians are hot. Yeah. Okay, got it. Uh so within the Ottoman Empire, survival of the Armenians depended both on a strong activist effort by our Armenians to retain their religious and linguistic distinctness but also on the millet system, which, though it placed Armenians and other religious minorities in a position of subordination to the Muslim majority Ottoman ruling class,

It did provide some measure of political and cultural autonomy. In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire permitted a variety of educational, charitable,

and social institutions to operate. Armenians, along with Greeks and Jews, benefited from the extension of the Ottoman Empire into the eastern Mediterranean, and some were able to rise within the economy of the Ottoman Empire, and especially as uh Europe like Western European expansion hit Constantinople and uh European trading centers started popping up, Armenians were Armenians al as well as like Greeks were often in a

uh adv advantageous position to like join the merchant class. Geographically? Geogra culturally, right? Like it was uh You know, as minorities who could like who also had a large diaspora community in Europe, they were well positioned sort of like historically materially. Oh okay, I guess. Does that feel like I know a guy there? Yeah. I can make that up.

Uh Here's the point where we kind of have to talk about the rise of capitalism and the pr precisely the historical and political factors which made Armenians as well as Greeks and Jews politically subordinate, as I said, within the m millet system. kind of created circumstances in which the cultural diaspora is located around trading centers both within the Ottoman Empire and within Europe and Western Asia, uh, they thrived economically over against their Sunni Muslim neighbors.

So you get this like weird system where Armenians in k the capital centers, so not all Armenians, but uh there is a strong, thriving Armenian bourgeois class located around Jerusalem, around Constantinople. It's a different story in Anatolia itself, but They are thriving over against their Sunni Muslim neighbors while being politically subordinate. to the Muslim majority. Interesting. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to breed resentment.

Uh uh white Americans did to black wall. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Black Wall Street, they were kicked out of basically participation in white American society. So they founded their own city, their own community, uh their own businesses, their own everything, and uh angry KKK members burnt it to the ground.

It's I mean we're not quite there yet, but we will get there. Yeah. I mean during the Great Depression when the white America was falling apart, Black Wall Street was thriving and that's what Red Through. And it's I mean, I think right like ethnic minorities communities often have that like it's just built into the structure of being sort of subordinate and dispersed. Right.

Uh so at the turn of the nineteenth century only eleven of the forty-two printing plants in the empire were owned by Muslims. In metal working, twenty plants were owned by non-Muslims and one by Muslims. uh European owned firms were able to position themselves at the top of the economic order within the Ottoman Empire, and Armenians and Greeks were able to obtain favorable positions within those firms.

Even within those firms though, Greeks and Armenians complained of lower wages than their European counterparts.

In eighteen thirty one, Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire concluded the Treaty of Balta Limani, which opened Ottoman markets to European trade and ended Ottoman monopolies on agriculture. And this is kind of this is the beginning of the end of The Ottoman Empire. Like it's gonna take a long time for it to end, but it's clear that they cannot maintain hegemony sort of economically or politically.

Okay. Uh shadowing. Yeah. So at this point like the Ottoman Empire is kind of trying to is they they're doing something called uh Ottomanism. And they are sort of like they're seeing the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century and they're sort of like Okay, we'd kinda wanna head that off on the path like at the past. And so we want to have like we want to create a national identity that is Ottoman that encompasses

you know, Sunni Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians and Armenian Christians uh and Jews. We want that to be an identity. We do not want to do all of the kinds of political reforms that would make that actually Okay, interesting. So but they also we're in the era where Marx is writing. Yeah. This is interesting.

Uh i so There are some land reforms which are called the Tanzimat uh which were carried out between eighteen thirty nine and eighteen seventy-six, and they sought to centralize control of the Ottoman Empire and introduce modernizing and secularizing measures to combat the imperial weaknesses that had exacerbated uh that had been exacerbated by the wars with Russia throughout the eighteenth century.

And in the urban centers the Armenian diaspora is doing well. However, in Anatolia and Silesia, Armenian peasants were vying for land with local Kurds, who were a nomadic population that had settled kind of in the uh Anatolia area. And we're essentially exacting huge ground rents to Army and

Or from Oh, okay. Uh and Turks and after the land reforms of eighteen fifty eight, which was an attempt to place land uh uh in uh in sort of Muslim hands or Turk like Turkish hands, uh uh uh both Armenia like Armenians often had to go to court to sue for their rights to their like their ancestral land and generally speaking they lost those cases. Um So what was essentially an economic struggle began to take on

At this point in the nineteenth century, really ethnic d uh dimensions. Uh, here is Gerald Henry Fitzmaurice, first secretary of the British Embassy in Istanbul, summing up the position in nineteen fourteen. The Turkish government, after the Treaty of Berlin in eighteen seventy eight, realizing that a sense of nationality cannot uh be easily lived without.

oh a p cannot easily live without a peasantry, and that if it succeeded in uprooting the Armenian peasantry from the soil and driving them into the towns or out of the country, it would in great part rid itself of the Armenians and the Armenian question.

condoned and encouraged by the Kurdish usurpation of Armenian lands. So to sum up, what's happening is that there's an attempt to create a sort of modernized and centralized state, which the Ottomans understand to be necessary, right? Having a diffuse uh empire that is largely uh administrated by the millet system isn't gonna work. Decentralization fails. Yeah.

Uh uh And at this point, wealthy and well-positioned interests were able to accumulate land in Anatolia and Silicia at the expense of uh Armenian peasants. Uh here's Ronald Sooney describing the situation. A wealthy and powerful man would invade a peasant's family. Madeline, tell me if this sounds familiar. uh uh a a peasant family's land and and with armed attendants a and ask for the family to move out with their animals.

Uh uh notables accumulated land and privatized it according to the land code of eighteen fifty eight, often supported by state officials. Such seizures of land. Uh hit Muslims as well as non-Muslims, but for Armenians and Greeks, the losses were seen as a part of the Ottoman policy to weaken the Christians and favor the Muslims.

Does that sound familiar? Yes. It sounds like Palestine. It sounds like Manifest Destiny in the United States. It sounds like every settler colonial project. So ooh, SUNY goes on, peasants petitioned the authorities, particularly after the nineteen oh eight revolution, but their moral appeals to fairness, justice, and rights seldom succeeded before the raw exercise of physical.

Oh god, so bad. And essentially what's happening is that on the one hand, in the cities, there's this like liberal-minded diaspora that like is sort of like ideologically breaking with the sort of Armenian church. Like they want something that is like a secular republican state. They are bourgeois through and through. And they have made inroads into the emerging European dominated cla uh capitalist economy.

and Anatolia and Silesia, meanwhile, Armenian peasants are being dispossessed of their land. In eighteen forty four Mateos Chicagia and is elected the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople and begins to transform the sort of Armenian millet into a constitutional institution, such that the Anatolian peasants and the uh uh millet uh was transformed into a national assembly divided into two chambers, a political assembly and a religious assembly. So they're getting political. Okay. Right.

Uh uh in the provinces, nonetheless, the the peasants are underrepresented and uh bishops Mikrich Crimin became patriarch of Constantinople in eighteen sixty nine, and Crimean was from Van kind of like the most Armenian city in Anatolia, and through his work and the publication of a journal of Arzvid Vesper Urkani began placing a greater emphasis on the suffering of Armenian peasants in the eastern part of the empire,

In eighteen seventy two he reported to the National Assembly, highlighting quote rapes, depredations and thefts, and above all murders that remain without punishment or have remained undiscovered, carried out against the Armenians in the region.

And large parts of what Armenians understood to be their homeland was split essentially between three empires at this point. So some of it is in the Ottoman Empire, some of it is in the Persian Empire, and some of it is in the Russian Empire. Anatolia was in the Ottoman, uh, Yerevan the Persian, and after eighteen twenty eight, Edj Miyatsin was at like in the Russian Empire. In eighteen thirty six Tsar Nicholas the First i issued the

Ugh, my sorry guys. Uh, which essentially gave the Armenian church cultural autonomy within the Russian Empire. And Nicholas is one of the he's like he Is kind of the first one to sort of begin to recognize that the Russian Empire is going to have to change if it's going to survive. And he starts.

doing liberal reforms. They don't go very well and they're m mostly gestural rather than material. I was gonna ask what his motive was for this. Right. I mean I think this is I I was thinking about this on the way over here because I was like you know, the re revolutions that break out at the beginning of the twentieth century, uh and which Armenians play like a large part in the Russian Revolution in uh the Persian Revolution that creates

the, you know, twentieth century Iran and in obviously uh nationalist movements in Ottoman uh in the Ottoman Empire and in the Young Turk movement. Um but it was like the thing about the Russian Revolution is that like the The roots of it are like, oh, you have like a really spread out empire with a bunch of like Essentially. like imperial periphery subjects who do not fucking like being a part of the Russian Empire. Right. Right.

Like so you So it's like almost like uh you it's like a gesture, like you throw'em a bone so they don't fully revolt and your shit. That makes sense. And this is there's uh a great Tolstoy novel called Haji Marat. that is about a famous Chechen freedom fighter who was eventually arrested by the by Russia and was put up in like extreme luxury in like essentially a palace in St. Petersburg in order to keep him from like

fucking shit up anymore. Yeah, that makes sense. And you say here just in the notes, I think it's important not to skip over that um when Sar Nicholas I did this and gave the Armenian church autonomy, that also freed it from taxation and gave it power over Armenia. Yeah. I just wanna make sure we didn't skip that'cause I'm like, that's really significant. No, and this was like this was way greater autonomy than was happening in the Ottoman Empire.

Uh also in the Ottoman Empire, for example, Armenians as well as Greeks and Jews were not allowed to bear arms and like the Ottoman. interesting. Right. So they were afraid very much of an all-out relation because they knew these people were being So uh under Nicholas the First, Russia had its own form of cultural imperialism, which was called rusification, uh w similar to the Ottomans Ottomanism.

And Armenian intellectuals within the Ottoman Empire certainly experienced conflict. The latitude they were allowed at first brought a relative flourishing of an Armenian middle class. And it's in Russia as well as in Venice and Vienna that Armenians, such as novelist and poet Rafi, increasingly begin to conceptualize their Armenian identity in broadly national terms and to conceptualize the possibility of a homeland n specifically in the lands conquered by the Ottomans.

So Rafi wrote for instance, shall Armenia that was once a garden always be a desert grey, is a glad day coming when a banner er shall on Ararat, its folds expand, and from every side Armenian pilgrims hasten to their beautiful fatherland. So this is we are classic nineteenth century need nationalism, right? Yep. Uh start getting oppressed by everybody. We need our own homeland. Where do we develop it?

So oh to sum up, right, you get a prosperous middle class and like a struggling and oppressed peasant class. Uh it's so like In essentially three different empires. And the middle class is kind of conservative because realistically they've kind of done well. Right. This is true uh many places. Yeah. It like around the world. Like even today. Like the middle class tends to align themselves with uh financial aspirations rather than a material reality.

Yeah. And so they are trying to find the expression for Armenian identity within the framework of the Ottoman Empire. So they're kind of like, listen, we want like the millet to be kind of like a stand-in for a nation with actual territory that has like sort of political sovereignty. Uh uh in the west near Anatolia, the Armenian peasants are being driven off their land with little recourse.

And a large international diaspora population, they're beginning to conceptualize Armenian identity, at least in partially ethnic and national terms, along with the traditional religious identifications.

In eighteen fifty five the Russian army seized the fortified town of Kars in eastern Anatolia. Which had been the center of the medieval Armenian kingdom. And who did they seize this from? From the Anatolia. From from the Ottomans. Yeah, yeah. Uh uh So essentially for a second, it goes back to the Ottomans after treaties are signed. Uh Armenians are beginning to regard

r Russia as the liberator because they have suffered so fucking much in Anatolia under Ottoman rule. And Tsar Nicholas I is like, Oh, don't rebel. Here's here's some stuff. And like to this day, like Aragon and people like that will be like, listen, here's the thing. The Armenian national movement was just like a pawn of like Russian interests.

Like it wasn't it was fake, it was astroturfed, like they were just trying to fuck with the Ottoman Empire and they were using Armenian nationalists to do it. And this is not true. This is not true. Okay I mean, or it's like Two things can be true at once. Russia was kind of doing that a little bit. But there was also an organic there was like like the large part of like the sort of Armenian national movement was like a

an organic movement. And then Russia was like, We can work with this. Yeah. Okay. Uh Uh so at the time many Armenian subjects of both empires regarded Russia as the best hope for freedom from their Ottoman rulers, and when Russia was forced to cede cars back to the Ottomans a year later, it became evident to Ottoman.

Ottoman officials that many Armenians would support Russia in any conflict between them. Which so now you have an ethnic minority that is being economically and politically repressed, who also is seen as constitutionally disloyal.

Yeah. They hate you. They they hate you and they want to team up with your enemy to take you fucking down. Yeah. Uh and how many years are we out from the Russian Revolution here? This is what we're in eighteen fifty five? Eighteen fifty five. We got like sixty years to c Yes. Seventy years. Um so o

Ooh, at this point when the Crimean War breaks out, Russian Armenians led armies in the an invasion of Anatolia. So Russian or Russian Armenians were heading Russian armies invading Anatolia. And a lot of Armenian peasants were like, fuck yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Got it. Uh Uh uh so uh local Armenians joyfully greeted them, and when the border was redrawn in eighteen seventy-eight, Kars and Ardahan were annexed to Russia, making one hundred thousand former Ottoman Armenians Russian sub-

So at this point we kinda have to talk about wha what the fuck is going on in Russia. Well. What the fuck is going on in Russia? It's not great. It's not great. It's not great. There are certain There are serfs, they got a thirty five year life expectancy. The the economy is shit. Only thirty five percent of them can read. Yeah. Thirty five thirty five rules going on. It's not Right. Uh so Alexander the Second is kind of the last hope Russia has for a liberal, reformist, nationalist leader

or in the mold of like Frederick of Prussia, right? A guy that everyone could just be like, That guy did the thing, right? Like he he uh instituted a bunch of constitutional reforms where he's still like uh like you know, an autocratic absolute ruler, but there's like an assembly that advises him. Uh I believe he is the one who abolished serfdom. See this is the thing. You gotta throw the people above.

And if you throw the people a bone, you stave off your own destruction. This is what the United States government is not learning. We're we're gonna we're gonna talk about he did not stave off his own destruction. Uh very specifically, he did not save off his own destruction. Um but uh what like the problem is is that that kind of created I would argue that created the material terms.

for the revolution of like nineteen ten or whatever, in the sense that because they weren't like the liberal reforms were never fully fucking complete. What you got was an extremely frustrated bourgeoisie who were like, dude, we want to be a fucking market economy, you dumbass. We want to fucking thrive. And but you haven't done enough to make us A market economy. Right. You can't you can't do a little. You gotta There's a standard of something you have to do. Yeah. This makes sense.

So, in practical terms, it's another story. A anyways, Alexander appointed Armenian Count Loris Melikov to head the Russian government. So Armenians are getting up there in the government and it's Loris Melikov who pressured Alexander to push through all of these political reforms, such as ending serfdom and appointing a a constitutive assembly to advise the Tsar. It was all a little too late.

E and on March thirty first of eighteen eighty one, Narodnaya Volya, People's Will, assassinated Alexander by throwing a bomb at his carriage. Uh that'll do it. Sometimes sometimes just say carriage bombed. And this kind of right, it sparked, first of all, a reaction by his son, uh, who was like Fuck liberal reforms, bro, like they're gonna v bomb me and kill me.

Uh, but it also set off a wave of terrorist violence in Russia that went right up to the Russian Revolution.'Cause they were like, Oh shit, you just throw bombs at people's carriages? I didn't know that was an option. And y you get extremely wacky and ideologically

confused motherfuckers like Boris Savankov just being like, Yeah, we're just gonna start like a socialist uh quote unquote, but uh the real air quotes around socialists. They do this all the time though. This is what Perez did in Venezuela. Venezuela's on my mind.

They will always pretend to be a socialist to try to appease the masses while continuing to have their cake and eat it too and get away with like shit that is not socialist. Well so Boris Steven Cobb is he's an interesting guy. This is a total aside, but here we are. Uh uh he's an interesting guy. So he was born with like he was born to Russian administrators. I believe it's a Russian judge.

in Ukraine and began to identify heavily with like nascent Ukrainian sort of independence slash quasi-national movements of the eighteen seventies and eighties, and then became again an extremely intellectually confused uh socialist. Uh cautionary deal. Uh who joined uh I can't remember the name of it, but he joined essentially a terrorist cell that was almost immediately infiltrated by the Okarna.

Which was the Russian secret police, um, who who then did in fact carry out a series of spectacular terrorist attacks. uh throughout Russia. Once after nineteen seventeen he just carried out terrorist attacks against the Bolsheviks. Okay. He just likes doing terrorism for its own sake. He's just like He's just like, it's fun to throw bombs. He actually wrote novels, the whole point of which is like, it's really fun to throw bombs. Wow. But this is kind of the vibe and writing.

at the time. Rush is going through it. Yeah. Rush is going kook balls, chaos mode.

So Alexander the Third almost immediately dismisses Loris Melikov after his father Urz's assassination and began a campaign of reaction against the Russian Armenians in 1885. All of the Armenian parish schools are closed, five hundred in total with two hundred thousand students and nine hundred teachers. Increasingly radical or like increasing radical Armenians in Russia began to conceptualize Uh the necessity of liberation in Ottoman Turkey.

No, no. Uh that was the N Narodnaya Volia people. Yeah, yeah. But so why why all the second was he like, Fuck the Armenians? What do they have to do with that? Well, because he was like I mean, this was the case with like all of the sort of ethnic uh like minorities living within the Russian Empire where he was just like, dude, we can't fucking have these people like

bopping around being all independent because some of them might it was just like repression, repression, repression. And and okay, so then the Armenians were part of it. Yeah. They were one of many. Yeah. Like it was again, like the Haji Murat, I highly recommend the novel Haji Marat by Tolstoy. It's fabulous. Uh, but there's also Imam Shamil. There are all of these people who are like

Bobbing around doing like guerrilla attacks against the like Russian army. Ler Lermanov has like a whole fucking novel that is essentially like Yeah, these like Georgian and Chechen guerrilla fighters are our enemies, but aren't they brave and cool and also hot? Got it. Right, like Um So Oh, at this point there is this huge reaction, and the Patriarch of Constantinople opined that the situation is so desperate that he would not rule out an armed insurrection in Otta in the Ottoman Empire. Okay.

So n wherever you are, like if you're a if you're a Russian Armenian, you're like, maybe being a part of Russia is not so great. Like because we are still at the whims of like other people, maybe we want to just like have our own Right. Back in Van, there's this activist teacher called Mitrich uh Portugalin, who begans who begins organizing young people into a political party. Uh, when he was exiled to Marseille, he began a journal called Armenia. Uh

readers back in Ar Anatolia were inspired to start their own political party, uh uh Arminican. In eighteen eighty nine, two Arminican members were killed trying to smuggle arms into Van from Persia.

In eighteen ninety, Armenians from the Caucasus led by Sarkas Gugunian attempted to cross into Van where they were immediately driven back and arrested by Cossacks in Russia. So Russia is going like, look, we do We are not totally opposed to Armenians stirring shit up, but we don't want Armenians to stir shit up this bad.

It's kind of like is kind of the thing. Um Um, all of this meant essentially that for both neighboring empires, Armenian radicals were regarded as a nuisance and kind of a potential danger. After the closure of Armenian schools, some Armenians traveled to Geneva where they started the Henchuk Party, a radical socialist and Armenian nationalist.

newspaper and political party. They advocated for a free socialist Armenian state composed of territory carved out of the Ottoman Turkey, Russia, and Persia, and advocated for the use of terror to accomplish their goal. So there again, like when, you know, Erdogan is like, hey man, there was this nationalist movement. He's not wrong. That doesn't mean killing a million and a half peasants.

Right. Like this is Uh so the newspaper Ur wrote The purpose of terror is to protect the people when it is subject to persecution, to raise its spirit, to inspire and elevate a revolutionary disposition among them.

to show daring on behalf of the people will protesting. Actually, Madeline, can you finish reading this one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So the purpose of terror is to protect the people. When it is subject to persecution to raise its spirit, to inspire and elevate a revolutionary disposition among them.

to show daring on behalf of the people protesting against the government, and thus to maintain the faith of the people towards the task at hand, to shake the power of the government, to abase its reputation of being powerful, to create extreme fear in its right. The means to achieve these goals are to annihilate the worst Turkish and Armenian personalities within the government, to annihilate spies and traits.

I mean, I gotta say, if I if I were sixteen, I would be like, fuck yeah, this is sick. I mean it was so I'm sure it was compelling to a certain type of So there's this other politically radical organization that is called Erdazar Erd Haistan, uh young Armenian. Again, uh Haya after like the first king is the sort of Armenian name for Armenians.

Uh they began organizing revolutionary groups in Turkey. With the Hemchuks they founded a common group the Oh God, Madeline, can you say this? I will not be able to The High Hegopokoneri Hegapok. Polcaganary. Yeah. Hag a poca the chance to Su Tian. This is my first time seeing this. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Dashank Sutian. Um so okay. So I just want to go back though to this quote. Mm-hmm. So what they're saying here when they're like the means to achieve their goals are to annihilate

Armenian personalities within the government. They are Army. Well, so what they're essentially saying is like there are middle class Armenians who are the traitors amongst us. Who are the traitors amongst us. And we gotta go after them. And we are politically radical. We do not want appeasement. We want independence. But their their enemies at this time are the Russia. The Russians and the Ottomans. And the Ottomans. So they throw the Turkish in there. Mm-hmm. But why are they targeting

Their own people. Well, because they're like, look, there are fucking spies among us. Who are like we gotta clear our ranks. This is uh like they're advocating sort of like essentially a purpose. Oh, right. Like pol like politically not okay great people. Uh so within a year of like the joining of these two organizations, uh the socialists are out.

And even within the the Hunshaks there's a split between those that wanted a fully autonomous state and those that are willing to demand greater autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. So among Armenian radicals and Armenian nationalists, there is this huge split over like how to be uh like how to be a national movement. Got it. Okay. Uh the most powerful of these who eventually emerged uh as representatives of Armenian interests were the Dashnak.

who, by the way, are still around and have been active in Armenia as well as Iran a and Azerbaijan until Madeline twenty twenty three. What happened in twenty twenty three? What happened in t Azerbaijan uh ethnically cleansed an entire Armenian town within uh their borders. Okay. In twenty twenty three? Yeah.

I didn't fucking know that. That's what I've been saying. I didn't even fucking know that happened. What I have been saying, hey Madeline, should we do something on like the Azerbaijan Armenian thing? That's what I mean. Oh my gosh. It was See, this is a total thing that's there's so much happening in the world. Oh my god, okay, okay. So they did so by like mass displacement.

Right. Uh they like I I think one report said that like there were nine people left in the town after uh uh the Armenians were kicked out. Wow. Uh it so where were we? Uh

So this kind of always happens. There are a bunch of mat oh your hair's red now. Fuck. Blue-haired Vanguard's weirdos writing their little mimeograph journals. Red haired. Uh, and no one pays attention to them. Okay. Uh most Armenians are kind of indifferent to the dash knack. until Nicholas the Second uh ordered the confiscation of all property held by the Armenian Church, at which point they're like,

Fuck, we can't exist anywhere. Uh all of the sudden formerly indifferent Armenians began marching and demonstr demonstrating to protest the confiscations, insurrection broke out in Baku, and economic strikes spread throughout the Armenians and Russian territory. And at this point, this is when like the Armenian or the Ottoman Empire is just straight up not doing well. Uh in eighteen seventy eight, Abdul Hamid II Uh ascends as Sultan and kind of and like ends up.

the Tanzimat reforms that were meant to secularize like land law within uh the Ottoman Empire because it's like this isn't fucking working. Uh, we're getting our ass handed to us by like European powers. and uh having our entire life dictated r by uh European powers. Um So Oh he ends the Townsomat reforms that had attempted to centralize and modernize the empire.

European powers, principally Great Britain and Russia, were especially interested in dominating the empire, whose territory included the the passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Obviously we've talked about the Crimean War. We talked about it weirdly in the Cambridge Five thing. Oh.'Cause we talked about the or like the n like British realizing they needed a secret secret service at like the emergence of the Ocarna.

Um but what was essentially at stake was Russia's incursions into Ottoman territory, which Britain and France fought in order to preserve Ottoman sovereignty Uh, in the eighteen seventy eight to or eighteen seventy seven to eight war between Russia and the Ottomans, Germany and Britain again fought to preserve Ottoman territory.

Greece won its independence in eighteen thirty-one following a massacre of between twenty and twenty-five thousand people on the island of Chios in eighteen twenty-two. Uh this became like the Greek nationalist movement and the Greek war for independence. became like kind of a cause celebre like Lord Byron went to go fight for the Greeks and shit like that. If you were like a European liberal in like the like early nineteenth century, you really you were like

we want the Greek indep like we think the Greek independence is weird and people started wearing like fake Greek costumes. Uh the so like we're we we really are in nationalism territory. Got it. Uh Yeah, so Oh in eighteen seventy six a similar crisis occurred in which thousands of Bulgarians were massacred following the so called April uprising.

All of this created a crisis for the European great powers. On the one hand, Britain, France, and Germany had each come to the aid of the Ottomans at one time or another, ostensibly to protect their sovereignty, but really to prevent Russia from controlling access to crucial trade routes. However, first the Greek and then the Bosnian crisis more or less forced their hand. So uh he wasn't an prime minister yet. He was a conservative MP. William Gladstone

uh in Britain wrote a widely circulated pamphlet in which he said, actually, Madeline, do you want to read the The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East? Yeah. So there's a long quote in bold. So um he writes Let me endeavor very briefly to sketch in the rudest outline what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mahometism. Mohammedanism, but simply of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race.

They are not the mild Mohamedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them. Okay, so where what we're getting is This is very racist. Okay. Right. Like it's racist. It's very racist. Right. He's like, these people are murderers. They're vicious murderers.

It is also it is like it becomes like an extremely influential sort of you know, contemporaneous account of like what Britain and also America's role should be towards the Armenians. And at this point you start getting things like like American Protestant missionaries going to Armenia or going to Anatolia and being like, whoa, dude, it's fucked up over here. Um, so you get this like

huge kind of like outcry for ethnic minorities that is cast in extremely weird racist nineteenth century ass terms. Okay, got it. Right. Uh Uh So William Gladstone continues that a quote lurid glare is thrown over the current case by the Bulgarian whores. So at this point, Britain's like, we can no longer support the fucking Ottomans against Russia because they keep massacring motherfuckers. Um

In a letter to the Daily News, British ambassador J A m uh McGahan wrote an account of the massacre. Madeline, do you wanna read the blue? Yeah, it's horrible. In the midst of this heaf I could distinguish the slight skeleton form still enclosed in a chemise, the skull wrapped around with a colored handkerchief, and the bony ankles encased in the embroidered footless stockings worn by the Bulgarian girl.

We looked about us. The ground was strewn with bones in every direction where the dogs had carried them off to gnaw them at their leisure. At the distance of a hundred yards beneath us lay the town. A scene from our standpoint, it reminded one somewhat of the ruins of Herc Herculaneum and Pompeii. There was not a roof left, not a whole wall standing. It was a massive ruins.

From which arose as we listened a low, plaintive wail, like the kneeling of the Irish over their dead. Like the keening Oh keening, sorry, keening of the Irish over their dead that filled the little valley and gave it voice. So after the massacres, European representatives convened in Constantinople to kind of address the problem. Abdul Hamid II, who had just become Sultan, immediately issues a new constitution which instituted an Ottoman parliament

in which non-Muslim deputies could be represented. Uh the new constitution did not, however, seriously limit the power of the Sultan or the central government, uh, which was called the Port. Uh, nor did it grant fundamental o rights like the right to assembly or the right to form political parties.

Alexander II, of Russia, of course, who had been both sentiment uh both a sentimental and territorial attachment to dismantling the port government, wrote that the port has remained immovable on the categorical refusal of the ul will of every effectual guarantee for the security of its Christian subjects, Turkey

a by its refusal places uh us under the necessity of having recourse to arms. And this is also being cast very much in terms of like by like the international community as like these bloodthirsty Muslim Turks are killing Right.

Uh at the beginning of the war, er, Armenians were sort of caught between two sets of contradictory goals. As I mentioned earlier, there was a growing nationalist movement with its base among the Armenian diaspora in Russia.

At the time, the Russians had begun to systematically marginalize the Armenian communities, which we talked about. Uh the middle class that had obtained wealth and position with within the Ottoman Empire was more likely to seek autonomy within the empire than through a nationalist war for independence. And a contemporaneous report on provincial repressions. Uh

put it the position bluntly. The Armenians have always, within the limb it set before them, spontaneously rendered every service to the audio. To the Ottoman Empire. In one word, the Armenians seek their future in the prosperity and welfare of the Empire, and the concession of their demands will benefit not only themselves but the country, in accordance with the good intentions of the sovereign. And this is obviously about the middle class Armenians. Yeah, who are essentially like

Hey guys, like maybe stop like massacring people in land grabs in Anatolia and give us some more political autonomy, but like we like you. Right. Um So the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople cautioned Armenians not to support the Russians in the war. An Anatolia, however, rural peasant, and Armenians who had been largely the victims of an officially sanctioned land grab. are like not sanguine about their chances with the Ottoman Empire.

A prominent family in the East, uh, the Passer Majans even entertained Loris Melikov in their home during the war. This was the guy who had advised uh Oh yeah Alexander the second. Who got fired when his when he died. At this point Armenian nationalists broke with the patriarchy and or with the patriarch well. Uh they broke with the patriarch and sent emissaries to Russian commander Grand Duke Nicholas in anticipation of Russian support for an independent Armenia.

uh and local militias began and massacring Armenians by the thousands in eighteen seventy seven. Wow. The governor of Van told a British representative that he was afraid to stop the massacres because of the war with Russia. What like he was afraid that if he stopped killing people they would all team up with Russia? Yeah. Okay.

Uh so the war ended a year later in March of eighteen seventy eight with the Treaty of San Stefano, which more or less forced Abdul Hamid to relinquish control over the entirety of the Balkans to the Russians. So But here's the thing, William Gladstone notwithstanding this was Pretty unacceptable to the British who regarded Russian control over the Balkans as economically and politically destabilizing.

So they hold a secret conference with Abdul Hamid, uh, and Britain takes over administrative control of Cyprus in exchange for promises to come to the Ottomans' aid should Russia uh attempt to hold the territory they had invaded in Anatolia. In exchange, Abdul Hamid pledges to introduce reforms to protect Armenian Christians. Uh What this means is essentially Alexander Ur won, but he lost. Right, because so he won all this territory and then like the entire international community was like

No. You don't too much. You don't get to keep it. He got cocked by Britain. Yeah. Uh so he agreed to send representatives to a conference in Berlin, uh, convened by the Bismarck. Also present at the conference was Crimean, who was the patriarch who had been at one point uh exiled to Jerusalem and who was like an early of sort of Armenian nationalist. We talked about him earlier. Um Uh and he's the former patriarch.

He's one of the main proponents of Armenian liberation. He he's the guy who got exiled. Uh so Crimean proposed a map of provinces to be included in reforms hashed out at the conference with regional councils made up of proportional representatives of Christians and Muslims. In the end, the Congress of Berlin included none of his demands but merely reduced Russia's territorial gains.

Article sixty one repeated Gladstone and Britain's call for reforms but in omitted any timetable and explicitly excluded the possibility of military intervention. Should Abdul Hamid not do anything about the land seizures and massacring?

Uh so the consequence of the treaty is that Russia was removed from Anatolia, ensuring that uh it the one stay on Ottoman abuses is removed. And also, I gotta say, there is some resentment. Okay. I can imagine. Uh of whom though? Of the Armenians. Okay, okay, like the I was gonna say I feel like everybody can resent everybody. So the Armenians are upset because they fuck with Russia, heavy.

Uh or the Ottomans are are upset because the Armenians fucked with Russia. Yes. Right. The Armenians are upset because Russia is effectively neutered in monitoring territory they live in. Yeah.

And because all of their fucking land is being taken from them and they have no judicial recourse. Uh so they're being oppressed and like occasionally just murdered and massacred. Right. Right. Uh uh so at this point it It kind of transforms the so called Armenian question from a merely regional dispute between Russia and the Ottomans into an international question akin to the cause celebrate that was the Greek war for independence forty years earlier.

Essentially from this point on, the Armenians serve as a useful infra instrument to leverage against a weakened Ottoman Empire and an excuse to intervene while no real help is coming for them.

So people will gesture, like the international community will gesture, like, oh, the poor Armenians, but they won't actually do anything. Got it. Right. In the United States, the Armenian question became mixed with really racialized notions. uh uh uh of the Turk and the quote unquote Muhammadian, the exacerbated and already grim picture of Abdul Hamid.

At first Gladstone and other Western politicians believed him to be kind of like a Tanzamat style reformer, but after he dismissed his parliamentary deputies and uh he abrogated the Constitution,

it soon convinced them that the or it soon convinced the international committee that he was a quote bloody assassin and the red sultan. Uh He said of his position, We are accused in Europe of being savages and fanatics, yet unlike the Tsar, I have abstained till now from stirring up a crusade and profiting from religious fanaticism.

But the day may come when I can no longer curb the rights and indignations of my people at seeing their co-religion is butchered in Bulgaria and Armenia, i.e., what about massacres of Muslims by Russians? Right, this is I don't like He was also pretty convinced, and maybe kinda rightly that the Armenians were in league with the Young Turk movement, which was a sort of constitutional reform movement.

uh within uh like the Ottoman Empire that was like, no, we actually need to become a modern state with a modern sort of liberal constitution. uh as well as with nationalist movements among Greeks and with it uh it's still within the Ottoman Empire and with Macedonians. Starting in the eighteen nineties, in order to curb growing Armenian nationalists, he begins arresting Armenian clerics, imposing stricter control on the Catholicos and

schools and changed the boundaries of the province in order to ensure Muslim majorities. So he basically did gerring. State employment was restricted to graduates of state schools, which effectively eliminated Armenians from the bureaucracy. So after the war the Armenian state is basically being taken apart piece by tea piece. Tunisia becomes a front. Oh yes, I'm sorry.

Uh Tunisia becomes a French colony in eighteen eighty one. In eighteen eighty two the British take over Egypt. The Russians retain the Balkans, causing around eight hundred thousand Muslim refugees to flee and resettle in Anatolia.

Which is gonna be bad. Yeah. Uh the first stirrings of a Greek revolt in Crete are beginning with protests and isolated attacks. armed rebellions sprung up in the Armenian province of Zaytun in eighteen seventy eight and seventy nine, Van uh uh uh Vask uh Perakan and Alash Kurt in eighteen ninety, accompanied by peaceful demonstrations by Armenians living in Constantinople in eighteen ninety.

In eighteen ninety three, the first outbreak of violence occurred. Madeline, where are we in time? Eight oh, of right now for recording? You're an hour and fifteen minutes in. Okay, so we are going to go just to We'll go to the end of this. Okay. Uh uh where were we? Uh the first violence is breaking out. Uhhuh.

Okay. So oh, at this point the first violence is breaking out, oh, ooh, in a town called Yozga in Anatolia, where Ottoman police went to investigate some telegraph wires that had been cut. They began rounding up villagers, abducting women, and arresting a priest who they marched from village to village as an example. In response, several of the villagers met at a local church. Here is a report from the British consulate. Madeline, do you want to read this? Sure.

The commotion caused among the Muslims by the Christian assemblage roused greater fear among the Armenians that they would not obey the orders of the governor to disperse. Oh and they would not, sorry. Uh thereupon a Turkish soldier, possibly with the intention of barely frightening them into obedience, fired off his gun.

hitting an Armenian in the leg. Thinking this was the commencement of a general attack on them, the Armenians fired back and wounded about ten Turks, of whom three have since died. One Armenian was killed, but only two or three were wounded. The Turks withdrew soon afterwards, but the Armenians remained for some time at the church, and for several days did not leave their houses or open their shops as they feared Turkish reprisal.

So in eighteen ninety four, Armenians living in Sassoon refused to pay essentially a double taxation. The first was to the Ottoman state, the next was to local Kurdish and Turkish officials. So essentially they were

Getting double text. Yeah, yeah. Uh uh which is kind of like the downside of the millet system is that it is like an easy way to abuse some because you become the local authority. Uh um so members of uh of the local Henchuk party led by Miran Damatyan, who had arrived from Istanbul in eighteen ninety one to lead self defense lessons, attempted to turn resistance to taxation into a c an armed resistance to the Ottoman state.

At first, three or four thousand Kurdish militiamen entered the village and began attacking Armenians. In response, the Ottoman state launched coordinated attacks on the Armenians. A december fourth Associated Press article printed in the Sacramento Record Union reports the experience of refugees gathered in Athens from the massacres. Madeline So these are all Armenians, right? Yeah. And also they're getting attacked by both sides. Kurds and Ottoman Turks.

Oh God. Uh so everyone's attacked. All right. So the their For about eighteen months the Armenians say the province of Sasun has been surrounded by Turkish troops until nobody has been allowed to enter relief. About four months ago, the Turkish authorities learned that the inhabitants of Vartimas, a village outside the frontier of Sasan, were ending for For the necessities of life of wait, we're ending for the necessaries of life to the village of Dalvery.

Communication between the two villages being prohibited, the Turks massacred nearly all the inhabitants of Vartamas. This was the second massacre to occur. The first took place a year ago. One of the refugees, a man named Kadik, states that his uncle and aunt were both killed, the latter being violated previous to being put to death.

So an eyewitness report published in the Catholic World in May of eighteen ninety five reads quote Over the whole province the work of destruction has been pursued, every town and every hamlet it having been given over to pillage and murder.

Two large Catholic mission stations have been entirely wiped out, the churches, the presbyteries, the the schools have been sa uh have first been sacked, were then given to flames, those who fled from the doomed districts were pursued and cut down mercilessly without regard to age or sex. the bodies of many children and young girls lie under or the uh h harid debris of the ruined homes.

No such gigantic affliction has ever before fallen upon any nation. To add to the horrors of the situation these massacres and burnings went on in the depths of the most rigorous winter and spring.

So contemporary estimates put the death toll between one and two thousand, with some estimates going as high as ten thousand, but those are Yeah, those are contested. Uh British consular report writes that the Armenians were absolutely hunted like wild beasts being trapped wherever they were met. Gladstone, who had retired after a stint as prime minister, emerged from retirement

to give a speech at Chester Hall to around six thousand people, calling on European powers to intervene, saying, quote, To serve Armenia is to serve civilization. So at this point what's happening is this like It is it is not it is sort of sanctioned by the Ottoman state, but also kind of just like like mass killing of neighbor by neighbor. Right. Um

Uh E. L. Godkin, writing for the Nation in January of eighteen ninety five, commented on Gladstone's speech thus, the question has now reached the stage where common humanity demands that it be settled. Whatever the case may be, as soon Uni writes, The Sassoon events began a cycle of killing by both state authorities and local Kurds, which is best explained by what might be called an ecology of violence.

three elements came together in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that resorted in a toxic conjuncture that exploded in plunder resistance and massacre. Er Sunni names these elements as a sudden disequilibrium between the local Kurdish authorities and the Armenian peasants in Anatolia.

The ambition of the Ottoman state to exert greater control over the region, resorting not in a monopoly over the use of violence, but rather in a contested state power and rivalry between local traditional authorities and Constantinople appointed representatives attempting to extract wealth to support a nearly bankrupt state, and third, a growing national consciousness among Armenians leading to acts of resistance against both local and state representatives.

So this causes like problem for for the European powers because essentially they don't fucking want to get involved. Right? Like they have essentially made promises that they are going to get involved, but they're like W absolutely not. A bunch of aid organizations sort of get involved. Uh the Red Cross sends people for the first time in its history to a foreign country. Uh right. So

Uh uh so any attempt to form a protectorate for Armenians becomes a challenge to the dominance of one of the European powers. So essentially what would happen? Think about it this way. If Britain is the country that intervenes to form a protectorate for Armenians in Anatolia, then Britain gains influence in Anatolia. If Germany is the one, Germany gains influence, which means no European power want like wants the others to do it, and no European power can do it themselves.

Got it. I guess my question is it was Turkish troops who were Turkish troops as well as Kurdish militiamen. But it wasn't they're saying it wasn't like sanctioned by the government. No, it was sanctioned by the government. Oh, okay. Okay. It's both. Okay, gone. Both at the same time. Right. So This is like I think we're like we're going to uh save like the main thrust of the massacres for next week because I feel like it deserves its own eyes. It deserves its own very heavy. Yeah.

Um, so we'll get to sort of the end of this and then chat. Does that sound good? Yeah, I think that sounds good. Yeah. Uh in September of eighteen eighty five, members of the Hand Chucks notified the port government that they intended to hold a peaceful rally in the center of Constantinople's old city. A group of Armenian women who had travelled from Van, Bitlis, and Er Erzurum petitioned the Patriarch for relief from the depredations occurring in Anatolia,

Uh he pleaded with the group not to march. Like the patriarch. Remember the patriarch is conservative and it's like guys like don't fuck with like don't get in bed with Russia. Yeah. Uh this is gonna go really bad. Uh so that evening Turkish students began running through the streets attacking anyone they suspected of being Armenian. Hanschuk's organized a resistance, killing an army major,

Alarmed by this, the so called Triple Alliance, Germany, Austria and Italy sent emissaries to Constantinople to pressure Er Abdul Hamid into meeting with the protesters. And what's happening right like This is going to spark. riots and massacres, which I think is what we should talk about next week because it is its own thing. Okay. Um where eventually like Armenian resistance fighters take over like the uh principal Ottoman bank, which ironically was founded by the British. Okay, so

This is like so much, and it's so funny because we've been through the whole thing, but I'm like, how did this even get started again? Wait, okay, so. The the broad outline and again like this is uh to spur you to read the books. Uh right, but the broad outline trying to like conceptualize it and I'm like, Okay, so somebody tried to kill the czar of Russia and then his son got super reactionary was like I'm firing all of uh the the Armenians who work for me and then

the Armenians are dispersed across different empires and then the empires start battling each other for power. They're more kind of aligned with the Russians historically because the Russians had given them some freedoms, but then after the the guy got killed and his son was just like, No, we're repressing everybody then they lost those freedoms and then Okay. Okay, here's And then I'm like and then everybody just started killing them? Okay, so essentially within Anatolia, right, uh, you get

this is the historic home of like this is l like uh like since time immemorial the historic home of Armenians. Right. Uh with the founding of You good? Yeah. Uh with the founding of the the Ottoman Empire in what, ten seventy one, right? The like all of the ethnic minorities within the empire are subordinated to the Sultan and to the Ottoman Right.

Some some allowances, uh middle class has developed in some areas, they've been super oppressed in others, they've been having their land taken, they've been kinda getting fucked over by the power structures they've in most of the three empires they've existed under. Yeah. And so all of these political parties, some of which are just purely nationalists, some of which are like nationalists and socialists, not national. So like

Right, start forming mostly in exile, some form in Vienna, some form or movement for themselves. Form in Helsinki, uh and what's essentially happening is and they begin sort of trying to mobilize Armenian resistance. uh in Anatolia specifically, which is the poorest and most concentrated region. But it seems like they were just kind of going after their own for being traitors. Well no, they that was one line. Oh

They weren't doing like general acts of terrorism to fight for independence. Mostly pamphlet people. They were like mostly pamphlets. So in the meantime, all of the great powers are like want the Ottoman Empire to retain control of its territories in the Balkans and Anatolia because even though they lost it to the Russians technically. They're like, we don't want Russia to have that much power.

But we'll be in charge of it, kinda. Like you guys can be in charge of it, but we are going to essentially administer your state. Uh At the time the local sort of Kurdish and Turkish population in Anatolia is double taxing Armenians. Right. And then they are they're like, We're not doing this. Yeah. Fuck you guys.

And then the local Kurdish and Turkish population forms into militias to essentially massacre Wait, so it was out of nowhere. They're just like we're not paying those taxes and everyone's like, Fuck you and then just starts killing them? Yeah, but this was a a cycle of killing and remember like the patriarchy. But this is like the kind of like this is the beginning of What is essentially like

I I think in the massacres and this is why it's like it needs its own episode is like three hundred thousand people are said to have died. So it becomes this huge sort of like All throughout Anatolia, it just becomes like mass killing. Yeah. Um

Yeah, okay. And it I like I understand this story about like, oh, the gun goes off and then it hits somebody in the leg and then they think they're being fired on like that kind of confusion makes sense to me. Like we've seen that confusion lead to political incidents before. the them just like just firing on uh you know, people for not paying their taxes is

Yeah. That's wild. Well, I mean, they were like marching. They had assembled at the church to be like, What the fuck are you doing? Yeah, right, right, right. Um, but still I mean, I'm not so like The thing is obviously you're not justifying our medians very, very clearly. I know. Um it's just so uh

Shocking. I mean I think the thing about history is that it's so convoluted and when you take a step away from it, you're like, oh, this is just like ridiculous and senseless. But when you're in it, you're like, no, this makes the most

This is I mean I always uh not to be corny or whatever, but it's that like famous Benjamin thing about like the angel of history being blown backwards that would like to pause and like rescue the dead from oblivion or whatever. And I feel like often like history is What I will say additionally, like we haven't even gotten to the actual Armenian genocide, which right, which

next week it's just gonna be a bloodbath. Okay. But uh warning for everybody it's gonna be bad. But what I will say is that the Armenian genocide and massacres became princip like kind of principally uh like a huge thing in international law when trying to describe like describe what a genocide is. And so Erdogan and Turkey's like refusal to recognize it as a genocide is significant.

Right. Right. Okay. Well yeah, this is um super, super harrowing. We're at a an hour and a half. Did we just kind of I think I think All right, everybody. Well, that's part one of uh the Armenian genocide. We're gonna be getting into part two next week. It's going to be it's gonna be a hard one. Obviously what we already heard was pretty hard. Um Yeah. I'm very, very happy though to be learning about this because like I said, it was such a gap in my knowledge. Here's a funny thing. Uh so

The first four Armenians to or the first Armenian to visit Fresno was uh in the eighteen seventies after like that initial massacre, right? Uh And he apparently got his brothers to move to Fresno and then he married a Presbyterian woman in Philadelphia and fucked off to Philadelphia. And just left his brothers in Fresno. Yeah. And you gotta imagine Lucky them. Absolutely. They like the the city what isn't it? They loved it. Isn't Philadelphia the city of brotherly love? I think so, yeah.

I don't think there's a lot of other five. Wow, wow, wow. Okay. Well, everybody, uh if you want more of us, you can get it over on our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash pick me up I'm scared for three dollars a month. You can access bonus content over there. Um, we will be talking about the Armenian genocide mostly on our main

uh this whole month, but we will be doing bonus episodes that are more probably current events based. Yeah, I've I really do I do really do think we should do a Patreon thing about the Azerbaijan. I think that would be good. Yes. Yeah, that's kind of something we've planned. All right. So uh thanks so much and we'll we'll be here next year